Norma Romm

University of South Africa | unisa · College of Education (CEDU)

The dialogue in this chapter is centred around how we can live differently if we challenge the speciesism based on an assumption of clear-cut boundaries between what are seen as different species. The dialogue takes the form of our deliberating around two fictional pieces created by Janet McIntyre (editor of this volume) to challenge the way we rel...

In this chapter, I join my colleagues to link storytelling with scenarios as a way to foster critical systemic thinking, emotional intelligence and changes in the way in which we relate to one another including our links with the rest of nature as a living system. Storytelling and ceremony can be used as a means to support distributive leadership p...

The key theme of this chapter is that climate change, high costs of living and movement to the cities threaten food security but this does not mean that small farmers should be threatened by the corporatisation of food production or factory farms. Localisation and food sovereignty is about owning the means of production of the food cycle. This cont...

In this chapter, we ponder around the relationship between a posited observer (or observers) and what becomes “observed”. We begin the discussion with a reference to quantum physicist David Bohm and his conversations with spiritual leaders including HH Dalai Lama. The suggestion is that we live in a participative universe as also expressed by vario...

This chapter is a discussion about both process and content in several weekly Sunday morning conversations. It explores re-inventing democracy in the digital era, governance and areas of concern with youth leaders and the young at heart from Africa and Indonesia. Overall, we reflect on social, economic and environmental challenges. Some of the part...

The two case studies are of forest communities in Venda in South Africa and Ciptagelar, West Java discussed in terms of their social, environmental and economic approaches. In both cases, the communities see themselves as related to nature, in the case of Venda, they express this as a totemic relationship and have been inspired to apply an ecologic...

The chapter addresses social and environmental justice based on celebrating, inter alia, Indigenous wisdom though a systemic relational approach. It discusses the literature on earth jurisprudence and issues of ecocide by reconsidering and redressing approaches for governing the Anthropocene that rely on state-based and market-oriented initiatives....

The various papers, discussions and panel presentations given at the International Society for the Systems Sciences conferences (ISSS) which contribute to this volume are based on the work of a community of practice that reflects on seed and food security, earth jurisprudence and accountability to current and future generations of living systems. I...

In this article, we explore options for organising effective and ethical knowledge management, using Nonaka and colleagues’ model of knowledge creation, which is premised on principles of ba (where people recognise their occupation of a shared space with others). We relate this model to our reflections on the applicability of the African concept of...

This article is structured around my locating a lacuna in the (mainstream) literature describing the history of the field of “systems thinking”. I investigate how dominant accounts of this history do not include an account of the contributions of Indigenous sages and scholars’ systemic thinking. Such thinking (and being) is grounded in a relational...

The paper reflects on the lessons from two case studies in order to discuss (1) how they address Ostrom's eight principles and (2) implications for social, economic and environmental challenges. The two case studies are of forest communities in Venda in South Africa and Ciptagelar, West Java, discussed in terms of their social, environmental and ec...

The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, we consider whether the setting up of mixed-gender focus group sessions has the potential as a research process to contribute to transforming people's understandings of their gendered relationships. Secondly, we relate our discussion to the question of the mutability of stereotypical thinking in the...

The chapter offers a way of systemic thinking linked to a systemic ethics in which thinkers and actors strive to re-generate life chances of people and the living systems on which they depend. The argument takes into account the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of 2015, and extends these by propounding an ethic of inclusive wellbeing: t...

This is my review of Hilary Bradbury's latest book (2022) on Action Research for Transformation at a Time of Eco-Social Crisis. It is published in the journal entitled Journal of Awareness-based Systems Change; and in this issue (2,2) there are very many excellent articles, including an inspiring editorial.

This paper discusses transformative research in a community of practice, it is written in the form of a metalogue on our progress to date This iterative dialogue based on face to face meetings and regular virtual meetings. Together we illustrate and map the journey of developing the pathways to wellbeing software into story pathways to support a gr...

In this chapter, we explore the ways in which collective awareness of possibilities to act in the face of social and environmental justice became activated in a community in Uganda. We concentrate on community participants’ joint reflections around the operations of a foreign-owned factory that was set up in Koch Goma Subcounty, Nwoya District in n...

This review is written in the form of a dialogue between the author (Janet Mills) and the reviewer (Norma Romm). This fits well with the way we usually work together as it helps to unfold ideas and to consider whether they can be improved. A conversation as we see it implies that the speaker does not wish to speak in an authoritative voice but invi...

