30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
Aesthetic Knowing in Biology Education: Towards a ‘Science of Qualities’ During the Ecological Crisis
Ramsey Affifi
university of edinburgh, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Affifi, Ramsey
This paper makes two contributions to reconstructing science education curriculum. Its theoretical contribution is to define 'aesthetic knowing' and outline a rationale for cultivating it in science education responding to the ecological crisis. I argue that through the perception of relationships, 'aesthetic knowing' plays a necessary, albeit subterranean role in science education, and that science education should more explicitly cultivate aesthetic knowing, as well as the capacity to consider tradeoffs/synergies between aesthetic and other kinds of knowing. I suggest much of science's complicity in the ecological crisis is linked to discounting aesthetic knowing's role in empirical engagement, and curtailing its development in science education. Second, its practical contribution is to share and discuss approaches I have taken to developing 'aesthetic knowing' in ITE biology education across three different pedagogical contexts.
I first define aesthetic knowing, consider its relationship with other epistemic approaches, and outline what it offers to the perception, understanding and participation in empirical phenomena. Aesthetic knowing occurs when we 'catch' the gestalt (the form) quality of relations (Zwicky 2019). Put simply, aesthetic knowing is why we can perceive a melody rather than a sequence of detached notes, or recognise a face instead of a collection of disparate spatial features (Author a). Its capacity to home in on spatial and temporal relationships is necessary for the perception of 'ecological process' writ large, from co-constituting relations in gene regulation and other intracellular processes (Brookfield 2005), to organismic homeostatic and social interactions, up to the patterns and fluctuations of planetary biogeochemical cycles (Margulis & Sagan 1997). It is, however, not limited to trading simplistic linear models for 'systems theory' accounts emphasising circularity, feedback and so on (Orr 1992), which are rather skeletal illustrations of aesthetic knowing's capabilities. Aesthetic knowing doesn't merely perceive a face from the relation between eyes and nose and so on. It is also distinguishes one face from another -even if formally they contain all the same features. In other words, aesthetic knowing perceives not only form but the 'quality of relations' in the structures in catches. By perceiving the quality of relations between entities at various levels, aesthetic knowing perceives both nomothetic regularities and idiographic particularities in the gestalt of developing ecological systems (Author b). This includes sensing whether ecologies are healthy and thriving, or vulnerable or collapsing, which is crucial for education aiming for sustainability in both human health and biotic flourishing.
Most ecologies occur at spatiotemporal scales occluded from direct view. It is a pedagogical problem how we might 'train' our aesthetic knowing in encounter with them, because many tools to perceive such ecologies reduce the texture investigated relations into snapshots and summaries. I suggest starting with dynamics immediately available in students' worlds, and offer three easily accessed pedagogical domains. The first is the ongoing experienced ecology arising from the very relations between people in the classroom. Aspects of these relationalities can be foregrounded through diverse pedagogies. A second domain is the opportunity-rich relational space between students and other organisms in local outdoor learning, where students can develop deeper acquaintance with live ecological dynamics. The third involves incorporating arts into biology education (ex. STEAM). Not only can art cultivate closer observational capacity, creating art is a continuous training in ecological participation (van Boeckel 2007). These immediate contexts can prime students to expect similarly rich concrete dynamics at other ecological levels, and not be hoodwinked into assuming simplicity at other microscopic or macroscopic levels. This has consequences for epistemic claims at these levels, and how we evaluate the sustainability of technologies and interventions based on them.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis paper is a theoretical engagement with my own practice, in dialogue with several literatures. The method employed to develop and defend 'aesthetic knowing' is primarily philosophical. It seeks to distinguish aesthetic knowing from analytic knowing and systemic/complexity forms of knowing, while also defending the need for all epistemic modes to more responsively encounter the world and its many relations. It seeks to locate these modes of knowing pragmatically insofar as they participate in the very ecologies they perceive and articulate, and politically through the ways different modes are favoured or backgrounded for different purposes.
