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The Schools Water Project (SWAP): A Case Study of an Action Research and Community Problem Solving Approach to Curriculum Innovation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Danie Schreuder
Danie Schreuder*
Affiliation:
Environmental Education Program (EEPUS), Stellenbosch University, South Africa
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It seems ironic that the amazing breakthroughs and successes of scientific methods of enquiry of the past century that were supposed to enhance the quality of human life are currently looked on as being at the root of many of the pressing environmental and social problems of our time. Conventional approaches to science and technology that enabled humankind to manipulate and exploit natural resources led to a sense of authority and command which gave rise to a sometimes blind belief in ‘…the triumphs of natural science in seeking to develop the social understanding that would allow human beings successfully to harness the forces thus released to their own self-betterment’ (Giddens 1982, p.69).

This extension of the apparent success of natural science as ‘… an ideology, a culturally produced and socially supported, unexamined way of seeing the world which shapes and guides social action’ (Carr and Kemmis 1986, p. 132) seemed very appropriate at the time. Inevitably, the trusted logical positivist and reductionist approaches permeated social sciences to such a degree that they dominated Western views on education for a long time. Popkewitz (1984, p.23) refers to the effect on education in which ‘…human engineers … act upon educational affairs as though there are no difficulties or uncertainties; …educators are to manipulate and control children as physical scientists manipulate objects of the physical world’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 10 , 1994 , pp. 35 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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