Urban environmental education: Principles in action

While the value of environmental education in a natural environment is acknowledged, a case is made for urban environmental education. Principles underlying a programme derived largely from the British Urban Studies movement, in particular, the Art and the Built Environment project (Adams and Ward 1982), are presented as a contribution to urban environmental education in South Africa

Drawings in a "Container": A Visual Narrative Approach to Research With Refugee Children

Drawings can be a useful research tool as they allow children and young people to reflect on their lived experience in a form that is not dependent on words. They can, however, evoke strong memories and cause distress, particularly among children affected by war. This article describes a visual narrative approach where drawings do not exist on their own as a research tool but are embedded in an actual container, like a suitcase, or another artistic form such as a sculpture, a book, or a layered collage. The challenge this seeks to address is how to work with difficult topics in a way that allows us to apprehend the depth and complexity of the lived experience of children affected by war while protecting them from distressing memories evoked by the visual images they create. In an attempt to answer this question, the article describes a number of research encounters that have taken place over the last 15 years in eastern, central, and southern Africa in both refugee settlement and urban contexts. It explores examples of how multiple drawings are placed in a metaphorical "container" that resonates with the research purpose and the participants. The approach contains emotion, but using a multiplicity of drawings also allows children to reflect on the complexity of lives affected by war, a complexity that includes both strength and vulnerability

English as an arts discipline in environmental education

The subject English can be used as a discipline or as a medium. This paper describes the form of English as a discipline and questions the way it is used in environmental education. A call is made to involve in environmental education those who understand the form of English as a discipline in particular and of the arts in general

You can take a horse to water ...environmental education theory and practice in the context of a simple freshwater ecology exercise

This article deals with some important considerations which should be taken into account in the planning and execution of environmental education activities. It questions the educational benefits of teaching and learning that rely on the transmission of information, and explores an alternative epistemological basis for such work.It suggests that a discussion-based approach focused on experiences of actual environmental issues, encountered problematically, should characterise environmental education activities.A simple ecology exercise dealing with organic pollution of a river is provided as a context for the educational principles and ecological concepts which are described

Understanding trauma and trauma intervention in new ways through an examination of the Suitcase Project, a project for unaccompanied refugee children in Hillbrow, Johannesburg

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, February 2016This thesis provides a detailed description of a support project that originated in 2001 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The project, which became known as the Suitcase Project, worked with unaccompanied refugee children from Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Angola. The thesis contains detailed narratives of the children’s experiences in their countries of origin and in South Africa as refugees. The narratives were collected through a participatory, artbased process over a period of five years. A reflection on alternative ways of understanding and responding to the trauma experienced by war-affected children emerges from the description of the project. The project’s use of art-making as a key process tool allows for an examination of the role that art can play in helping children make meaning of specific traumatic events as well as the general loss and grief of migration. The artwork and narratives the children produced are used to explore children’s understandings and representations of trauma giving a unique understanding of the way children use their own agency to overcome their situation. The reflection on the project allows for the emergence of a meaning-making approach to helping children deal with trauma. The approach includes the explicit use of metaphor through art, allowing for fragmentary narratives to be built up into coherence over time, accepting silence in place of talk, creating internal and external spaces for children to express their agency and a focus on everyday rituals and objects. The project is an example of the creation of a community of grief that allows the children to support each other but through the public work of the project to also make a political statement as marginalised children. The approach explicated in the thesis can be incorporated into a wide range of intervention projects for children made vulnerable by war. Key words: Unaccompanied refugee children, art-making, trauma, narrative, child agency, making meaning, everyday, metaphor, war-affected childrenGR201

Understanding the history of women's lives in Zanzibar through song and story: a gendered perspective

This dissertation and the accompanying performance explore women's history through the song genre dandaro learned from women's singing groups in present-day Zanzibar. The study aims to show that songs, a part of oral tradition, are an effective way of adding to the minimal understanding we have of women's lives in Zanzibar and the Indian Ocean. The dissertation transcribes both the lyrics and the music of the dandaro songs and analyses them in relation to theoretical perspectives on archive and gender realities, as well as in the context of the history of Zanzibar. It also describes how and why I created a performance that reflected both the journey of my research as well as what the women and men I met shared with me. The dissertation and performance form a whole and the performed work is incorporated into the dissertation to show how the performance deepened the approach to the theory and data and vice versa. This study of dandaro songs reveals the existence of a transgenerational archive of information that preserves and transmits the image of strong womanhood and woman's agency, where women subvert gender norms and express their solidarity with each other

Towards an environmental education programme for the training of primary school teachers

This study involved the design, implementation and evaluation of an Environmental Education programme intended for teacher training. The programme was implemented over a twelve-week period with a group of nineteen final year students at the Johannesburg College of Education. The programme has two main aims: 1) the development of environmental literacy in students; the equipping of students to develop environmental literacy in their pupil

Revealing the impact of loss : Exploring mental health through the use of drawing/writing with HIV positive adolescents in Johannesburg

This document is the Accepted Manuscript of the following article: Nataly Woollett, Heena Brahmbhatt, Kate Dodd, Michelle Booth, Hayley Berman, and Lucie Cluver, 'Revealing the impact of loss: Exploring mental health through the use of drawing/writing with HIV positive adolescents in Johannesburg', Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 77: 197-207, June 2017. Under embargo until 29 October 2018. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.04.021. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Research that utilises non-verbal methods, such as drawings, are also increasingly recognised as particularly ethical as they offer research subjects active participation in the research process, authenti- cating their voice through their engagement, offering more develop- mentally appropriate means of accessing data, diminishing stress in the child/adolescent-adult interaction and providing a more comfortable method of engagement than languagePeer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

The environmental education policy initiative: Reflections on the process

This paper describes aspects of the Environmental Education Policy Initiative (EEPI), as it is now known, with the purpose of reflecting on it and drawing out some key features. Commonly, a process such as the EEPI runs its course with little attempt to reflect more deeply on the process and learn from it. This short paper is intended as a useful learning opportunity for us all