Exhibiting Climate Change: An Examination of the Thresholds of Arts-Sciences Collaborations in the Context of Learning for a Sustainable Future

This dissertation probes the cultural and political thresholds of arts–sciences collaborations in the context of the development of public pedagogy about a sustainable response to climate change. The dissertation is an in-depth case study of a civil society group called Cape Farewell that is organizing collaborations between contemporary artists and climate scientists. Since 2003, Cape Farewell has been leading expeditions to the Arctic, the Andes, and the Scottish Islands and Faroes that bring artists, scientists, educators, and other creative communicators together to innovate public pedagogy about a sustainable response to climate change. Drawing on sustainability theory, Jacques Rancière’s theory of political aesthetics, Grant Kester’s theory of artistic collaboration, phenomenological curriculum theory, and Tim Ingold’s notion of wayfinding, the dissertation describes these expeditionary field studies as forms of ecological wayfinding. By following the wayfaring path of learners alongside materials and shared metaphors from field studies to cultural productions, I describe the multifaceted dimensions of ecological wayfinding in relation to arts-based research, curriculum, and pedagogy. Building on Elizabeth Ellsworth’s theory of pedagogical pivot points, I describe the potential of the climate exhibitions, art works, films, websites, and concerts to produce visionary possibilities for a sustainable future on the planet. These public pedagogies variously negotiate the political thresholds of neoliberalism, the cultural thresholds of Romanticism, and disciplinary thresholds in higher education. Central to my argument is that we need to develop place-based and interdisciplinary sustainability curricula and pedagogy in postsecondary art education in order to foster more meaningful forms of collaboration across the arts and the sciences and alongside socioecological places. Finally, we need to envision an ethics of sustainability on the scale of the cosmos rather than the market via the intimate expenditure of bodies-in-motion and the generosity, empathy, and hospitality that can be inspired by emergent forms of relational and site-specific art practice

Using Mezirow's Transformative Learning Theory to understand online instructors' construction of the virtual teaching experience

This qualitative study examines expert instructors’ lived experienced with online pedagogy in order to (1) understand how teaching in a virtual environment influences pedagogical style, academic identity and student-instructor interactions and (2) to explore how the virtual teaching experience evolves as faculty continue to teach online. None of the existing empirical research has focused on accomplished instructors’ online teaching experiences and, as a result, there is very little information concerning how to sustain faculty approval, retain skilled instructors, provide adequate online teaching support and maintain a successful online learning enterprise over time (Coppola, et al., 2002; Bolliger & Wasilik, 2009; Betts, 2014). Using a constructivist design, this study employed interviews and content analysis techniques to explore the following research questions: 1) What challenges do experienced online faculty face when they teach in the virtual learning environment? 2) What new challenges have emerged as a result of their continued online teaching experience? 3) How do experienced instructors approach and address these challenges? Thirty-one self-identified experienced online instructors from across the nation and a variety of institutions participated. Findings show that continued online teaching experience has a profound impact on the way instructors perceive their pedagogical practice, their place in the academy and their role in students’ online learning experiences. The online environment presents instructors with a multitude of challenges. These challenges are complex and involve pedagogical issues as well as philosophical dilemmas that force instructors to reconsider their assumptions about teaching, learning and authority in the classroom. Wrestling with these issues puts instructors in a vulnerable position as they search for pragmatic solutions and simultaneously renegotiate their long-held academic assumptions and beliefs. The practical and philosophical challenges instructors experience in regards to their developing digital pedagogical practice, their changing relationship with students, and their evolving online academic identity are discussed as well as findings related to vulnerability in the online environment. Implications for online faculty development, limitations and areas for improvement are also considered

Countervisuality as Policy Feedback: A Critical Policy Study on the Symbolic Role of Visual Culture in Contemporary Antiracist Resistance

