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SKILLS FOR JUST TRANSITIONS

As climate change intensifies, it continues to present unprecedented challenges to work and livelihoods, particularly in Africa. South Africa exemplifies this, with nearly every sector, from agriculture to energy feeling the adverse effects of climate change. This growing concern has many contemplating the future of work and seeking innovative ways to cultivate knowledge and skills that are currently not yet included in the skills system.

Research projects within this thematic cluster include:

GREEN SKILLS

The Green Skills Project responds to the need for more proactive, concerted and coordinated efforts to analyse, plan for and develop green skills for South Africa, with a focus on the post - schooling system.

The aim if the Green Skills Project was to build the capacity of the national system to better integrate and plan for green skills development, with a particular focus on post-school skills development.

Chaired by the Department of Environmental Affairs, the lead partner was Rhodes University and its Environmental Learning and Research Centre. Funded by the Green Fund through the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the National Research Foundation, key implementation partners were Wits University and the Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL), UCT and the African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI), UWC and WWF-South Africa. The programme still seeks to partner with current and aspirant green skills researchers, employers, funders, universities and TVET colleges, government departments, SETAs and other skills planning and development agencies, across all sectors of the economy and society.

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SUSTAINABLE FUTURES: EXPLORING SOCIAL ECOSYSTEMS FOR SKILLS

Case studies investigating local / place based social ecosystems for skills are being developed in sectors and contexts where sustainability challenges are high, such as agriculture and fisheries, maritime, oil and gas. Methods being used to explore place-based social ecosystems for skills include historical sociologies, curricular reviews, contextual profiling, change laboratories, in-depth interviews and focus groups, social network mapping and policy analysis.  The challenge is to map out all players involved in skills development in response to sustainability challenges in a place-based sectoral context, and to then understand how they all contribute to skills development in and across formal education and training institution boundaries. 

Through multidisciplinary collaboration, researchers spanning countries, including South Africa, Uganda, and the UK, have contributed to articulating the contours of what a social ecosystem for skills looks like in an African context, with key findings articulated in the VET 4.0 Africa project (a partnership between Rhodes University, Nottingham University, Gulu University and Wits University). This project sheds light on how individuals navigate their learning and work transitions within VET systems, both formal and informal, and highlights the important role played by ‘informal’ training providers in the social ecosystem for skills context in Africa.  The findings also show how skills trajectories are often skewed by donor driven interests and a general lack of responsiveness in the VET system to emerging challenges such as climate change. A VET Africa 4.0 Collective book: “Transitioning Vocational Education and Training in Africa; A social Skills Ecosystem Perspective” was published in 2023.

This PHD study offers a workstream mapping approach as a potential mediating unit of intervention for skills planning and development for agricultural extension to facilitate Just Transitions for smallholder farming (Muhangi in press). Other ongoing PhD studies at the ELRC are investigating the laminated nature of social ecosystems for skills in aquaculture sector, and school food gardens as sites of just transitioning in the food system. Research by Ramsarup, Lotz-Sisitka and McGrath is showing a need to deepen analytical tools for social skills for ecosystem approaches. This work contributes to ongoing insights into methods and approaches that can advance skills development for the just transition in food, water, agriculture and energy sectors. 

Downloadable Skills Ecosystems Research Summary

LEARNING AT SEA

Ferguson's PHD research explores the provision of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) of southern African workers at sea on local and foreign vessels using a blended learning approach. The pedagogical challenge of providing quality education in this context is that multiple African and foreign languages and cultural norms are found amongst the all-male crew; and there are widely differing levels of education, low levels of digital literacy and limited connectivity or access to devices. 

The study describes the mechanisms used to provide ongoing, real-time workplace TVET for engineers and production workers on local and foreign deep-sea trawling vessels. Some training was done in person when the vessels came into port, however, the majority of the TVET was achieved from shore to ship. This was done by using a combination of commonly available Google and Microsoft Apps which rolled up into ‘mobisodes’. A ‘mobisode’ is a tiny 3-4 minute low data video, which incorporates voice, video-in-video, PowerPoint, and text, and is transmitted using WhatsApp. The mobisodes afford teaching and learning in multiple languages, in different modalities (looking, listening, reading) which means that different learning styles and levels of education can be accommodated. The learning was supported by the development of learning networks using social media. This promotes social learning horizontally and vertically. Based upon topics raised in the mobisode WhatsApp Groups it is possible to build relevant curriculums from the ground up by developing materials which engage with the learners’ questions and comments. This research also reflects on the shore-based organisational change processes required to support @sea learning. 

TOWARD MONITORING, EVALUATION AND LEARNING IN LANDSCAPES

The Rhodes University Chair in Environment and Sustainability Education has explored since 2016 (and earlier) methods, processes and frameworks for evaluation to more strongly support learning and transformation towards social justice and environmental sustainability.

Central to this work has been the development of a ‘hybrid’ framework for monitoring, evaluation, reporting and learning in systemic social-ecological programmes focussed inter alia on restoration, resilience and natural resource management, under conditions of complexity. The hybrid model accommodates indicator-based reporting that can be aggregated by donors and government, and seeks ways in which this data can be used more effectively for communications and learning. At the same time, it overcomes the limitations of indicator- and target-based monitoring and reporting through dialogic theory-of-change mapping, collective case studies and action experiments as part of adaptive learning cycles, and realist evaluation designs to answer system-level questions. Key ingredients in the hybrid model are dialogic reflections, up-down and all-round communications, trust, and investing strongly in the starting conditions in the system, so as not to rely excessively and exclusively on compliance and control measures.

