Summary – Skills, knowledge, values and attitude from Biodiversity
This is a public-good interactive module for biodiversity conservation in
the biome. Based on learning design, it aims to engage intermediate learners in learning that fosters authentic, active and interactive experiences. For example, learners model authentic scientific inquiry by investigating threats to biodiversity in South African National Parks. The module incorporates Western and Indigenous sciences and provides a global perspective on some of the socio-economic challenges and threats to the world’s tropical environments.
KEY WORDS Biodiversity, conservation, resources
Why is biodiversity conservation important in South Africa?
Through the Convention on Biological Diversity, South Africa has international commitments to conserve biodiversity, including species and ecological communities, which are given effect through the South African Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, and related State legislation. South Africa has been bestowed with a great natural legacy where an extraordinarily large ecologically functioning natural landscape is ornamented by biodiversity richness of international significance. Computer-based learning environments that are accessible to all learners in South Africa provide an excellent opportunity to not only provide appropriate resources for sustainability but, also to adopt different approaches. “Environmental education for sustainability promotes an approach that takes learners beyond acquiring knowledge about the environment and instead developing skills for engagement with environmental change,” Further, “reorienting education towards sustainability requires a new view of science, an ecologically-focused science, which recognises the interconnectedness of systems, both human and natural,” supports this move away from traditional “canonical science” to one that adopts more humanistic science perspectives that give “priority to a student-oriented point of view aimed at citizens acting as consumers of science and technology in their everyday lives”. Complex issues require an integrated approach where “learners can see relationships and links between their learning and use these to make sense of the world”. Learners: • Understand that communities of plants animals and people live and interact in South Africa. Insects, especially termites as decomposers and herbivores, play an important role in our country. • Develop skills to build simple food chains and food webs based on real world examples. • Understand some of the key factors that threaten South African ecosystems include: introduced species (weeds & feral animals) and changed fire regime.