The practical dimension of the work describes experiences attempting to engage with ecologising actualising in real time as a means of cultivating aesthetic knowing. My approach is to describe both how aesthetic knowing illuminates the concrete character of co-constituting relations, and how it is itself more deeply understood through considering how it works vis a vis those relations. I also reflect on challenges and opportunities engaging with ITE students, including prospects for investigating how aesthetic knowing can in turn be explored in high school science classrooms. I consider the purposes, scope and limitations of aesthetic knowing in science education, and how it operates in mediated contexts as well, such as in statistical interpretations. I also consider aesthetic knowing’s relationship to Indigenous approaches to knowledge that also focus on aesthetic approaches to perception (ex Kimmerer 2015).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFrom intracellular processes to planetary biogeochemical cycles, dynamic systems of reciprocally interacting living and nonliving entities pervade the biosphere. Although such ecologies are ubiquitous, in high school biology classrooms (UK and North America, for instance) the thinking and practices required to see, understand and respond to such phenomena is only required and taught in specific and stereotypical contexts. Too many students exit science studies with a head full of scattered facts, mostly depicting simplistic cause-effect relations, and with little sense of any unifying bio-logic. This is pedagogically, but also ontologically, epistemologically, and ethically problematic in this era of accelerating ecological challenges.
A 'science of qualities' to use mathematical biologist Brian Goodwin's term (1994), recognises the ontological significance of quality in the natural world and seeks qualitative supplementation to quantitative methods in scientific investigation. Aesthetic knowing is the process by which we pick up spatiotemporal patterns, and variations in those patterns, and thereby crucial in empirical investigation into not only generalities, but particularities too, and the relationship between the particular and the general. Treating phenomena solely as 'cases' of generic laws or properties misses out on understanding not only the dynamism of living systems, but also underemphasises side effects of applying such science. By contrast, an education system that addresses the varied sustainability challenges of contemporary ecological crises would foster a public able to understand and respond to the particularities of living processes and systems, and to evaluate (and/or develop) better attitudes, values, and concepts, but also technologies, natural management schemes or policies accordingly. To do so, biology education should foreground the qualitative nature of the curricular topics it studies, and ecologise its approach in turn.
ReferencesAuthor a
Author b
Brookfield, J. F. Y. 2005. “The Ecology of the Genome –Mobile DNA Elements and Their Hosts.” Nature Reviews. Genetics 6 (2): 128–136. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1524
Goodwin, B (1994). How the leopard changed its spots. London: Phoenix.
Kimmerer, R. W. 2015. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolios, MN: Milkweed Edition.
Margulis, L., and D. Sagan. 1997. What is Life? Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Orr, D. 1992. _Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World_. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Van Boeckel, J. (2007). Artful empiricism and improvising with the unforeseen. In Culture in Sustainability, edited by Asikainen et al, 143-160.
Zwicky, J. 2019. The Experience of Meaning_ Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
Human agency in Dealing with Challenges in Transdisciplinary Learning for Sustainability in Higher Education: A Scoping Literature Review
Weiwei Liu, Valentina Tassone, Pascal Frank, Harm Biemans, Renate Wesselink
Wageningen University, Netherlands, The
Presenting Author: Liu, Weiwei
Higher education institutions play a crucial role in educating future agents who are supposed to contribute to the successful implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The wicked nature of sustainability-related problems requires higher education institutions to re-design and broaden their curricula to become more real-life oriented and transdisciplinary by establishing connections among various disciplines and with non-academic partners from society (Sherren, 2008). Consequently, courses involving transdisciplinary learning approaches where students collaborate with peers with various disciplinary backgrounds and non-academic partners have become popular in higher education for sustainable development (Menon & Suresh, 2020).
Research has revealed numerous benefits of transdisciplinary learning settings for sustainability-oriented higher education. Students reported improved communication and teamwork skills, increased agency in terms of enhanced self-efficacy and self-regulation skills (Adefila et al., 2023) after participating transdisciplinary courses. Additionally, students became more willing to collaborate with societal stakeholders and were more open to different perspectives, as demonstrated in research on transdisciplinary learning workshop (Oonk et al., 2022). Another prominent learning outcome of transdisciplinary learning, mentioned by multiple studies, was that it empowered learners as agents capable of addressing sustainability-related problems and instigating changes through collective actions (Horner et al., 2021; Tassone et al., 2017).
