30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
What Role Does Social Media Play in Environmental Education?
Annika Bush
Bielefeld University, Germany
Presenting Author: Bush, Annika
Social media offers new ways of online communication and learning. Especially sustainability topics are widely discussed and presented on online platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and Twitch. Furthermore, social media has the potential to compensate learning differences because it facilitates informal learning. Education for sustainable development (ESD) is not only important in formal learning settings like schools or universities. Informal learning is also crucial to reach everyone in their lifelong learning processes in order to fulfill the 17 sustainable development goals set up by the UN as part of the Agenda 2030.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn our study, we investigate how and why young adults learn about sustainability topics in social media. There is a lack of instruments to research this relation. Therefore, designed a new quantitative survey instrument: the Social Media Usage on Sustainability (SMUS) scale. With our newly developed questionnaire, we investigate how young adults use social media regarding sustainability. It is the first instrument to research this connection. Additionally, we modified two existing scales, a shortened version of the SCQ-S (Gericke et al. 2019) and the SNSUN (Ali et al., 2020). The SCQ-S investigates the attitude, knowledge and behavior towards sustainability whereas the SNSUN researches the respondent’s media usage.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsHere, we will present the first findings of a study with ~500 university students to validate the SMUS scale. Our newly developed scale showed a high reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha .928). We found the SMUS scale positively correlates with the SCQ-S and the SNSUN. The findings show that most of the respondents use the social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. They often see posts on sustainability topics on social media but hardly re-post them or create content regarding sustainability by themselves.
Its validation shows a good reliability and the correlation with other instruments related to Social Media are promising. We will further develop the scale in future studies to offer a valid and adequate ways to determine the relation of Social Media Usage and sustainability topics.
ReferencesAli, I., Danaee, M. & Firdaus, A. (2020). Social networking sites usage & needs scale (SNSUN): a new instrument for measuring social networking sites’ usage patterns and needs. Journal of Information and Telecommunication 4 (2), 151–174. doi:10.1080/24751839.2019.1675461
Gericke, N., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Berglund, T. & Olsson, D. (2019). The Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire. The theoretical development and empirical validation of an evaluation instrument for stakeholders working with sustainable development. Sustainable Development 27 (1), 35–49. doi:10.1002/sd.1859
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
Learning for an Unknown Future – Emotional Positioning in and for Expansive Learning
Johanna Lönngren1, Maria Berge1, Johan Holmén2
1Umeå University, Sweden; 2Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Presenting Author: Lönngren, Johanna
STUDY OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE
We live in troubled times. Faced with increasingly serious and urgent, wicked sustainability challenges (Lönngren & van Poeck, 2021; United Nations, 2015), such as climate change, pandemics, and violent conflict , more and more people experience anxiety, hopelessness, and worries about the future (Barrineau et al., 2022; Ojala et al., 2021; Pihkala, 2020). The United Nations’ Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; United Nations, 2015) may offer a comforting illusion of a yellow brick road to a known and livable future. Yet, complex systems studies have shown that the future is not only unknown but ultimately unknowable (Dewulf & Biesbroek, 2018; Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993). In light of such radical uncertainty, Barrineau et al. (2022) argued that environmental and sustainability education (ESE) is not only about “promoting [pre-defined] skills and competencies in sustainability education with which to equip students to tackle sustainability challenges” (p.3) since we do not know yet what competencies they will need. The only thing we know for certain is that future generations will need to develop knowledge, skills, and practices that are different from those we know today, that is, those that have given rise to our current predicaments. In other words, students need to “learn something that is not yet there” (Engeström & Sannino, 2010, p. 2).
In recent years, a range of educational theories and concepts that touch upon this type of learning have increased in popularity. For example, Engeström et al. (Engeström et al., 2022; Engeström & Sannino, 2010) have drawn on cultural historical activity theory to examine expansive learning processes that allow learners to develop “expanded pattern[s] of activity, corresponding theoretical concept[s], and new types of agency” (Engeström & Sannino, 2010, p. 7). Similarly, Barrineau et al. (2022) have described emergentist education as a form of teaching and learning that engages with “the possibilities of the not-yet-imagined” (p.2). Others have described related theories, such as transformative and transgressive social learning as crucially important in ESE (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015).
