1,721,007 research outputs found
Academics' conceptions of teaching sustainability
No full textOver the last decade a growing number of universities have committed to ensuring that sustainability is integral to higher education with the intent of preparing eco-literate graduates who can make positive contributions to the sustainability of the environment. With particular consideration for the increasingly internationalised teaching environment of many higher education institutions, this study sought to explore how academics' conceptions of teaching sustainability might differ across disciplines. This study builds upon the seminal work of Reid and Petocz (2006), Cotton, Bailey, Warren and Bissell (2009) and Cotton, Warren, Maiboroda and Bailey (2007) who explored the views of academics across a range of disciplines not traditionally associated with sustainability. This study extends their research by specifically identifying academics from a variety of disciplines who might be considered experts in the field of sustainability. The study takes a constructivist view of 'conceptions' which are developed through one's experiences, beliefs and interactions with community. The theoretical framing also identifies pedagogical approaches recommended in the fields of sustainability and intercultural education, and establishes eco-literacy and environmental ethics as integral to one's conceptions of sustainability. This research applied a multi case-study approach, including open ended interview questions with participants from four different faculties of Monash University namely: Science; Business and Economics; Education; and Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. All four participants were selected on the basis of the synopsis of the unit they taught overtly stating that sustainability related content was included in the syllabus, and thus might be defined as experts in the teaching of sustainability. The data was analysed using descriptive followed by interpretative coding, which ultimately identified six different components that might contribute to the participants' conceptions about their teaching. These components included: discipline; conceptions of sustainability; ethical position; pedagogical approach; approach to intercultural education; and approach to eco-literacy. The findings of the study conclude that there indeed were likely to be disciplinary differences in the academics' conceptions of teaching sustainability. While there was no evidence of a disciplinary link to the academics' understanding of what sustainability is, the research did appear to support a correlation between an academic's previous education and their ethical position. Furthermore, the current discipline of their unit appeared to strongly reflect their pedagogical approach to teaching sustainability. The research also highlights that while there are clearly some innovative teaching strategies being utilised, there is room for more transformational learning to· be included in syllabus design. Additionally, as the number of unit outlines that overtly referred to sustainability was surprisingly low, and not all sustainability related units seemed to demonstrate a comprehensive approach to the teaching of eco-literacy, questions are raised about whether all students are actually engaging in sustainability education as signatories of the Talloires Declaration have pledged. The significant contribution of this study is represented by its implications for the development of curriculum and syllabus design in the field of sustainability education. Having highlighted the potential disciplinary differences between approaches to teaching sustainability, a range of stakeholders, including university faculties and individual academics, can review how sustainability education is taught in their curriculum and address areas which require greater attention to ensure students receive a comprehensive exposure to the skills and knowledge required to develop eco-literacy
Ecological Literacy in an Egyptian Short Story [Elektronisk resurs]
No full textThis article explores a way in which an urban society in the Arab world may respond to an ecosystem by acquiring a measure of ecological literacy (eco-literacy) in a short story by an Egyptian author. Guided by David W. Orr’s concept of ecological literacy (1992) and eco-literacy (Amy Cutter Mackenzie and Richard Smith, 2003) we observe in which way this short story expresses awareness of ecological interrelatedness and an attitude of care and stewardship towards nature. With Christopher Manes (1996) and Don Kulick (1917) we argue that an environmental ethics which speaks on the behalf of nature and empathetic engagement with life beyond the human emerge.</p
Propositions for an Environmental Arts Pedagogy: A/r/tographic Experimentations with Movement and Materiality
No full textThis chapter works through a series of methodological experimentations with movement and materiality in order to explore the potentials of environmental arts pedagogies. We address the question of what environmental arts pedagogies might come to look like in the ever-changing contexts of children’s social and environmental worlds. This leads us to engage with the movements and materialities of learning environments as they come to co-compose pedagogical encounters. In doing so, we draw on new materialist accounts of matter as agentic, fluid, and dynamic; movement as a choreographic architecting of experience; and a/r/tographic approaches to pedagogical engagement and embodied practice. Taking up the use of concepts as methods, we develop a series of artistic and pedagogical experimentations with concepts of “corridors,” “flight,” “viscosity,” and “construction.” In teasing out the implications of these concepts for an environmental arts pedagogy, we combine imagery and text to both render and diagram the movement of bodies, materials, and environments in passage through each of these four conceptual enactments. This leads us to develop a series of propositions for an environmental arts pedagogy based on our creative research process. In doing so, we aim to sketch the contours of an environmental arts pedagogy that combines the speculative imagination with embodied, sensorial, and empirical experiences
Ecological Literacy in an Egyptian Short Story
No full textThis article explores a way in which an urban society in the Arab world may respond to an ecosystem by acquiring a measure of ecological literacy (eco-literacy) in a short story by an Egyptian author. Guided by David W. Orr’s concept of ecological literacy (1992) and eco-literacy (Amy Cutter Mackenzie and Richard Smith, 2003) we observe in which way this short story expresses awareness of ecological interrelatedness and an attitude of care and stewardship towards nature. With Christopher Manes (1996) and Don Kulick (1917) we argue that an environmental ethics which speaks on the behalf of nature and empathetic engagement with life beyond the human emerge.Anette Månsson and Krzysztof Baranowski (ed). Uppsala University, Semitic Languages, Department of Linguistics and Philology.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Playing With Environmental Education
No full textThis article represents the early collaboration of Cutter-Mackenzie and Edwards in early childhood environmental education. The article grappled with the notion of knowledge and its role in the teaching and learning of early childhood education. At that time, ‘knowledge’ was viewed as difficult to integrate with play-based approaches to learning in early childhood education due to reliance in the field of traditional theories of play as a basis for early childhood pedagogy. This meant that open-ended or free play dominated practice, where the role of the teacher was invariably to be seen but not heard.</jats:p
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