The United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development asserted the intention to free people from poverty globally and to take transformative action to make the world a more sustainable and secure place. One wonders how the Agenda 2030 goals can be achieved, given the colossal natural and human disasters which pervade all societies, but more especially those in the global South. Insights from decolonial theorists have revealed how the Global North, which is at the centre of global knowledge economy, reaps the benefits of intellectual authority. A shift in ontological, epistemological and methodological positions is crucial if Africa is to improve the lives of its people, as well as its ecological health. Transformation in teaching and learning can begin with critical self-reflexivity on our complicity in importing “good” science which is rooted in Euro-Western traditions, into African classrooms, and reinscribing it as the only episteme which is valuable. This requires a Southern lens to illuminate how Southern intellectuals can work with, in and for Africa by re-writing its story of advancement in the world, and working towards a citizen centred development strategy, which addresses social and economic inequality. Methodologies which involve a transcendence of paradigmatic fractures between formal education and communities, which make science and mathematics education culturally inclusive and responsive, can form a basis upon which to repaint the curriculum canvas. This qualitative study reveals how teachers’ ecological ontology was developed by creating opportunities for immersion the environment, accompanied by the heightening of critical consciousness of interactions between the self and the environment, which are central to the transformative agenda. Eleven purposively selected science and mathematics teachers participated in arts-inspired collage-making and diary reflections. Transformation involved retrospection and introspection by participants who demonstrated how, through the integration of the self with the non-human, and the more-than-human, teacher learning towards achieving 2030 Global Goals could be realised.

Speaker: Ronicka Mudaly

Published in: Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2024)

• Date of Conference: 2-4 April, 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/IICE.2024.0008
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-70-9
• Conference Location: Dún Laoghaire, Ireland