This critical interpretive study explores the relationship between public policy and visual culture. Drawing from five areas of research literature on (1) policy feedback theory, (2) the spectacle, (3) art and visual culture, (4) Black feminist theory, (5) and critical philosophies of resistance, images of contemporary antiracist activism are conceptualized as a form of policy feedback. Photographs of Ieshia Evans, Bree Newsome, and a self-portrait by Nona Faustine are reverse searched through Google Images. Utilizing constructivist grounded theory, a collection of publicly available news articles, blogs, and social media content are analyzed to better understand how mass publics engage with these images online. The findings reveal that a unique form of social learning takes place as publics orient themselves to the images in terms of lived experience, current events, and history; as they make sense of images by connecting novel information to previously learned information; and, as they apply the images in a variety of ways in civil society, politics, and market. This form of extra-institutional learning appears to be consistent with current literature on public pedagogy. Implications for the field of public policy are discussed

Buildings for Education

This open access book presents theoretical and practical research relating to the vast, publicly financed program for the construction of new schools and the reorganization of existing educational buildings in Italy. This transformative process aims to give old buildings a fresh identity, to ensure that facilities are compliant with the new educational and teaching models, and to improve both energy efficiency and structural safety with respect to seismic activity. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on the social role of the school as a civic building that can serve the needs of the community. Innovations in both design and construction processes are then analyzed, paying special attention to the Building Information Modeling (BIM) strategy as a tool for the integration of different disciplines. The final section is devoted to the built heritage and tools, technologies, and approaches for the upgrading of existing buildings so that they meet the new regulations on building performance. The book will be of interest to all who wish to learn about the latest insights into the challenges posed by, and the opportunities afforded by, a comprehensive school building and renovation program

Community-campus Connections: Exploring The Potential Of Collaborative Planning Between York University And Its Neighbours

Community engagement has been a core element of York University’s mandate for several years. However, does a conceptual gap prevent university-community engagement from being actualized? The purpose of this project is to embark on an iterative exercise that brings the Jane-Finch community’s engagement concerns directly to the University administration, thus advancing the understanding of challenges and opportunities that exist with respect to community-university partnerships at York University. By focusing on the implications of upcoming development projects on the Keele campus, this project investigates the scope of community engagement concerning land use planning for the Jane-Finch neighbourhood adjacent to York University. Despite measures taken to create a dialogue between the University and the Jane-Finch community – initiated on both the University and community fronts – this project revisits the discussion as a review and re-evaluation to spot opportunities for improvement and progress. With the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension nearing completion, alongside York’s renewed commitment to community engagement, it is now more important than ever to review the University’s community engagement approach. As York University enters a new era with large-scale land-use development occurring on the Keele campus, the current condition of community-university engagement must be evaluated to identify challenges and opportunities for improvement

Learning Within Socio-Political Landscapes: (Re)imagining Children’s Geographies

Over a century ago, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, one of Bank Street College’s founders, put into practice a vision of teaching and learning enmeshed in the physical, social, and political city spaces of young peoples’ daily lives. Central to her work was reimagining geography, grounding the discipline in the here and now of children’s neighborhoods, connecting with community members and city spaces as a means to explore complex relationships within the wider world. Mitchell considered working across different modes of engagement as an integral practice for children to learn about their worlds and their roles within it: physical movement, like walking and subway riding, and the construction of maps with varying scales, materials, and symbols (Mitchell, 1991). Mitchell also envisioned movement and mapping as essential for teachers’ learning, leading multi-day Long Trips along the eastern seaboard to make visible educators’ connections to contemporary social, political, and environmental realities, and connecting city and rural locales. Temporally, these practices and tools acted as playful intermediaries between visible and invisible interrelationships constituting children’s and adult’s lives and livelihoods

Ethical Frames: A Qualitative Study of Networked Device Use in Two High School ELA Classrooms

