Evaluating innovation in transdisciplinary sustainability education: TRANSECTS’ international learning labs
- Rosenberg, Eureta, Cockburn, Jessica J, Reed, Maureen G, James, Wendy, Gengelbach, Jana, Walk, Heike
- Authors: Rosenberg, Eureta , Cockburn, Jessica J , Reed, Maureen G , James, Wendy , Gengelbach, Jana , Walk, Heike
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480451 , vital:78443 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a21
- Description: Evaluative research can advance sustainability education through the learning it can enable, at micro and systems levels. This proposition is explored by examining evaluation practice in a 6-year international programme entitled Transdisciplinary Education Collaboration for Transformations in Sustainability involving universities and biosphere reserves/regions in Germany, South Africa and Canada. A Transdisciplinary International Learning Lab (TILL) was evaluated using a theory-based evaluation approach and interviews, focus groups and questionnaires that yielded qualitative data. Through metareflection, we concluded that our TILL had elements of a Field School, rather than a Learning Lab, and that our curriculum required more explicit deliberation among programme developers and implementers towards a deeper and shared understanding of pedagogical assumptions and more congruent practice of transdisciplinary and transformative sustainability education. The reflective, theory-based approach enabled learning from evaluation and was captured in a shared refinement of the theory of change, which makes it explicit that learning from pedagogical innovations is not only for students but also for academics. The paper is an invitation to other innovators in sustainability science, education and evaluation in higher education, to share related findings.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024
- Authors: Rosenberg, Eureta , Cockburn, Jessica J , Reed, Maureen G , James, Wendy , Gengelbach, Jana , Walk, Heike
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480451 , vital:78443 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a21
- Description: Evaluative research can advance sustainability education through the learning it can enable, at micro and systems levels. This proposition is explored by examining evaluation practice in a 6-year international programme entitled Transdisciplinary Education Collaboration for Transformations in Sustainability involving universities and biosphere reserves/regions in Germany, South Africa and Canada. A Transdisciplinary International Learning Lab (TILL) was evaluated using a theory-based evaluation approach and interviews, focus groups and questionnaires that yielded qualitative data. Through metareflection, we concluded that our TILL had elements of a Field School, rather than a Learning Lab, and that our curriculum required more explicit deliberation among programme developers and implementers towards a deeper and shared understanding of pedagogical assumptions and more congruent practice of transdisciplinary and transformative sustainability education. The reflective, theory-based approach enabled learning from evaluation and was captured in a shared refinement of the theory of change, which makes it explicit that learning from pedagogical innovations is not only for students but also for academics. The paper is an invitation to other innovators in sustainability science, education and evaluation in higher education, to share related findings.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024
Interrelated transformative process dynamics in the face of resource nexus challenges an invitation towards cross case analysis
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Pahl-Wostl, Claudia, Meissner, Richard, Scholz, Geeske, Cockburn, Jessica J, Jalasi, Experencia M, Stuart-Hill, Sabine, Palmer, Carolyn G
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Pahl-Wostl, Claudia , Meissner, Richard , Scholz, Geeske , Cockburn, Jessica J , Jalasi, Experencia M , Stuart-Hill, Sabine , Palmer, Carolyn G
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482626 , vital:78672 , https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2297707
- Description: The need for more attention to the social and human dimensions in global change sciences and natural resources management requires in-depth understandings of transformative approaches and processes. More inclusive and systemic approaches are needed that embrace complexity and support transformative learning, shifts in power relations, collective and relational agency and structural transformations for adaptive and innovative governance. Scientific understanding of how such change can be brought about is still limited. In this paper, which sets the scene for this Special Issue, we develop a conceptual framework for analyzing transformative processes across a range of diverse cases. Aspects of the conceptual framework are applied, tested and elaborated in three following papers in the Special Issue, deepening understanding of how transformative change in complex social-ecological systems may originate at nexus boundary zones such as that portrayed by the water-food-energy nexus. Specifically, the paper conceptually elaborates four iteratively related dynamics of transformative learning, transforming power relations, transformative agency and transforming structures which intersect in transformation processes. The perspectives offer tools for cross case analysis in the longer term, but also tools for supporting co-engaged, generative research processes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Pahl-Wostl, Claudia , Meissner, Richard , Scholz, Geeske , Cockburn, Jessica J , Jalasi, Experencia M , Stuart-Hill, Sabine , Palmer, Carolyn G