These and other traditions of transformative and expansive learning theories have in common that they attend to the role of social interaction for learning, stressing that learning always takes place in social contexts (Lenglet, 2022; Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; Van Poeck et al., 2020). Another common thread through many approaches is an attention to spirituality, affect, and/or emotions (Hoggan, 2016; Lenglet, 2022; Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015). For example, Hoggan (2016) argued that learners must be “emotionally capable of change” (p. 61), pay attention to emotional experiences, and learn to utilize emotional ways of knowing. Similarly, Östman et al. (2019) have used pragmatist theories to argue that strong embodied experiences can trigger transformative learning. This intersection between expansive learning, social interaction, and emotions is the focus of our contribution.
The aim of our study is to explore how expansive learning can manifest in and through emotional interaction when student groups engage with wicked sustainability challenges. To do so, we draw on positioning theory as a theoretical tool that allows us to study emotions as a form of social interaction (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999) rather than something individuals have and experience. More specifically, we explore processes of emotional positioning (Lönngren et al., 2021; Lönngren & Berge, forthcoming), analyzing how students use emotions discursively to position themselves – and each other – in relation to their (expansive) learning and (future) agency to work for sustainable and desired futures.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedMETHODS
Emotions can be expressed through a wide range of modalities (e.g., speech, gestures, facial expressions, intonation, bodily positions). Therefore, multimodal approaches are particularly suitable for studying how emotions are expressed and used in social interaction (Goodwin et al., 2012; Hufnagel & Kelly, 2018; Lönngren & Berge, forthcoming). For this study, we video-recorded group work conducted by four groups of engineering students. The group work sessions took place during two sustainability courses for engineering students at two Swedish universities and they were part of the students’ regular course work. No researchers were present during the sessions, but teachers entered each room occasionally to check on the groups’ progress. In total, we recorded approximately 70 hours of video data.
To analyze the data, we first watched all recordings (~70h) to familiarize ourselves with the data. Thereafter, we formulated sensitizing concepts (consensus/dissensus, convergence/divergence, comfort/vulnerability, intensity, and social positions) to narrow our focus on situations in which we could study emotional positioning and/or expansive learning processes. The sensitizing concepts allowed us to select a smaller number of excerpts for in-depth analysis. For each excerpt, we then developed narrative descriptions of any processes of expansivity and expansive learning we could observe. Finally, we applied the analytic tools of positioning theory to make sense of the ways in which students used emotions discursively while engaging (or not) in expansive learning.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsPRELIMINARY FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
Our preliminary findings point to multiple ways in which emotional positioning could facilitate expansive learning during group engagement with wicked challenges. For example, when students suggested norm-breaking methods or solution approaches, other students could validate those ideas by listening attentively and expressing excitement. By validating unconventional ideas, the students also positioned themselves and each other as expansive learners with rights and duties to reach beyond known approaches and solutions. In other excerpts, we observed high levels of emotional congruence between the group members. When one student laughed, others would often join in. In other instances, students would fall silent simultaneously, much like a general pause in an orchestra concert. By enacting these and other forms of emotional congruence, the students could co-construct their group as a team – working together, building on each other’s ideas, and taking collective responsibility for any outcomes they produced. Thus, they also constructed a shared safety-net, reducing perceived risks associated with expansive learning: If the outcomes of their work had turned out to be flawed or ridiculed by others, they could have shared the burden of the perceived (!) failure and helped each other focus on the exceptional learning they had achieved. These findings demonstrate how students could use emotions discursively to position themselves and each other as (a) students who can and should engage in expansive learning, and (b) sustainability agents who can and should contribute to developing innovative solutions to wicked issues. The findings also show how emotions expressed in interaction can have profound impacts on learning, which further stresses the importance of more ESE research on emotions in and as social interaction. A better understanding of emotional interaction in ESE would also support educators in developing teaching and learning environments conducive to expansive learning.
ReferencesBarrineau, S., Mendy, L., & Peters, A.-K. (2022). Emergentist education and the opportunities of radical futurity. Futures, 144(103062).
Dewulf, A., & Biesbroek, R. (2018). Nine lives of uncertainty in decision-making: Strategies for dealing with uncertainty in environmental governance. Policy and Society, 37(4), 441–458.