This dissertation addresses a gap in empirical research on the way reading and writing on networked devices intervene in the social dynamics of secondary classrooms. Though many studies have investigated how networked devices shape the literacy practices and social norms of online writing spaces, few have investigated the impact of networked devices on the social norms of the classroom. At the same time, the scholarly discourse on the role of networked devices in classrooms is highly polarized, with some scholars suggesting that literacy curriculum must change to meet the demands of the 21st century (Prensky, 2001; Gee, 2017; Jenkins et al., 2009), while others argue that schools have gone too far in accommodating technology, losing something vital to the project of education in the process (Carr, 2010; Bauerlein, 2010; Turkle, 2011). Researchers who attempt a more balanced interpretation have located their studies in extra-curricular spaces (boyd, 2014; Itō, 2010) which are not subject to the peculiar social demands of the classroom (Jackson, 1968; Cuban, 1986). Drawing on interviews with 24 students and 3 teachers in two small, suburban, public high schools, this qualitative study asks how networked devices matter to students and teachers who use them daily in both personal and academic spaces. The study investigates the ways in which public and policy discourses contribute to the practices and perspectives of students and teachers as they negotiate the role of networked devices in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms, developing personal norms for what constitutes acceptable uses of cell phones, tablets, and laptops and making decisions about what aspects of digital literacies belong to the ELA curriculum. Two findings arose from analysis of the data: 1) Students make deliberate choices in deciding when to read and write on networked devices during class for non-class purposes and 2) The various policy documents meant to guide technology integration and digital literacy instruction represent multiple overlapping activity systems whose goals don’t always align. The findings of this study suggest that the current body of research and policies would benefit from attending more closely to important relational dimensions of device use, including how students and use networked devices to maintain their ethical commitments through reading and writing and how policy documents implicitly position students and teachers in relation to different goals for containing or connecting the classroom network. Building on a recent turn to an examination of the ethical relations implicit in writing and programming (Duffy, 2017; Brown: 2015), this study proposes ethical frames as a conceptual vocabulary for how students decide to engage with various audience types: the self, known others, school, and society. Guided by ethical frames, students manage and maintain relationships in the coextensive visible and virtual networks in the classroom and teachers implement, reject, or adapt policies that reflect the ethical frames they believe most suited to their local contexts.PHDEnglish & EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145849/1/scriba_1.pd

Old enough to know : consulting children about sex and AIDS education in Africa

This compelling study, comprising of a sample of eight schools in three countries in sub-Saharan Africa – Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania – examines the sources, contents and processes of children´s community-based sexual knowledges and asks how these knowledges interact with AIDS education programmes in school. Old enough to know showcases the possibilities of consulting pupils using engaging, interactive and visual methods including digital still photography, mini-video documentaries, as well as interviews and observations. These innovative methods allow children to speak freely and openly in contexts where talking about sex to adults is a cultural tabo

Urban Ecosystem Services and Tourism

Urban tourism depends on the place specific qualities of destinations. In many cities, climate change poses a threat to these qualities, through increasing risk of excessive heat, draught and flooding. Cities need to adapt to reduce these risks. One way of doing this is to improve their green infrastructure. Urban forests, parks, rivers and wetlands may help reduce the effects of climate change in cities. At the same time, green infrastructure provide a variety of ecosystem services to the community. In particular, cultural ecosystem services such as recreation, andesthetical values take place in urban green infrastructure; they provide value in the form of improved experiences. These mainly benefit the locals but they may also be important for tourism. Such relations between ecosystem services and tourism have in earlier literature been recognized in rural contexts but very seldom in urban. This paper reports preliminary findings from qualitative case studies in the South of Sweden and Berlin, Germany. They focus on how urban planning projects (primarily aimed at mitigating GHG emissions and adapting to climatechange) can be extended to develop places where experience values for both residents and visitors are created alongside other kinds of ecosystem services. We suggest that the need for climate change adaptation in a city may be used as a means to improve its place specific qualities as a tourist destination. By developing green infrastructure in innovative and environmentally friendly ways, the quality of ecosystem services improves, including those relevant for both visitors and residents. Protecting and building green infrastructure, therebyenhancing a city´s visible qualities and its reputation as a sustainable destination, may also be valuable in marketing the city