Deliberations on a Changing Curriculum Landscape and Emergent Environmental and Sustainability Education Practices in South Africa

Abstract

This chapter describes Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) in South Africa against the backdrop of a changing educational system. It discusses changing educational imperatives in post-apartheid South Africa and how these have been interpreted and applied in three curriculum revisions in South Africa since 1994: Curriculum 2005, the Revised National Curriculum Statements and the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement. The narrative also examines a changing picture of teacher professional development in South Africa highlighting how constructivist and social realist understandings of education, development and learning have entered the discourse and influenced practice in South Africa. The chapter concludes with highlighting how a relational approach to learning, as evident in ESE practices in South Africa, can help to avoid a pendulum swing between the dichotomies of competing discourses.