The Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Biodiversity Conservation in the Lesotho Highlands: Exploring Indigenous Epistemology

This paper is based on part of a broad study to investigate indigenous knowledge applied by the Lesotho Highlands communities to conserve biodiversity. A questionnaire was administered in 12 villages, to a population of 139 interviewees. It guided interviews on conservation of selected faunal and floral species with various community groups in the highlands: men, women, herd-boys and school pupils. It is illustrated that there are practices and beliefs about certain species that contribute towards their conservation. Through these beliefs species are perceived to have powers to cause certain awesome consequences for humans if destroyed, seen or encountered, and some species are believed to have abilities to communicate some messages to humans. It is argued that these beliefs and practices reflect evidence of the existence of a complex epistemological framework characterised by physical and spiritual interconnections of humans with other species. Some implications of the emergent epistemology for educational and conservation approaches are discussed

Learners’ Experiences of Peer Tutoring in the Context of Outdoor Learning: The Case of a Primary School

The article explores peer tutoring in the context of outdoor learning at a primary school in Lesotho. The peer-tutoring approach was trialled to explore its effectiveness in promoting learning in large class sizes which characterise primary and secondary schools in Lesotho. An urban primary school was purposively selected for the study. The study involved 104 Class 6 learners as tutors, 86 Class 2 learners as tutees, and 8 teachers as facilitators. To determine the learners’ perceptions on the peer tutoring and outdoor activities, focus-group discussions were employed. It is concluded that both the tutors and tutees responded positively to the outdoor learning activities and peer tutoring, but that the approaches need to be investigated further to establish tutor and tutee processes of interaction

Reflecting on socially transformative environmental literacy for Lesotho

This paper is an attempt to clarify the concept of environmental literacy from a socially transformative orientation. It resulted from our ongoing reflection on a conceptual framework in and for a three-year research project on education for environmental literacy within the integrated science curriculum in Lesotho

Education for environmental literacy : towards participatory action research in the secondary school science curriculum in Lesotho

The dependency of educators in Lesotho on externally developed curriculum theories and concepts is fundamental to issues of relevance of the school curricula. This study set out to develop the meaning of environmental literacy in the context of three secondary schools and to explore appropriate teaching methods for the development of this concept in the science curriculum. The participatory action research process involved a team of four science teachers, including the researcher, in partnership with an environmental centre. We progressively developed the meamng of environmental literacy by monitoring teaching innovations in the classroom, holding meetings and workshops and attending conferences where we shared classroom findings and reflected on our emerging understandings based on classroom experiences. Data collection involved: audio-recording of classroom lessons, interviews with teachers and students, audio-visual recording, classroom observations and students' questionnaires. The research process made apparent the complex nature of the process of clarifying and developing environmental literacy in this context. Classroom actiyities planned to inform the team's understanding of the meaning of environmental literacy and develop appropriate teaching methods encountered constraints associated with the education system and the legacy of colonialism. These contextual constraints crystallised the need for the education system to be transformed in order to make schools more conducive environments for the gevelopment of students' environmental literacy. While initially teachers were reluctant to engage in critical reflection, the research process did encourage the team to revise and expand their understandings of both environmental literacy in the science classroom, and the action research itself. The emerging meaning of environmental literacy in this context and how it may be developed among students does not involve a definition with prescriptive, effective teaching methods, but provides insights and understandings gained by the participants in their engagement with a reflective process of reconslructing meaning. I have come to understand environmental literacy during the study to be a process that should draw strongly on the local knowledge and understandings into the science curriculum, through participatory process-based curriculum development models

The role of 'rapid cognition' in the facilitation of theatre-making: a case of the 2008 Winter/Summer Institute in Theatre for Development

Abstract The Winter Summer Institute in Theatre for Development (WSI) is a biennial inter university programme that integrates a number of already established methods and ideas charted by other theorists in drama and theatre. As a pedagogical approach, its generative process relies on employing techniques such as improvisation and spontaneity. This study endeavours to unpack the principles and strategies that inform the generative process of theatre - making in the WSI. It emerged from the perception that the notion of ‘theatre without script’ (Fox 1994) underpins the work of the WSI, as it offers experiential and experimentational theatre-making. ‘Rapid cognition,’ a theory concerned with the ability to think instinctively, circumventing time and logic was used as the theoretical framework. Gladwell (2005) maintains that the life experience that individuals possess has enough power to intuitively and rapidly guide them to correct understanding, without necessarily complying with the formal procedures of time and logic. Qualitative research was used, particularly phenomenology, as a research methodology involving a choice of complementary methods. Findings reveal that for ‘rapid cognition’ to manifest itself, the environment, time pressure and planning are crucial. Although ‘rapid cognition’ falls within the mode of the “right hemisphere” of the brain, evidence in the study suggests that it can be trained. The benefits of which would include a heightened awareness in decision making, thus increased appropriateness in the choices of content and form in the WSI theatre-making. The study goes further in making theorized demonstration of ‘rapid cognition’, in many ways; it offers an affirmation of the power of theatre beyond mundane entertainment

Reflecting on socially transformative environmental literacy for Lesotho

This paper is an attempt to clarify the concept of environmental literacy from a socially transformative orientation. It resulted from our ongoing reflection on a conceptual framework in and for a three-year research project on education for environmental literacy within the integrated science curriculum in Lesotho

Embodied learning: Responding to AIDS in Lesotho's education sector

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Children's Geographies, 7(1), 2009. Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14733280802630981.In contrast to pre-colonial practices, education in Lesotho's formal school system has historically assumed a Cartesian separation of mind and body, the disciplining of students' bodies serving principally to facilitate cognitive learning. Lesotho has among the highest HIV-prevalence rates worldwide, and AIDS has both direct and indirect impacts on the bodies of many children. Thus, students' bodies can no longer be taken for granted but present a challenge for education. Schools are increasingly seen as a key point of intervention to reduce young people's risk of contracting the disease and also to assist them to cope with its consequences: there is growing recognition that such goals require more than cognitive learning. The approaches adopted, however, range from those that posit a linear and causal relationship between knowledge, attitudes and practices (so-called ‘KAP’ approaches, in which the role of schools is principally to inculcate the pre-requisite knowledge) to ‘life skills programmes’ that advocate a more embodied learning practice in schools. Based on interviews with policy-makers and practitioners and a variety of documentary sources, this paper examines a series of school-based AIDS interventions, arguing that they represent a less radical departure from ‘education for the mind’ than might appear to be the case. The paper concludes that most interventions serve to cast on children responsibility for averting a social risk, and to ‘normalise’ aberrant children's bodies to ensure they conform to what the cognitively-oriented education system expects