Engeström, Y., Nuttall, J., & Hopwood, N. (2022). Transformative agency by double stimulation. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 30(1), 1–7.
Engeström, Y., & Sannino, A. (2010). Studies of expansive learning: Foundations, findings and future challenges. Educational Research Review, 5(1), 1–24.
Funtowicz, S. O., & Ravetz, J. R. (1993). Science for the post-normal age. Futures, 25(7), 739–755.
Goodwin, M., Cekaite, A., & Goodwin, C. (2012). Emotion as Stance. In M.-L. Sorjonen & A. Perakyla (Eds.), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 16–41). Oxford University Press.
Harré, R., & van Langenhove, L. (1999). Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts of Intentional Action. Blackwell.
Hoggan, C. D. (2016). Transformative Learning as a Metatheory: Definition, Criteria, and Typology. Adult Education Quarterly, 66(1), 57–75.
Hufnagel, E., & Kelly, G. J. (2018). Examining emotional expressions in discourse. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 13, 905–924.
Lenglet, F. (2022). Transformative and Social Learning–In the Tradition of Freire. In Transformative Research and Higher Education. Emerald.
Lönngren, J., Adawi, T., & Berge, M. (2021). Using positioning theory to study the role of emotions in engineering problem solving. Studies in Engineering Education, 2(1), 53–79.
Lönngren, J., & Berge, J. (forthcoming). Positioning, Emotions, and Emotional Positioning. In M. McVee, et al. (Eds.), International Handbook of Positioning Theory (pp. 1–17). Routledge.
Lönngren, J., & van Poeck, K. (2021). Wicked problems: A mapping review of the literature. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 28(6), 481–502.
Lotz-Sisitka, H., et al. (2015). Transformative, transgressive social learning. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 16, 73–80.
Ojala, M., et al. (2021). Anxiety, Worry, and Grief in a Time of Environmental and Climate Crisis: A Narrative Review. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46(1), 35–58.
Östman, L., Van Poeck, K., & Öhman, J. (2019). A transactional theory on sustainability learning. In Sustainable Development Teaching (pp. 127–139). Routledge.
Pihkala, P. (2020). Eco-Anxiety and Environmental Education. Sustainability, 12(10149).
United Nations. (2015). Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Van Poeck, K., Östman, L., & Block, T. (2020). Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 34, 298–310.
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
(Re)Envisoning Resistance for Sustainable Health(y) Futures
Martin Mickelsson1, Emma Oljans1,2
1Uppsala University; 2Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences
Presenting Author: Oljans, Emma
In understanding the conditions for human health and wellbeing, microbial relationships emerge as both benefitting and impairing health and wellbeing, while global burdens of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are primarily borne by the global south. Found everywhere in our lives microbes are especially important in our health care systems and the food supply chain; from farm to table (Ma et al; 2021). While AMR has long been identified as a health issue, it has only recently acquired global political momentum. Following the highlighting of AMR by the UN (2015) and WHO (2015) as an emerging sustainable health challenge connecting human, animal and environmental health (One Health). Furthermore, health and AMR are interconnected with ecological, economic and social sustainability challenges (Ward, Kristiansen, & Sørensen, 2019; Veenker & Paans, 2016), including a need for research on AMR-education (Mölstad et al., 2017; Pavydė et al., 2015; Wernli et al.,2017). Food security represents such a nexus, being an enduring sustainability challenge in Southern Africa. Food availability, accessibility and affordability disproportionately affected the health of communities in the global south, emphasising the importance of health education that engages One Health as a focus for social justice and health equity (Pithara 2019: Ruger, 2010).
This paper answers the special call on envisioning the role of health and wellbeing education in advancing social justice and health equity, by (re)envisioning antimicrobial resistance[1] through two co-creation research workshops. As antimicrobial resistance, impacts and links all three spheres of One Health (human, animal and environmental health) exploring it becomes crucial as part of health education for Sustainable Health(y) Futures. Considering all three spheres of One Health, the reported workshops crucially resulted in the generation of bio-social innovations for health education. This took the form of novel health practices that included the (re)envisioning of how to address resistance in the health-care system, food production and consumption as well as built and natural environments.
Furthermore, the paper responds to the overarching theme of ECER 2023 by reporting on a co-creation research workshops on how diversity in ways of knowing health and well-being intersects with diverse health-related values. The paper explores how a diversity of value-knowledges(s) emerge and transact as part of engagements between lecturers/researchers and students in a Zimbabwean university setting. As such, the focus is on ways of doing knowledge together, developing joint epistemological practices and generating shared ways of coming to know health as part of (re)envisioning resistance. (Re)envisioning thus becomes an emerging process of working together for sustainable health(y) futures, where the future is not set but the subject of engagement from a diversity of value-knowledges. Through the results of the workshops, the paper surfaces embedded understandings of how to develop practices and conduct health education that engages with social justice and health equity through developing contextually relevancy to a society like Zimbabwe, where the health care system is under severe stress. These results can find purchase outside the Global South as healthcare systems around the world are struggling to respond to increased demand (Papanicolas 2019).
The paper aims to explore knowledge co-creation regarding the intersections of health, food and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a basis for health education practices that integrate human, animal and environmental health as biosocial innovations.
Three research questions are formulated:
- How do participants articulate the intersections of health, food and antimicrobial resistance (AMR)?
- How do the intersections, as articulated by workshop participants, create opportunities for developing health education practices that integrate human, animal and environmental health?
- What forms of biosocial innovation do the health education practices engender for (re)envisioning resistance for sustainable health(y) futures?
[1] The emergence and spread of resistance among microbes to medicines,
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe paper draws on two co-creation research workshops conducted in collaboration with researchers at the Department of Women´s and Children´s Health, Faculty of Medicine, Uppsala University; Department of Science Technology and Design Education, Faculty of Education, Midlands State University; Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences; The Midlands University Research and Innovation Center; Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Sciences, University of Zimbabwe and UNESCO, Harare Office. Through this collaboration, the research workshop was able to connect the articulation arena of health policy and the implementation arena of health practice through the case of health, food sustainability and AMR, linking local to global sustainability challenges.
Participants for the two workshops will involve 20 health education practitioners (lecturers and researchers) and 40 students from Midlands State University and the University of Zimbabwe (Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995; Spinuzzi, 2005). The selection of participants is based on a holistic understanding, encompassing participants from a range of departments and academic disciplines all sharing an interest in the intersections of health, food, food security, sustainability and AMR.
The workshops operationalise participant research workshop methods (Bergold & Thomas, 2012; Spinuzzi, 2005; Unger, 2012) centring on participants´ experiential encounters from being part of physical, social and institutional environments. To this end, the workshop explores the co-creation of knowledge to (re)envision resistance for sustainable health(y) futures, thus addressing the challenges of implementing global and national policies on health, food, sustainability and AMR. Consequently, the workshops sit at the intersection of health, food and AMR as wicked sustainability challenges, exploring how these challenges are articulated in the local situations and contextual practices of Zimbabwean rural and urban health education.
Through the co-creation of knowledge, biosocial innovations are generated that integrate all spheres of One Health in response to the needs of society and communities where food, health, sustainability and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) intersect.
With the workshops as joint processes of knowledge construction, collaborative learning becomes key to develop health information, communication and education that integrates the health of humans, animals and environments (Bell et al. 2004; Bergold and Thomas 2012).
