Learning for Living

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Towards a new vision for post-school learning in South Africa The post-school education and training system in South Africa has been the focus of much attention since the establishment of the Department of Higher Education and Training in 2009. In the context of deepening inequality, poverty and unemployment, the need for a humanising, liberating and critical approach to learning and pedagogy in post-school education is becoming urgent. The rural and urban voices that speak in this book tell us that the current system is out of touch with how they are making a life. Learning for Living challenges policymakers, researchers, educators and civil society organisations to think critically about the relationship between post-school education and the world of work, and about how to transform the post-school system to better serve the needs and interests of rural and urban communities. It issues a call to action, and proposes key principles to inform an alternative vision of post-school learning.

Section 1 Experience – living and learning

Chapter 1 Being there

Chapter 2 Making a life

Chapter 3 Making life harder, making it easier

Chapter 4 Experiences of learning
Formal spaces of learning
Non-formal spaces of learning
Learning from life

Chapter 5 Making learning easier, making it harder
Getting there
Staying there
Moving on
Learning for life
What have we heard?

Section 2 Reflection and input – the implications

Chapter 6 Doing – in, against and beyond
‘Development’ and capitalism
Researching an alternative: a better framework for ‘making a life’
Making a good life

Chapter 7 Learning from and for our lives
Education that helps, education that harms
Education as beneficial to the individual and society
Education as reproducing existing power relations
Resistance
Learning for hope and possibility
Being ‘educated’ for our lives

Section 3 Action – a new vision for post-school learning in South Africa

Chapter 8 What learning do people want?
How people want to learn
What people want to learn

Chapter 9 Learning to make a life
A return to lived experiences
Dismantling the current vision
A new framework for making a life and learning
Principles for a new practice in post-school learning

Britt Baatjes is a research associate at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) (University of Johannesburg). She has a background in adult and community education, including teaching, curriculum development and writing of materials in ‘plain language’ versions. She holds a Master’s degree in Adult Education from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). Her research interests include theory and practice of ‘work’; non-formal education and informal learning; and eco-pedagogy.

Ivor Baatjes is Director of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training
(CIPSET), Nelson Mandela University and the current Chair of the Education Policy Consortium
(EPC). He has worked in all the subsectors of the post-school education and training sector. His research interests include adult and community education; higher education; workers education; and learning in social movements. Ivor was Senior Researcher at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg and previously Director of the Centre for Adult Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). He also served as policy maker in the Adult Education and Training Directorate of the National Department of Education in the mid-1990s. He was the founder and country Director of the Paulo Freire Institute – South Africa and continues to serve as a member of the international advisors to the Paulo Freire Institute (Brazil).

David Balwanz is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Education Rights and
Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg. His current research focuses on secondary education and youth development in low and middle-income countries and exploring issues of agency and subjectivity-formation. David holds a PhD in International
Education Policy/Political Economy from the University of Maryland-College Park.

Anne Harley is a lecturer in adult education in the School of Education, University of KwaZulu- Natal (UKZN) in South Africa. She teaches and supervises in the field of adult education and participatory development at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Working in a critical frame, Anne is interested in issues relating to ‘development’ and, in particular, the relationship between ‘development’ and the poor; in gender issues; in environmental justice issues; and in the possibilities for change through genuinely grassroots social movements and their thinking and learning. She has researched and published in all of these areas. She heads up the Paulo Freire Institute-SA based within the discipline of Adult Education at UKZN.

Sonya Leurquain-Steyn is a researcher at the Centre for Post-School Education and Training (CIPSET), Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. She forms part of CIPSET’s Vocational Education Programme where her work focuses largely on gender studies and critical pedagogy. Sonya holds an Honour’s degree in Psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Education.