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482626 , vital:78672 , https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2297707
- Description: The need for more attention to the social and human dimensions in global change sciences and natural resources management requires in-depth understandings of transformative approaches and processes. More inclusive and systemic approaches are needed that embrace complexity and support transformative learning, shifts in power relations, collective and relational agency and structural transformations for adaptive and innovative governance. Scientific understanding of how such change can be brought about is still limited. In this paper, which sets the scene for this Special Issue, we develop a conceptual framework for analyzing transformative processes across a range of diverse cases. Aspects of the conceptual framework are applied, tested and elaborated in three following papers in the Special Issue, deepening understanding of how transformative change in complex social-ecological systems may originate at nexus boundary zones such as that portrayed by the water-food-energy nexus. Specifically, the paper conceptually elaborates four iteratively related dynamics of transformative learning, transforming power relations, transformative agency and transforming structures which intersect in transformation processes. The perspectives offer tools for cross case analysis in the longer term, but also tools for supporting co-engaged, generative research processes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024
Transdisciplinary curriculum design for sustainability transitions: A reflective dialogue
- Olvitt, Lausanne L, Davies, Megan, Ebrahim, A’ishah I, Cockburn, Jessica J
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L , Davies, Megan , Ebrahim, A’ishah I , Cockburn, Jessica J
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480673 , vital:78465 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a23
- Description: Inter- and transdisciplinary curricula can potentially develop an integrated understanding of an increasingly interconnected, complex world and develop students' agency, empathy, creativity and critical thinking skills. Within the South African qualification landscape, the Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) is identified as a multior interdisciplinary qualification that allows working professionals 'to undertake advanced reflection and development by means of a systematic survey of current thinking, practice and research methods in an area of specialisation'. In this paper, four academics reflexively share their experiences of (re)developing and piloting transdisciplinary curricula for the PGDip in Sustainable Development (at Stellenbosch University) and the PGDip in Sustainability Learning (at Rhodes University). Reflections centre around the rationale, context and emergence of the two programmes, their structure and intended learning outcomes, and principles guiding the overall curriculum design. We highlight the appropriateness of transdisciplinary approaches to curricula focused on the sustainability field, and it distils three broad features of the two PGDip programmes that seem important - even necessary - for developing students' competencies as sustainability practitioners. These are ontological groundedness, epistemological openness and ethical attentiveness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L , Davies, Megan , Ebrahim, A’ishah I , Cockburn, Jessica J
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480673 , vital:78465 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a23
- Description: Inter- and transdisciplinary curricula can potentially develop an integrated understanding of an increasingly interconnected, complex world and develop students' agency, empathy, creativity and critical thinking skills. Within the South African qualification landscape, the Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) is identified as a multior interdisciplinary qualification that allows working professionals 'to undertake advanced reflection and development by means of a systematic survey of current thinking, practice and research methods in an area of specialisation'. In this paper, four academics reflexively share their experiences of (re)developing and piloting transdisciplinary curricula for the PGDip in Sustainable Development (at Stellenbosch University) and the PGDip in Sustainability Learning (at Rhodes University). Reflections centre around the rationale, context and emergence of the two programmes, their structure and intended learning outcomes, and principles guiding the overall curriculum design. We highlight the appropriateness of transdisciplinary approaches to curricula focused on the sustainability field, and it distils three broad features of the two PGDip programmes that seem important - even necessary - for developing students' competencies as sustainability practitioners. These are ontological groundedness, epistemological openness and ethical attentiveness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024
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