This article offers our reflections upon how we invoked an Indigenous paradigm in undertaking/facilitating qualitative research in a setting in Northern Uganda (2020/2021). The research was aimed at co-exploring with participants how they mobilized as a community against social and environmental injustices attendant with the entry of certain foreig...

In this article, we consider the instituting of effective and ethical knowledge management in the arena of public schooling, with reference to a multiple case study involving three schools in Emalahleni Circuit 1, 2 and 3 in South Africa. Teachers, HoDs, administrative clerks, and principals (20 participants altogether) were interviewed in depth co...

This chapter revisits issues related to how professional researchers situated in academia can work alongside research participants as part of the evaluation of Development Education interventions. Our notion of professional researcher involvement in community-engaged research (for the benefit of participants and stakeholders) draws on transformativ...

This edited book arose as a result of the Society for the Advancement of Science in Africa (SASA) Seventh Annual International (digital) Conference, Joint SASA and Ugandan Ministry of Health, October 15, 2020 – January 14, 2021 conference, held in Kampala, Uganda. Thereafter the editors of this book solicited chapters from presenters and also from...

The chapter spells out the implications of ongoing research that we have been conducting in the locality of Venda in South Africa as an action learning approach. We have also been inspired by the "one village many products" initiatives as practiced in certain localities of Indonesia. We focus on the systemic impact of convergent social, economic, a...

This is chapter TWO of a book edited by: Alain L. Fymat, Norma R.A. Romm, and Joachim Kapalanga entitled Covid-19: Perspectives Across Africa. This chapter is authored by Norma RA Romm & Yiannis Laouris with Abiba Abdallah, Bill Graham Osei Akomea, Daniel Ehagi, James Gondwe, Melvis Kimbi, Georgina Mabezere, Abel Mavura, Apollo Murigi, Abdulkarim T...

This chapter elucidates how ten young adults (in their 20s to mid-30s) from various African countries have experienced their individual and collective agency as impacting social and ecological outcomes in their societies. The chapter also considers how their agency has been crucial

This article discusses the African cohort’s contribution to the “re-inventing democracy in the digital era” project, funded by a UN Democracy Fund. The project involved almost 100 youth from five regions of the globe in deliberating upon the future of democracy, using a methodology called structured dialogical design. We explain the utility of this...

In the book, Questions in Qualitative Social Justice Research in Multicultural Contexts, the authors, Anna CohenMiller and Nettie Boivin, ask provocative questions meant to stimulate us as qualitative researchers to strengthen options for conducting “better” research which is likely to advance inclusion and equity for communities who have been hist...

This article proposes the importance of admitting into the repertoire of Problem Structuring Methods for (Community) Operational Research, the methodology called Structured Dialogical Design (SDD). Problem Structuring Methods are described in the literature as facilitating transparent and participative ways of formulating and systemically modelling...

This chapter explores some examples of systemic thinking and practice to support re-generative development. By re-generative development we mean developing opportunities that support people and the living systems on which they depend. We need to understand our connectedness and protect people and the environment. Our thinking shapes the material wo...

In this chapter I spell out various perspectives on performative research. I highlight that the common idea is that research should not strive to be “representational” of externally posited realities, but should take into account that it is always complicit in the unfolding of the worlds of which it is a part. I explain the advocacy of a performati...

In this chapter we endorse the concept of multispecies relationality by explicating African worldviews which emphasize the importance of the practice in African culture (as in other Indigenous traditions) of having a totem in which a human soul is given to animals, plants and nature. For example, the clan totem called Ndou in Venda means persons ha...

In this article we discuss how an interdisciplinary research team partnered with a variety of stakeholders concerned with and/or affected by the impacts of climate change in the Red River Delta of Vietnam. The research, undertaken from 2016 to 2018, drew upon a wide range of methods to investigate systemically these impacts – with a view to the res...

in Nwoya district, Uganda, we propose some recommendations for not returning to what is considered "normal" in the dominant narrative permeating the globe. As many authors have pointed out (including those committed to decolonization), a global economic system geared to increased wealth accumulation concentrated in the hands of the very few, the co...

In this article, I expand on Mertens' advocacy of the transformative paradigm for social research, where research is consciously geared to the advancement of social justice. I indicate certain links with Indigenous paradigmatic approaches to "knowing," where legitimate knowing is rooted in a quest to enhance relationality in the web of relations in...

