Sustainable Transformation in African Higher Education


Book Description

The book is a must read for policy makers, academics, university administrators and post graduate research students in the broad field of education and in higher education studies in particular. The book brings together a wealth of information regarding the imperatives of transformation in Africa’s higher education systems. Not only do some of the chapters provide critical discussion about the conceptualisation of transformation, the majority of the chapters reflect on empirical evidence for transformation in diverse fields of mathematics, science, gender, the training of doctoral students and the governance and management of universities. This central theme of sustainable change and reform runs across the chapters of the book. For students, the book provides exemplars of practical research in higher education. For scholars in higher education and policy makers, specific issues for reform are identified and discussed.




Sustainability in Higher Education


Book Description

Support in higher education is an emerging area of great interest to professors, researchers and students in academic institutions. Sustainability in Higher Education provides discussions on the exchange of information between different aspects of sustainability in higher education. This book includes chapter contributions from authors who have provided case studies on various areas of education for sustainability. - Focus on sustainability - Present studies in aspects related with higher education - Explores a variety of educational aspects from an sustainable perspective




Handbook of Research on Transformative and Innovative Pedagogies in Education


Book Description

Various pedagogies, such as the use of digital learning in education, have been used and researched for decades, but many schools have little to show for these initiatives. This contrasts starkly with technology-supported initiatives in other fields such as business and healthcare. Traditional pedagogies and general digital technology applications have yet to impact education in a significant way that transforms learning. A primary reason for this minimal impact on learning is that digital technologies have attempted to make traditional instructional processes more efficient rather than using a more appropriate paradigm for learning. As such, it is important to look at digital technology as a partner and use transformative applications to become partners with students (not teachers) to empower their learning process both in and out of school. The Handbook of Research on Transformative and Innovative Pedagogies in Education is a comprehensive reference that identifies and justifies the paradigm of transformative learning and pedagogies in education. It provides exemplars of existing transformative applications that, if used as partners to empower student learning, have the potential to dramatically engage students in a type of learning that better fits 21st century learners. Covering topics such as gamification, project-based learning, and professional development, this major reference work is an essential resource for pre-service and in-service teachers, educational technologists, instructional designers, educational administration and faculty, researchers, and academicians seeking pedagogical models that inspire students to learn meaningfully.




Sustainability in Higher Education


Book Description

Campus leaders describe how community colleges, publicly funded universities, and private liberal arts colleges across America are integrating sustainability into curriculum, policies, and programs. In colleges and universities across the United States, students, faculty, and staff are forging new paths to sustainability. From private liberal arts colleges to major research institutions to community colleges, sustainability concerns are being integrated into curricula, policies, and programs. New divisions, degree programs, and courses of study cross traditional disciplinary boundaries; Sustainability Councils become part of campus governance; and new sustainability issues link to historic social and educational missions. In this book, leaders from twenty-four colleges and universities offer their stories of institutional and personal transformation. These stories document both the power of leadership—whether by college presidents, faculty, staff, or student activists—and the potential for institutions to redefine themselves. Chapters recount, among other things, how inclusive campus governance helped mobilize students at the University of South Carolina; how a course at the Menominee Nation's tribal college linked sustainability and traditional knowledge; how the president of Furman University convinced a conservative campus community to make sustainability a strategic priority; how students at San Diego State University built sustainability into future governance while financing a LEED platinum-certified student center; and how sustainability transformed pedagogy in a lecture class at Penn State. As this book makes clear, there are many paths to sustainability in higher education. These stories offer a snapshot of what has been accomplished and a roadmap to what is possible. Colleges and Universities Covered Arizona State University • Central College, Iowa • College of the Menominee Nation, Wisconsin • Curriculum for the Bio-region Project, Pacific Northwest • Drury University, Missouri • Emory University, Georgia • Florida A&M University • Furman University, South Carolina • Green Mountain College, Vermont • Kap'olani Community College, Honolulu, Hawaii • Pennsylvania State University • San Diego State University • Santa Clara University, California • Slippery Rock State University, Pennsylvania • Spelman College, Georgia • Unity College, Maine • University of Hawaii–Manoa • University of Michigan • University of South Carolina • University of South Florida • University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh • Warren Wilson College, North Carolina • Yale University







Schooling for Sustainable Development in Africa


Book Description

This book considers the scope and dynamics of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and learning in schools in Africa. It explores the conditions and processes that support such learning, and examines how ESD in schooling can improve the quality and relevance of education. The quality of education has been defined internationally as a key concern for educational institutions around the world, including schools in Africa. The models of quality are often limited to performance-based approaches and/or inclusive approaches. The contributions in this book show that there is more to a discussion on educational quality in Africa than performance success and/or inclusion. The chapters explain how ESD brings a new relevance to education in Africa, and at the same time, sounds the beginning of a new concept of quality education. The volume presents a collection of experiences in creating and supporting quality learning processes through a variety of ESD practices.




Decolonising African Higher Education


Book Description

Across the African continent, college student activists have long fought to decolonise African institutions. Reflecting ongoing Western colonisation, however, Indigenous African languages, thought, and structures remain excluded from African universities. Such universities remain steeped in Eurocentric modes of knowing, teaching, researching, and communicating. Students are rarely afforded the opportunity to learn about the wealth of knowledge and sustainable wisdom that was and is generated by their own home communities. Such localised Indigenous African perspectives are critical in a world committed to anti-Black racism, capitalist materialism, and global destruction. This book thus clarifies decolonial efforts to transform higher education from its anti-Black foundation, offering hope from universities across the continent. Writers are university administrators and faculty who directly challenge contemporary colonial education, exploring tangible ways to decolonise structures, curricula, pedagogy, research, and community relationships. Ultimately, this book moves beyond structural transformation to call for a global commitment to develop Indigenous African-led systems of higher education that foster multilingual communities, local knowledges, and localised approaches to global problems. In shifting from a Western-centric lens to multifaceted African-centrism, the authors reclaim decoloniality from co-optation, repositioning African intellectualism at the core of global higher education to sustain an Ubuntu-based humanity.




Agency and Social Transformation in South African Higher Education


Book Description

This book explores the process of transformation, discussing how individuals are capable of acting to enable transformation of structures and cultures through the lens of South African higher education. Agency and Social Transformation in South African Higher Education examines the role of agency in effecting change amidst the rigid conditions within South African universities. Arguing for a focus on transformation from below, it explores transformation and agency from the perspective of academic staff. Through discussing moments at which faculty members embedded in rigid structures and cultures perceive themselves as having had the agency to interrupt and transform them, despite their rigidity, this book describes the nuances of social action and agency within the South African higher education institutional context and the ways in which contextual histories may provide enabling/limiting conditions to individuals within them. This book makes an important contribution to the field of agency and social transformation theoretically, methodologically and geographically as it details the motivations for transformation, how individuals become agents of change and the practical experiences of these individuals from a localised perspective. Agency and Social Transformation in South African Higher Education will be of interest to scholars and students of African higher education, transformation studies and postcolonial studies.




Sustainability on Campus


Book Description

Stories both practical and inspirational about environmental leadership on campus. These personal narratives of greening college campuses offer inspiration, motivation, and practical advice. Written by faculty, staff, administrators, and a student, from varying perspectives and reflecting divergent experiences, these stories also map the growing strength of a national movement toward environmental responsibility on campus.Environmental awareness on college and university campuses began with the celebratory consciousness-raising of Earth Day, 1970. Since then environmental action on campus has been both global (in research and policy formation) and local (in efforts to make specific environmental improvements on campuses). The stories in this book show that achieving environmental sustainability is not a matter of applying the formulas of risk management or engineering technology but part of what the editors call "the messy reality of participatory engagement in cultural transformation." In Sustainability on Campus campus leaders recount inspiring stories of strategies that moved eighteen colleges and universities toward a more sustainable future. This book is for faculty, students, administrators, staff, and community partners, whether hesitant or committed, knowledgeable or newcomer. Scholars and activists have recognized the crucial role that higher education can play in the sustainability effort, and each chapter in the book is full of ideas about how to get started, revitalize efforts, and overcome roadblocks. Human and at times joyful, these stories illustrate many forms of leadership, in new courses and faculty development, green buildings and administrative policies, student programs, residential life, and collaborations with local communities.




Industrial Policy and Economic Transformation in Africa


Book Description

The revival of economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is all the more welcome for having followed one of the worst economic disasters—a quarter century of economic malaise for most of the region—since the industrial revolution. Six of the world's fastest-growing economies in the first decade of this century were African. Yet only in Ethiopia and Rwanda was growth not based on resources and the rising price of oil. Deindustrialization has yet to be reversed, and progress toward creating a modern economy remains limited. This book explores the vital role that active government policies can play in transforming African economies. Such policies pertain not just to industry. They traverse all economic sectors, including finance, information technology, and agriculture. These packages of learning, industrial, and technology (LIT) policies aim to bring vigorous and lasting growth to the region. This collection features case studies of LIT policies in action in many parts of the world, examining their risks and rewards and what they mean for Sub-Saharan Africa.