The evaluation research and development work of the Chair in Environment and Sustainability Education is intended for a dialogue with evaluators, policy makers, evaluation commissioners, programme designers, managers and funders of multi-dimensional, multi-party programmes responding to complex issues such as climate change, food and water security, unemployment, loss of biodiversity and livelihoods in Africa’s culturally rich and naturally beautiful landscapes.

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RE-THINKING EVALUATION FOR SKILLS PROGRAMMES

Skills programmes and providers are now being evaluated like businesses - with simple, countable inputs and simple, measurable outcomes apparently achieved in linear, predictable steps. Not only government but universities and NGOs report against indicators that are aggregated up, but not reflectively interrogated to enable learning. The numbers of indicators and reports are growing, and more and more is audited. More time is needed for monitoring and evaluation (M&E), from growing tiers of managers, but also from educators. And yet we cannot confidently comment on the impact of skills programmes. We still cannot say whether we are producing real skills, and why (not). Even commissioned evaluation reports do not seem to inform the way forward, and the same questions are being asked by consecutive teams of evaluators, of the same programmes, only to be filed away by consecutive M&E managers.

New methodologies were developed such as a tracer study protocol to evaluate if learners use any skills gained post-training (by Mike Rogan) and a cost-benefit analysis tool (by Glenda Raven) to determine a realistic cost for skills training benefits. A case study evaluating enterprise development in a township (by Garry Rosenberg) demonstrated the value of viewing skills programmes as activity systems. DHET officials joined in mapping a Theory of Change (ToC) for the national skills system. However, the study showed that systemic constraints prevent SETAs and DHET from doing more meaningful M&E. Government is wedged into a proliferation of indicator-based reporting and auditing. While these do not prevent the mis-use of funding, they do reduce opportunities to learn from evaluation, as also found by Mudau among partners in water management, and by Rosenberg et al. in SANParks. 

Re-thinking Evaluations of Skills Programmes

MONITORING AND EVALUATION IN A SETA ENVIRONMENT

This is a recently finalised project where Rhodes University research units comprising of ELRC, NALSU and Community Engagement, were awarded a Research Chair to focus on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in a SETA Environment.

In March 2018 Rhodes University (ELRC, NALSU and Community Engagement) were awarded a Research Chair to focus on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in a SETA Environment. To be rolled out over three years (August 2018 – March 2020), this research programme is an initiative of South Africa’s 21 Sector Education and Training Authorities and was strongly supported by the Department of Higher Education and Training. It was funded by BANKSETA and ServicesSETA.

The programme addressed the fact that despite extensive monitoring and reporting already taking place in the national post-school education and training system, some important evaluative questions about our post-school education and training system and how to strengthen it, remained unanswered.

It explored innovative methods to address the need for evaluation at multiple levels: from single initiatives by individual SETAs, to a composite national picture. Both conceptual depth and practical feasibility are important, with due consideration of the kinds of M&E that SETAs and their research partners can realistically undertake.

Read more about the nine sub-projects

SUSTAINABILITY COMMONS

Grahamstown locals make art from 'junk'

The Sustainability Commons is a space where ideas and technologies for sustainable development can be tested and explored. Through the commons we hope to discover and re-discover new and old common sense practices that promote healthier, more eco-friendly ways of living. The areas of focus are: teaching sustainability, youth development, gardening, climate change, health, water, biodiversity, cultural heritage, waste and rural livelihoods. The purpose of a commons is to have an open and collaborative space where a variety of participants can share knowledge and expertise. Thus our partnerships with WESSA, local NGOs and local and provincial government are integral to this project.

CONSIDERING TIME IN CONVERSATIONS AROUND JUST TRANSITIONS

This research addresses a paradox: Sustainability scientists suggest that rates of change between fast, non-linear environmental changes, and accompanying social changes are ‘out of sync’ (Shrivastava et al., 2020). It is said that cultural and value changes have to occur within a generation, rather than over generations, via advancing ‘new ways of learning’ (ibid). However, new ways of learning in this short time (i.e. one generation) are seen to be problematic if not impossible, because it ‘takes time to engage over different stakeholder epistemologies’ (ibid). But, just transitions, if they are to be democratic and inclusive, necessarily require people’s participation and meaning making in and across diverse epistemic communities. This presents as a learning-centred paradox that requires methodology development, transgressive learning and meaningful skills development cf. Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2017; Rosenberg et al., 2020) i.e. ‘time [ixhesha] for justice’. Importantly, learning new ways of working and living requires the time needed for ‘destabilising categorical or stabilized knowledge in order to turn it into possibility knowledge’, a complex process that involves putting ‘inert stabilizing knowledge into movement’, with power to catalyse significant shifts and transformations in activity, a process that requires development of new meaning(s), instrumentalities or cultural tools that may as yet not be in existence (Engeström, 2007: 275).

This British Academy funded project involves multiple partners across the globe, coming together in collaborative meetings to re-think time in the context of just transitions. 

The South African based meeting in October 2023 held conversations that were centred on various aspects of time and just transitions in South Africa, which struggles with the realities of the past in the present, nevertheless with a promise of just transitioning to offer possibilities for a just, inclusive future in the world’s most unequal society. 

Time and Just Transitions, the South African Meeting Report