In this article I provide an account of my use (in a particular context) of a ‘post qualitative inquiry’ approach, with my recognition that ways of approaching issues to be explored with participants, and the method of exploration, carry social and ecological consequences. The research was initiated in a school in South Africa with a sample of ten...

In this article I discuss a number of ethical issues surrounding the USA-commissioned Belmont report. I discuss these with reference, inter alia, to research which I facilitated with ten (Black) school children in South Africa. With reference to this research, and at the same time engaging with ongoing ethical debates related to the purpose of soci...

This chapter focuses on exploring the contributions of indigenous-oriented relational thinking-and-being in terms of implications for the quality of social living and for sustaining relationships with everything in our ecological niche. It offers an account of how we can treat Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) as envisaging socio-economic developm...

This preprint is a Chapter in a book (Chapter TWO of the book) which are Conference Proceedings of a SASA Conference held virtually in 2020-2021 (Society for the Advancement of Science in Africa).The book is edited by Alain Fymat, Norma Romm and Joachim Kapalanga. This chapter is authored by Yiannis Laouris and Norma Romm with Abiba Abdallah, Bill...

In this article we offer a discussion around our academic-practitioner involvements with one another and with a targeted community, in relation to a particular project. In the title of the article, we have hyphenated the term academic-practitioner to render fuzzy the distinction between “academic” roles (associated with institutions of higher learn...

The project review as outlined in this article explores the questions: What is transformative research and what is transformation as far as the community stakeholders are concerned? To what extent has the transformative research achieved its intended outcomes? The Bokamoso project (founded by Lesego Serolong as facilitator and investor) is an integ...

In this book we have striven to create a compilation of interrelated material around the common theme of nurturing eco-systemic living and what this might entail in our everyday lives. Most of the contributions focus on how we can recognise what we call eco-systemic responses to food and water security. The contributions taken together offer a vari...

In this chapter we discuss the concept of Ubuntu as a way of living, and we consider what it means to revitalise the principles of Ubuntu in relation to our human connectedness and sense of connectivity to all that exists. We discuss this in relation to some of our life experiences intermingled with the literature which we share with one another an...

In this chapter, we explore how the South African Kha Ri Gude mass literacy campaign, flowing from and drawing on the experience of the an earlier national literacy campaign, was developed to support those otherwise marginalized in the South African society. We explain the aims of the campaign as furthering the goal of ‘Literacy Plus’ (i.e. Literac...

Intersectional interventions are needed to match and address the needs of the marginalised in social life. Our focus is on the voiceless as they become displaced and vulnerable as a result of losing habitat or homes. We begin with some deliberations by Janet in which she summarises her conceptual background to this argument and then explains the im...

The aim of the research underpinning the two companion volumes, subtitled ‘We are the land and the waters’ and ‘Getting lost in the city’, is to develop a new paradigm for reconstructing a sense of political community within and beyond the nation state. The focus will be on democratic and governance theory and practice to protect the commons.

This book promotes the well-being of the commons through representation and accountability through monitoring from below in order to operationalize engagement. This book views the commons as a legal concept, a transformative governance concept, and a basis for systemic ethics. The chapters focus on practical responses to address complex problems th...

In this article we discuss the duoethnographical approach we adopted to extend/deepen our interpretations of ourselves as academic researchers attempting to practise engaged research with participants in the field. We take, as a starting point for our discussion, our engagements in various projects (not always together in the same research settings...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to give practical insights into the systemic approach to organizational learning “triple loop learning” (TLL; introduced in Part I) by reflecting on a facilitated research-and-intervention undertaken in South Africa as part of the “500 Schools Project”. Design/methodology/approach The authors reflect on one o...

This book uses mixed methods to extend the concept of “wellbeing stocks” to refer to dynamic ways of working with others. It addresses metaphors and praxis for weaving together strands of experience. The aim of the wellbeing stocks concept is to enable people to re-evaluate economics and to become more aware of the way in which we neglect social an...

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to introduce a systemic approach to organizational learning “triple loop learning” (TLL) that addresses processes of power. Three equally important foci in our TLL are processes of design, processes of debate and processes of power. The focus on power aims to shift “power over” (power as domination) to “power to”...

