Welcome to the Fundisa for Change Life Orientation Healthy Living Courses
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and Sustainable Livelihoods are three related cross-cutting concerns that teachers and subject curriculum specialists need to work with to develop a relevant and sustainable curriculum that addresses actual contextual matters of concern. Responding to an urgency to include ESD-aligned work within the curriculum, we found ourselves at a crossroads in the development of course design frameworks for teacher capacity building that support teachers to integrate these cross-cutting topics into their teaching and learning practices.
School and classroom food gardens can engage students in processes of building resilience and adjusting to their surroundings in response to social-ecological concerns. School and classroom gardens provide chances to connect subjects such as healthy eating, biodiversity, water, and climate change to nutritional needs and food production.
This short course series is created as one of five short courses for Foundation Phase teachers on five sustainability techniques such as composting, keeping good soil, growing your own greens, water harvesting, and seed sharing. These are introduced in the form of five short courses, each followed by an assignment.
For a critical understanding, the course series presents an integrated perspective on the sciences (natural and social), technology, indigenous knowledge, and everyday life.
The Handprints for Change Teacher Education Handbook Learning Resource Platform provides support for this online course series. On the platform, there are several exemplars developed on the’starting points’ approach around Food Garden Heritage practices that encourage the formation of practical, start-up resources for teacher education. To access the platform, click the button below. The course also seeks to connect this critical topic to the CAPS curriculum. A overview of the CAPS linkages between Food Garden practices and the Handprints for Change Teacher Education Handbook is provided below. These courses are designed to help Life Orientation teachers, teacher educators, and learners discover how to become involved in Food Garden Heritage and how to include gardening in the classroom.
The Life Orientation Heatlhy Living Courses focus on enhancing three essential aspects of teaching:
■ Knowing your Subject,
■ Improving your Teaching Practice, and
■ Improving your Assessment Practice.
About our Life Orientation Healthy Living Courses
Course Structure
Each of the five courses is structured as follows:
- Introduction to a new sustainability-oriented topic that encourages alternative ways of being and seeing in the world. A quiz follows each introduction to help you to establish whether you are grasping the essence of each topic.
- Video and reading material which builds on indigenous knowledges and cultural practices to reflect from past, to present and future in local contexts while exploring important foundational concepts in the Life Skills curriculum.
- Practical activities that explore and expand on the indigenous knowledges and cultural practices introduced above.
- A task which you need to complete and submit online.
