Green Skills Research in South Africa

This book proposes transformative, realist methodology for skills research and planning through an analysis of case studies of the changing world of work, new learning pathways and educational system challenges. Studies of the green economy and sustainability transitions are a growing field internationally, however there are few books that link this interest to the development of skills. This book draws on, and showcases, the experience and insights of researcher-practitioners who are at the cutting edge in this emerging field, internationally and in South Africa. The context for this book is South Africa, but application is worldwide. In many ways indicative of the global picture, South Africa is in the grip of economic and environmental imperatives, searching for safe and just transitions. The authors present a new, embedded transitioning systems model for studying skills for a sustainable, just future. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable development, ecological economics and skills planning.

Eureta Rosenberg is the Chair of Environment and Sustainability Education and Director of the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. Presha Ramsarup is the Director at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Heila Lotz-Sisitka is a DST/NRF Chair of Global Change and Social Learning Systems and a Distinguished Professor in the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

1. Skills for just transitions to sustainability: An orientation 2. Green economy transitions & skills: Global and South African perspectives 3. Mining: A laminated, dialectic methodology for identifying not-yet-obvious green skills demand 4. Green skills for agriculture: A method for focussing demand analysis and prioritization 5. Surface coatings: Occupational analysis and green skills 6. Learning pathways into environmental specialisations: A boundaryless careers perspective 7. Transitioning into work: A transitioning process perspective 8. Probing the potential of social ecosystemic skills approaches for green skills planning: Perspectives from Expanded Public Works Programme studies 9. Framing sustainability policy Learning Needs Assessments 10. Green skills supply: Research from providers' vantage point(s) 11. Formative interventionist research generating iterative mediation processes in a vocational education and training learning network 12. Greening occupations and green skills analysis 13. Synthesis and elaboration of critical research methodology for green skills research 14. Green skills research: Implications for systems, policy, work and learning