This chapter discusses two examples of research in which I was involved, both of which made use of questionnaires and follow-up focus groups in the quest to explore/regenerate certain aspects of inclusive education. The first project was an international one comprising of six countries, namely, China, Finland, Lithuania, Slovenia, South Africa and...

In this chapter I consider some possibilities for responsible research practice geared to reviewing race(d) relations (and their link to classed relations). I discuss in depth an example of research in South Africa which involved initially setting up a cross-racial focus group, which was then followed up with one-to-one interviews/conversations and...

Mertens regards the transformative paradigm as an extension of critical and emancipatory traditions in social research. Researchers classed as working within the transformative paradigm, she notes, consciously tie the research enterprise to the furthering of social justice concerns. This chapter revisits her account of this paradigm and its relatio...

In this chapter, I look at two examples of research which bear on gender relations and which try to contribute to shifting stereotypical conceptions thereof (Woldegies in Economic empowerment through income generating activities and social mobilization: the case of married Amhara women of Wadla Woreda, North Wollo Zone, Ethiopia, 2014, Woldegies in...

In this chapter I engage with some of the discourses in the multiple and mixed methods research (MMMR) literature. I consider five paradigmatic positions (postpositivist, constructivist, transformative, pragmatic, Indigenous) in relation to the practice of MMMR, while appreciating that paradigmatic positions are not unitary and also can evolve. In...

In this chapter I consider, with a focus on researcher responsibilities, two examples of research which involved experimentation as a research procedure (Stephens in Investigating effects of Six Thinking Hats and emotional intelligence training on creativity thinking and emotional intelligence of recidivists in Lagos State, 2012; Oczak and Niedźwie...

In this chapter I develop further my references to responsible social research practice which I have introduced in earlier chapters and I explore in more depth various aspects hereof. I link this to a discussion of the USA-commissioned Belmont report (1979). This report offers guidelines for the practice of ethics in biomedical and behavioral resea...

This chapter examines some examples of development-oriented research directed toward actively furthering social as well as environmental justice (McIntyre-Mills, Report prepared for South Australian Local Government Association. Flinders University, Adelaide 2013; McIntyre-Mills, Systemic ethics and non-anthropocentric stewardship. Springer, New Yo...

In this chapter I develop further my discussions of generative theorizing as introduced in earlier chapters and I explore in more depth what responsible generative theorizing might amount to. I link this to a discussion around the use of retroductive logic, which I argue (combined in some way with deduction and induction) offers a way of organizing...

Throughout this book I have forwarded suggestions for those involved in research endeavors to responsibly take into consideration the immersion of the research in the “becoming” of social and ecological existence (of which it is a part). I now suggest that when researchers post facto generate methodological stories around how the design of the rese...

This article offers our reflections around a case of facilitating systemic thinking and practice in which the first author of the article (Tlale) interacted with research participants/participant researchers with the intention of strengthening systemic thought and action toward fostering inclusive education in the setting (a rural school in the Eas...

This paper begins with the understanding that the global commons is under threat. In the light hereof, I consider why it is important to appreciate Indigenous styles of collectively oriented knowing, where selves are understood as “selves-in-relation” to one another and to all living and nonliving things, as part of the web of life. I suggest that...

This book addresses the social and environmental justice challenge to live sustainably and well. It considers the consequences of our social, economic and environmental policy and governance decisions for this generation and the next. The book tests out ways to improve representation, accountability and re-generation. It addresses the need to take...

This book explores ways in which creative research practice can be explicitly and mindfully geared to make a difference to the quality of social and ecological existence. It offers a range of examples of how different research methods can be employed (and re-tuned) with this intention. The book suggests that what Romm names "active" research involv...

Social dominance theory (SDT) as expounded by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto (1999) takes as its starting point that human societies tend to be structured as group‐based hierarchical systems, with dominant groups having access to a disproportionately larger share of valued material and symbolic possessions. SDT identifies age , gender , and arbitr...

This article reflects upon a range of research-and-intervention practices which were employed in the conduct of a community-engaged research initiative in South Africa called the 500 Schools Project. These practices may be seen as offering innovations which can be used or adapted for Community Operational Research where the intention is to transfor...

This article is based on research, the goal of which was to explore with participants in a selected community in Mpumalanga (South Africa) possibilities that they foresaw for drawing on their ancestral knowledge and Indigenous approaches to knowing in the process of (beginning) science teaching. Thirty participants—15 elders and 15 primary school...

This chapter focuses on exploring the contributions of indigenous-oriented relational thinking-and-being in terms of implications for the quality of social living and for sustaining relationships with everything in our ecological niche. It offers an account of how we can treat Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) as envisaging socio-economic developm...

In this article we offer an account of a research-and-intervention project – called The 500 Schools Project: Making Schools Better – in which we were involved in various capacities. We focus on the design of this project in terms of its links with what Mertens in various publications calls the ‘transformative paradigm’. Further, we discuss the way...

In this article I re-examine the tenets of the transformative paradigm as explained by Mertens in various publications. Mertens suggests that the transformative paradigm (as she names it) encapsulates the positions of researchers who question positivist/postpositivist- and interpretivist/constructivist-oriented approaches, which to date have been a...

This article describes experiences of an adult educator (Kofi Quan-Baffour) at the University of South Africa, 1995 to 2009, teaching tutorial classes to train teachers who, in turn, would offer adult literacy classes/sessions (in relation to adult basic education and training [ABET] policies initiated post-1994). The article aims to make a contrib...

In this article I consider some examples of conducting focus groups in South Africa with school teachers in a manner which takes into account indigenous ways of knowing. Indigenous knowing (within various indigenous cultural heritages) can be defined as linked to processes of people collectively constructing their understandings by experiencing the...

In this article we explicate our way of assessing the South African Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign, and in particular its impact in the Eastern Cape. We provide an account primarily of focus group sessions conducted in 2013 and again in 2014 with volunteer educators and past learners in the campaign. We concentrate on the way in which relations...

In this article, we locate the Kha Ri Gude South African Mass Literacy Campaign within the context of the problem of illiteracy and exclusion in South Africa, while concentrating on various post-apartheid initiatives designed to give visually challenged adults the opportunity to become literate. We shall provide a detailed account of focus group se...

Indigenous cultural orientations across the globe offer some groundwork for us to recognize the essential connectivity of all planetary life, including human and non-human dynamisms. Furthermore, Indigenous Wisdom as it manifests across the world (for example, in the cultural symbols of Indigenous people in Africa, of Native/Indian Americans in Ame...

In this paper I consider the contours of a transformative research paradigm with pragmatic twist. I offer an account of various ways of activating transformative paradigmatic intentions to contribute to social justice. I propose that situating one's research work within a social justice agenda in the field of education requires taking cognisance of...

In this article we deliberate upon our way of facilitating focus group sessions with teachers concerning their views on inclusive education, by referring also to feedback that we received from the participants when they commented upon their experiences of the sessions. (The teacher participants were from three separate primary schools in South Afri...

In this article, I delve into what it might mean to employ questionnaires without regarding them simply as a way of attempting to discern relationships of correlation or causality between defined variables (as in positivist and post-positivist conceptions of questionnaires). I shall consider the implications of researchers using questionnaires on t...

In this article, I delve into what it might mean to employ questionnaires without regarding them simply as a way of attempting to discern relationships of correlation or causality between defined variables (as in positivist and post-positivist conceptions of questionnaires). I shall consider the implications of researchers using questionnaires on t...

In this article, we explain how we took an "active" approach to focus group discussions with teachers in three South African schools. The topic of discussion was their views on the implementation of inclusive education. We shall also show how we sought feedback from the participants on their experiences of these discussions. In seeking this feedbac...

Social Dominance Theory, as forwarded by Sidanius and Pratto (Social dominance: an intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression, 1999) and as elaborated upon in continuing research by themselves and others, claims to offer a way of exploring the structuring of social systems along the lines of group-based hierarchies. In this article I ende...

In this chapter I discuss ways of generating inquiries in relation to the quality of life in social settings via what is considered as another qualitatively oriented mode of inquiry, namely, ethnographic research. The chapter is set around my discussion of two examples of ethnographic research, namely, a study of a particular high school in the USA...

In this Chapter I discuss in detail a number of experiments that I have chosen as examples of research examining causal connections between variables (phenomena that can vary) that the researchers present as contributing to our understanding of possibilities for mitigating against the exclusionary practices associated with (new) racism. They sugges...

In this concluding chapter I first summarize the way in which this book has been structured to re-examine various research options for organizing inquiries around new racism. I then offer some reflections on the justification for what Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi call “mixed-research designs” (2008, p. 140). The argument that I forward is that mixed-...

In this chapter I offer an overview of some of the ways in which researchers have conceptualized what they call new forms of racism.