As such, research method has the dual-purposes: (1) to enable participants to develop knowledge and capacity related to the intersections between health, food, lifestyle choices and AMR (2) to enable researchers to generate empirical data about intersections between health, food, lifestyle choices and AMR (Darsø & Høyrup, 2012; Darsø, 2001; Rossi, & Sein, 2003; Ørngreen & Levinsen, 2017).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe paper illustrates how co-creation goes beyond top-down implementation of SDGs to encompass contextual considerations. AMR, as a wicked case for the co-creation workshop, enabled envisioning Sustainable Healthy Futures where the resistance is not isolated from the efforts of food security, food safety and salutogenic health, especially in the Global South (Founou et al. 2021; Mensah 2014). Antimicrobials become crucial in promoting meat production, bringing the tension of access-excess regarding food and antimicrobials to the fore (Jaffee et al. 2019). Retroviral drugs developed and distributed for HIV/AIDS treatment are repurposed as agricultural growth promoters (Ndoboli et al. 2021). Efforts to provide access to food drive excess antimicrobial use, with the risk of limiting access to effective human retroviral treatment. Contributions are made regarding ways of doing knowledge together, developing joint epistemological practices and generating shared ways of coming to know health as (re)envisioning resistance. Insights are offered regarding how health educational practitioners and students, based on their practices and experiences, articulate the relationships between health, food, dietary choices, lifestyle, sustainability and AMR. Furthermore, the paper outlines how knowledge co-created through research workshops can form the basis for health practices as biosocial innovations that holistically engage with human, animal and environmental health. As such, insights are offered regarding the conditions for knowledge co-creation and biosocial innovation that move beyond established approaches to health, food and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) for (re)envisioning sustainable health(y)futures. Such (re)envisioning encompasses embracing the epistemological and experiential diversity of sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory value-knowledges as part of shared explorations of “what to do?” in contextually situated health education. From these results, the paper also encompasses method development in bridging the implementation gap between knowing and doing as part of how research workshops can be used for participants to explore value-knowledges in response to health-related sustainability challenges.
ReferencesCornwall, A., & Jewkes, R. (1995). What is participatory research? Social Science and Medicine. DOI:10.1016/0277-9536(95)00127-S.
Darsø, L., & Høyrup, S. (2012). Developing a framework for innovation and learning in the workplace. In H. Melkas & V. Harmaakorpi (Eds.), Practice- Based Innovation: Insights, Applications and Policy Implications. Springer. DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-21723-4_8
Founou, Founou, R. C., & Essack, S. Y. (2021). Antimicrobial resistance in the farm-to-plate continuum: more than a food safety issue. Future Science OA, 7(5), FSO692–FSO692. https://doi.org/10.2144/fsoa-2020-0189.
Jaffee, Henson, S., Unnevehr, L., Grace, D., & Cassou, E. (2019). The safe food imperative : accelerating progress in low- and middle-income countries. World Bank Group.
Mensah SEP, Koudandi OD, Sanders P, Laurentie M, Mensah GA, Abiola FA. (2014) Antimicrobial residues in foods of animal origin in Africa: public health risk. Rev. Sci. Tech. Off. Int. Epiz. 33(3), 987–996.
Mölstad, S., Löfmark, S., Carlin, K., Erntell, M., Aspevall, O., Blad, L. Cars, O. (2017). Lessons learnt during 20 years of the swedish strategic programme against antibiotic resistance. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.16.184374.
Ndoboli, D. Nganga, F., Lukuyu, B., Wieland, B., Grace, D., von Braun, A., & Roesel, K. (2021). The misuse of antiretrovirals to boost pig and poultry productivity in Uganda and potential implications for public health. International Journal of One Health, 7(1), 88–95. https://doi.org/10.14202/IJOH.2021.88-95
Ørngreen, R., & Levinsen, K. (2017). Workshops as a research methodology. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 15(1), 70–81.
Papanicolas, I., Mossialos, E., Gundersen, A., Woskie, L., & Jha, A. K. (2019). Performance of UK National Health Service compared with other high income countries: observational study. BMJ, 367. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6326
Pavydė, E., Veikutis, V., Mačiulienė, A., Mačiulis, V., Petrikonis, K., & Stankevičius, E. (2015). Public knowledge, beliefs and behavior on antibiotic use and self-medication in Lithuania. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph120607002.
Spinuzzi, C. (2005). The Methodology of Participatory Design. Technical Communication, 52(2), 163–174.
United Nations (2015). Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York: UN.
Veenker, H., & Paans, W. (2016). A dynamic approach to communication in health literacy education. BMC Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-016-0785-z
Ward, M., Kristiansen, M., & Sørensen, K. (2019). Migrant health literacy in the European Union: A systematic literature review. Health Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896918792700.
Wernli, D., et al. (2017). Antimicrobial resistance: The complex challenge of measurement to inform policy and the public. PLoS Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002378
WHO (2015). Global action plan on antimicrobial resistance.
Zimbabwe (2017). Zimbabwe One health antimicrobial resistance national action plan 2017-2021: Strategic Framework, Operational Plan, and Monitoring and Evaluation Plan.
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