While transdisciplinary learning for sustainability offers rich learning benefits, it is also regarded as a challenging learning process by many studies. Research on learners’ experiences highlighted that, due to the different and even conflicting viewpoints in transdisciplinary learning process for sustainability, engaging non-academic partners and integrating various disciplinary knowledge and capacities are difficult (Killion et al., 2018). As a result, students might simplify sustainability-related problems by not including all stakeholders and avoided authentic transdisciplinary learning experience by narrowing their focus (Veltman et al., 2021).
Current research recognizes transdisciplinary learning is a promising yet challenging approach for higher education for sustainability. However, hardly any research has been done to connect challenges in learning experience with the learning outcome of increased agency. It is still unclear what agency in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability entails and how it manifests itself in dealing with the corresponding challenges.
This present review study adopts a systems perspective by taking all three main groups of actors in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability-namely, students, educational staff and societal partners-into account and regards them as equal learners. The study aims to address the above-mentioned scientific gap and provide advice for future empirical research by mapping out the learning challenges in transdisciplinary learning experience from various learners’ perspective. It also explores how learners exert their agency to deal with challenges in transdisciplinary learning, and in return, increase their agency on both individual and collective levels. Agency for sustainability that refers to the intentions and corresponding capabilities to take individual, proxy or collective actions to continuously motivate and regulate individual and collective learning for sustainability will be used as conceptual framework of this review study . Proxy agency means accomplishing desired outcomes by employing others who are more proficient or in better situation, and collective agency refers to acting together with others (Bandura, 2006). The study addresses the following research questions:
- What are the experienced challenges in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability from perspectives of academic staff, students, and societal actors?
- What do these different learners take individual agentic actions to address challenges in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedA scoping literature review, following the PRISMA guideline (Tricco et al., 2018), aimed to answer the research questions through a keyword search strategy based on the focus concepts of this study, namely transdisciplinary, sustainability, higher education, learning, challenges and agency. The search terms were selected based on relevant literature about transdisciplinary learning, higher education for sustainable development and agency for learning.
Executed in November 2023 on the bibliographic databases Scopus, ERIC (Education Resource Information Center), and Web of Science, the first phase included only peer-reviewed research articles in English. Web of science yielded 234 articles, Scopus and ERIC showed 115 and 48 articles meeting the criteria respectively. After removing duplicates, 297 articles remained for the second phase.
To further identify publications relevant to the research questions, the second phase screened titles and abstracts to selected articles that met the following criteria: 1) The article discussed one of four characteristics of transdisciplinary learning (respond to sustainability-related problems; include multiple perspectives; engage academic and non-academic partners; integrate knowledge and capacity from different disciplines), and/or the article discussed human agency in transdisciplinary learning; 2) The article investigated the transdisciplinary learning environment in higher education. This resulted in 103 articles for full-text screening.
In this third screening phase, 73 articles were excluded because of the following reasons: 1) The article didn’t discuss learners’ experiential challenges or agency in transdisciplinary learning environments; 2) The study was not an empirical study. 3) The article does not have an available full-text version. Through the snowball method, one additional publication was included. In the end, 31 publications were included for data analysis.
A combination of deductive and inductive coding was used in this study. The included publications were analyzed with a deductive coding scheme developed from the theoretical framework with two analytical dimensions: 1) four characteristics of transdisciplinary learning, 2) four components of individual agency, as well as collective and proxy agency in transdisciplinary learning. To answer the three research questions of this study, we coded the findings from the above-mentioned categories separately and conducted inductive coding to extract and categorize prevailing patterns among challenges in learners’ experiences and the role of agency in transdisciplinary learning environments. The first author coded all the publications and other authors reviewed and verified the coding. In cases of disagreement, the authors went through calibration discussions to reach a shared understanding of the results.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAs mentioned above, only preliminary analyses of the included publications have been carried out so far. While investigating the learners’ experiences and/or perspectives in transdisciplinary learning, most studies included perspectives from students (N=27), and educational staff and societal partners’ viewpoints were investigated by 15 and 11 studies, respectively. Nine articles included all three target groups in their research.
