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ELF Guiding Principles and ProtocolEnvironmental Learning Forum members subscribe to the following guiding principles/protocol. ELF members will: • Actively contribute to sharing and collaboration around experiences, case studies, resources, learning materials, methods, approaches, evaluations and any other activities or resources related to the development and delivery of environment and sustainability education and training. • Agree to partner, when appropriate, with emerging providers and other ELF members in the development and delivery of education and training courses or initiatives. • Commit to rigor, quality, consideration of context and ongoing evaluation in the development and delivery of education and training. • Encourage a cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary approach to environment and sustainability education and training. • Maintain a learner-centred approach to education and training with a real commitment to education and training that is relevant, up-to-date and meaningful and that inspires and motivates the learner and develops appropriate skills, knowledge and values for their career development and life-long learning path. • Agree to notify other members, through the ELF website notice-board, of any relevant tenders or contracts related to environment and sustainability education and training. While collaboration and partnerships between ELF members in responding to such tenders and contracts is encouraged, members are not obliged to do so and are free to submit proposals and tender applications on an individual basis. • Agree to the development of a multi-stakeholder peer oversight mechanism, so that content and quality are monitored, and where necessary, discussed, debated and agreed to. This will assist in matters of ethics, transparency and accountability . • Agree that the ELF, as a stakeholder group concerned with environment and sustainability education and training, engage with lobbying for better inclusion of environment and sustainability concerns across the NQF. Any such lobbying activity undertaken by an ELF member in the name of ELF must be supported by the majority of ELF members. How Does the ELF Work?The ELF can best be described as a meeting place for organisations and individuals interested in environmentally related education and training with a major, but not exclusive, focus on accredited education and training within the context of the NQF. The networking and communication between members of the ELF will allow members to share information and resources to avoid duplication and unnecessary overlapping of activities. For example, two members of the ELF may discover that they are both working on developing materials for a particular course and may decide to work together, thus splitting the load rather than both working independently on the same thing. Another example could be an accredited provider that requires a facilitator with particular skills and experience for a course they are implementing. Through the ELF network they may be able to sub-contract this training to another ELF member with the requisite skills. The process of becoming an accredited education and training provider is an extremely time and resource consuming exercise and requires a substantial institutional/administrative support system. The Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), a founding member of the ELF, is currently in the process of becoming accredited and through the ELF, WESSA and other accredited members will offer the opportunity for partnerships and collaboration with other organisations and individuals in the delivery of accredited courses, selection of learners, finding appropriate workplaces for unemployed learners on learnerships, supporting emerging providers, sharing lessons learnt, sharing learning programmes and materials, advertising and marketing of courses, developing relevant teaching and learning materials and so on. How this will all work is best explained by starting with what it means to be an accredited provider. There are three important aspects related to becoming an accredited education and training provider: • Quality Management Systems - the accredited provider must have Seta prescribed QMS in place before accreditation is approved. This includes having proper policies and procedures in place related to all aspects of provision including, for example, administrative systems, learner selection criteria, assessment and moderation policies, proper learner record systems, facilities, facilitation, etc. • Learning Programme Approval - for any qualification registered on the NQF, the accredited provider must submit their learning programme and learning materials that they have developed for that particular qualification or skills programme for approval by the relevant ETQA (education and training quality assuror). Accredited providers are only able to offer qualifications and skills programmes for which they have programme approval. • Education and Training Staff - the provider must have relevantly qualified and experienced education and training facilitators and accredited assessors and moderators. These need not be employed by the accredited provider and can be outsourced for the delivery of particular qualifications. It is certainly not feasible for most organisations to set up all three of the requirements listed above but this does not mean that an organisation cannot engage with accredited education and training. Fully accredited providers that are willing to partner with non-accredited organisations and individuals for certain aspects or components of delivery will open up opportunities for involvement in activities such as facilitation of learning, assessment, learning materials development, moderation, etc. The ultimate impact that the ELF can have in the field of environment and sustainability education and training will therefore depend on the inputs that members contribute. Unless members use channels such as this website to notify others of their activities and needs, the point of being a member is lost. ELF Membership Categories and BenefitsThere are four categories of membership in the ELF:
Category 1: Fully Accredited Members Accredited members are those institutions or organisations that are already accredited with a relevant Seta to offer environment and sustainability related qualifications and skills programmes. Benefits of ELF Membership: • Access to and networking with other accredited providers for sharing of personnel such as assessors, moderators, facilitators, etc. • Access to and sharing of existing learning programmes, materials etc. of other providers (copyleft will apply - i.e. members using materials for not-for-profit purposes will be able to use free of charge while charges will be in place for profit-making members) and collaboration around development of new materials. • Establishing partnerships or consortia with other accredited members and emerging members to be able to respond to large learnership and other tenders/contracts. • Access to employer members to gain insight into education and training needs, employer input into materials development, etc. • Receive regular updates of tenders and contracts available for environmentally related education and training e.g. learnerships. • Interact and communicate with others in the field. Category 2: Emerging Provider Members This includes all members that are not yet accredited as education and training providers but are aiming to become accredited or partly accredited at some stage in the future. Benefits of ELF Membership: • Gain experience and know-how in various components of accredited education and training through partnering with already accredited members. Such components include, for example, learning programme and materials development, facilitation, assessment and moderation. • Avoid administrative burden of becoming fully accredited (and the QMS systems this requires) and concentrate only on those aspects of delivery that you are skilled or interested in. • Gain insight and support in the Quality Management Systems (QMS) requirements of a fully accredited provider for those organisations wanting to become fully accredited themselves. • Gain through sharing of case studies, lessons learnt, models and best practice approaches and other networking activities between ELF members. Category 3: Non-accredited and Employer Members Many organisations have no interest in becoming accredited education and training providers but do have an interest in the provision of learnerships and skills programmes for their employees or to the public or communities they work with. Often, especially for smaller organisations, it is not clear how to gain access to skills funding for setting up of learnerships and skills programmes and other education and training activities. Also, it is often not clear who is offering relevant training and whether this is what the organisation needs. Much criticism of accredited education and training has been of how often the training does not really cater for the specific needs of employees or the organisation. This category also caters for individuals/consultants who may want to join the ELF to facilitate partnering with accredited or emerging accredited members in specific aspects of education and training. For example, a registered assessor may join and offer their services to other members who may need assessors for a particular learnership or skills programme. Benefits of ELF membership: • Keep up to date with environmentally related education and training opportunities such as skills programmes, learnerships and other courses offered by members. • For individuals - opportunities will develop to work under accredited providers for inputs such as facilitation, assessment, moderation, etc. • Have access to credible accredited providers that subscribe to the ELF protocol. • Have opportunities to contribute to the conceptualizing and developing of accredited courses for your employees such as input into the materials development to ensure relevance and appropriate content for your context. • Keep in touch with what other members are doing, avoid overlap and wasteful duplication of activities throughout the environmental community of practice. Category 4: ELF Supporter Members This category is for members who want to support the ELF and subscribe to its vision, principles and protocol but do not really fit into the other categories. While many government departments will probably fit into category 3 as Employers, those that are not directly interested in environment and sustainability education for their own staff may prefer to join as supporter members. Seta's that may decide to join would fall in this category. Benefits of ELF membership: • ELF can provide a forum for dealing with the cross-cutting nature of environment and sustainability issues that all Seta's are required to respond to in some way or another in response to the sustainable development imperative. • Learn from other ELF members how issues of environment and sustainability have been or are being dealt with in other sectors or organisations. • Discover how a forum such as ELF can provide a case study or model for dealing with other cross-cutting/cross sectoral issues such as gender, health, etc. Background and Rationale for the ELFIn late 2003 the Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), the Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit (Rhodes EE&S) and the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) started working together in an informal partnership to find out the viability of having the level 5 National Certificate: Environmental Education, Training and Development Practice (EETDP) registered as a learnership and to work on developing a curriculum framework and learning support materials for the said qualification. Over the past two years our organisations have lobbied various Sector Education and Training Authorities (Seta's) for better inclusion of environment and sustainability concerns in their Sector Skills Plans. We have conducted research and held participatory workshops to determine the environment and sustainability education and training needs in a diversity of sectors and written up a Needs Analysis Report for the EETDP qualification. This work was rewarded when in early 2005 the ETDP SETA (Education, Training and Development Practice Seta - under whose domain the EETDP qualification falls) had the level 5 National Certificate: EETDP registered with the Department of Labour as a learnership. Throughout our work and as we interacted with a diversity of organisations and individuals it became apparent to us that there was a lack of accredited education and training providers offering environmentally related courses in general. We felt that the complexity and layers of bureaucracy surrounding the NQF and accreditation process was partly to blame thus preventing most environmental organisations from even attempting to navigate their way into the NQF and work with accredited courses, both for their own staff development purposes and to become accredited to offer accredited courses to others. At the same time there was an increasing level of interest in accredited environmental courses such as the EETDP and many of the organisations we were working with expressed that they would like to get involved in some way or another. It was at this point that we decided that the best way to open up possibilities for others to participate in the work we were doing was to formalize our informal partnership/network and so the idea of the Environmental Learning Forum was born. At an EETDP curriculum planning meeting in April 2005 we officially launched the ELF with about ten organisations present. Since the launch, there has been huge interest in the environmental community and we have realised the need to set up a formal structure that will facilitate the activities of the ELF. Founding Members of the ELFThe following organisations are founding members of the ELF: • Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism |
