Ideological and pedagogical tensions in an environmental sustainability education project: A review of adult education practices around Lake Fundudzi, South Africa

ABSTRACT

Research in poor communities in South Africa faces intellectual challenges and tensions which offer lessons for evaluating environmental education (EE). This article illuminates five such tensions that emerged during the course of an adult environmental education programme, implemented from 1999 to 2002, in communities surrounding the catchment of Lake Fundudzi in South Africa: tensions arose between traditional and modern concepts of community; between traditional and post-apartheid structures of local governance; between liberal empowerment and traditional conservationist ideologies; and also within and between environmental ideologies and research paradigms. Paramount among the lessons learned is the need to develop multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary (MIT) practices that are sensitive to local community and environmental needs, and to solutions expressed through local residents, community workers and academics – in other words, the recognition and affirmation of local indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs).

Keywords:

• Academic research
• adult education
• community development
• conservation
• culture
• environmental education
• environmental issues
• IKS
• Lake Fundudzi
• MIT
• participatory rural appraisal
• rural development
• sustainability
• traditional values
• Venda