Challenges in transdisciplinary learning experience reflected the characteristics of transdisciplinary learning. The wickedness and uncertainty of sustainability-related problems unsettle learners, making them feel powerless. Collaborating with societal and non-academic partners engendered tensions due to various goals and roles. Each discipline had its own language, way of thinking and methodology, increasing the difficulty of communication in a transdisciplinary team. Prevailing challenges emerging from the inductive analysis included addressing tensions generated from conflicting perspectives and uneven power relationships, investing massive time and energy required for reflection, and dealing with uncertainty and unfamiliarity in transdisciplinary learning environments. The role of agency explored in current literature mostly appeared as an outcome of transdisciplinary learning, especially as increased self-efficacy. Some studies also mentioned positive forethought of taking actions, which, in turn, motivated people to overcome challenges in transdisciplinary learning. Collective agency was discussed in existing research as an emphasis on group relationship building and an awareness of connection to a broader group of people and nature. This reinforced self-efficacy, as good relationships with team members empowered learners to engage in transdisciplinary learning. The connection between challenges and the concept of agency in transdisciplinary learning will be further explored and presented at the ECER 2024. Insights into learners’ experiences in transdisciplinary learning from the perspectives of academic staff, students, and societal actors and the concept of agency in transdisciplinary learning have theoretical and practical implications for the optimization of transdisciplinary higher education for sustainability.
ReferencesAdefila, A., Chen, Y., Chao, C., Oyinlola, M., & Anafi, F. (2023). Developing transformative pedagogies for transdisciplinary education—Resources and competencies students need. INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION AND TEACHING INTERNATIONAL, 60(4), 476–487. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2022.2062032
Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164–180. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00011.x
Horner, C., Morse, C., Carpenter, N., Nordstrom, K., Faulkner, J., Mares, T., Kinnebrew, E., Caswell, M., Izzo, V., Méndez, V., Lewins, S., & McCune, N. (2021). Cultivating Pedagogy for Transformative Learning: A Decade of Undergraduate Agroecology Education. FRONTIERS IN SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.751115
Killion, A. K., Sterle, K., Bondank, E. N., Drabik, J. R., Bera, A., Alian, S., Goodrich, K. A., Hale, M., Myer, R. A., Phung, Q., Shew, A. M., & Thayer, A. W. (2018). Preparing the next generation of sustainability scientists. Ecology and Society, 23(4). Scopus. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10395-230439
Koskela, I.-M., & Paloniemi, R. (2023). Learning and agency for sustainability transformations: Building on Bandura’s theory of human agency. Environmental Education Research, 29(1), 164–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2022.2102153
Menon, S., & Suresh, M. (2020). Synergizing education, research, campus operations, and community engagements towards sustainability in higher education: A literature review. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 21(5), 1015–1051. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-03-2020-0089
Oonk, C., Gulikers, J., den Brok, P., & Mulder, M. (2022). Stimulating boundary crossing learning in a multi-stakeholder learning environment for sustainable development. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION, 23(8), 21–40. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-04-2021-0156
Sherren, K. (2008). A history of the future of higher education for sustainable development. Environmental Education Research, 14(3), 238–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620802148873
Tassone, V. C., Dik, G., & van Lingen, T. A. (2017). Empowerment for sustainability in higher education through the EYE learning tool. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 18(3), 341–358. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-12-2015-0209
Tricco, A. C., Lillie, E., Zarin, W., O’Brien, K. K., Colquhoun, H., Levac, D., Moher, D., Peters, M. D. J., Horsley, T., Weeks, L., Hempel, S., Akl, E. A., Chang, C., McGowan, J., Stewart, L., Hartling, L., Aldcroft, A., Wilson, M. G., Garritty, C., … Straus, S. E. (2018). PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation. Annals of Internal Medicine, 169(7), 467–473. https://doi.org/10.7326/M18-0850
Veltman, M. E., van Keulen, J., & Voogt, J. M. (2021). Using Problems with Wicked Tendencies as Vehicles for Learning in Higher Professional Education: Towards Coherent Curriculum Design. Curriculum Journal, 32(3), 559–583.
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