Structured Collaboration Across a Transformative Knowledge Network-Learning Across Disciplines, Cultures and Contexts?

Realising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require transformative changes at micro, meso and macro levels and across diverse geographies. Collaborative, transdisciplinary research has a role to play in documenting, understanding and contributing to such transformations. Previous work has investigated the role of this research in Europe and North America, however the dynamics of transdisciplinary research on ‘transformations to sustainability’ in other parts of the world are less well-understood. This paper reports on an international project that involved transdisciplinary research in six different hubs across the globe and was strategically designed to enable mutual learning and exchange. It draws on surveys, reports and research outputs to analyse the processes of transdisciplinary collaboration for sustainability that took place between 2015-2019. The paper illustrates how the project was structured in order to enable learning across disciplines, cultures and contexts, and describes how it also provided for the negotiation of epistemological frameworks and different normative commitments between members across the network. To this end, it discusses lessons regarding the use of theoretical and methodological anchors, multi-loop learning and evaluating emergent change (including the difficulties encountered). It offers insights for the design and implementation of future international transdisciplinary collaborations that address locally-specific sustainability challenges within the universal framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

How pluralistic is the research field on adult education? Dominating bibliometrical trends, 2005-2012

What the field of adult education research is and how it can be described has been a debated issue over the decades. Several scholars argue that the field today is heterogeneous, borrowing theories and methods from a range of disciplines. In this article, we take such statements as a starting point for empirical analysis. In what ways could it be argued that the field is pluralistic rather than monolithic; heterogeneous rather than homogenous? Drawing on bibliographic data of the top cited articles in three main adult education journals between 2005 and 2012, we illustrate how the citation patterns have tendencies of homogeneity when it comes to the geographical country of authorship, since the USA, UK, Australia and Canada dominate, as well as the research methods adopted, since qualitative approaches have near total dominance. Furthermore, there is a tendency to adopt similar theoretical approaches, since sociocultural perspectives, critical pedagogy and post-structuralism represent more than half of the articles in our sample. At the same time, the results of our analysis indicate signs of scholarly pluralism, for instance, in terms of authorship, since both early career researchers and established researchers are represented among the top cited publications. We conclude the article by arguing that empirical analysis of publication and citation patterns is important to further the development of reflexivity within the field, not least for early career researchers, who might benefit from knowledge about what has been recognized among peers as worth citing in recent times. (DIPF/Orig.

Review of the Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture

The Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture is a knowledge platform which leverages the strengths, opportunities and diverse audiences of the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD) and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The objective of the Learning Alliance is to produce and disseminate evidence for informed policy and implementation of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions by capturing, analyzing and communicating lessons emerging from the IFAD supported global Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP). The Learning Alliance strives to enable agricultural development policy-makers and practitioners make science-based decisions in the context of climate change. The underlying assumption of the Learning Alliance is that the “provision of demand-driven research outputs to policy-makers and practitioners is a key mechanism for improving the effectiveness of adaptation actions among ultimate beneficiaries, in this case smallholder farmers”. The review aims to identify areas for improvement to achieve the planned outcomes of the Learning Alliance more effectively. It provides recommendations to inform a further phase, based on the experience of those closely involved in the knowledge production and implementation of the Alliance

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research: A New Paradigm for Battery Research and Development

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) seeks transformational change in transportation and the electricity grid driven by next generation high performance, low cost electricity storage. To pursue this transformative vision JCESR introduces a new paradigm for battery research: integrating discovery science, battery design, research prototyping and manufacturing collaboration in a single highly interactive organization. This new paradigm will accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation and reduce the time from conceptualization to commercialization. JCESR applies its new paradigm exclusively to beyond-lithium-ion batteries, a vast, rich and largely unexplored frontier. This review presents JCESR's motivation, vision, mission, intended outcomes or legacies and first year accomplishments.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, 96 reference

Transformation in a changing climate: a research agenda

The concept of transformation in relation to climate and other global change is increasingly receiving attention. The concept provides important opportunities to help examine how rapid and fundamental change to address contemporary global challenges can be facilitated. This paper contributes to discussions about transformation by providing a social science, arts and humanities perspective to open up discussion and set out a research agenda about what it means to transform and the dimensions, limitations and possibilities for transformation. Key focal areas include: (1) change theories, (2) knowing whether transformation has occurred or is occurring; (3) knowledge production and use; (4), governance; (5) how dimensions of social justice inform transformation; (6) the limits of human nature; (7) the role of the utopian impulse; (8) working with the present to create new futures; and (9) human consciousness. In addition to presenting a set of research questions around these themes the paper highlights that much deeper engagement with complex social processes is required; that there are vast opportunities for social science, humanities and the arts to engage more directly with the climate challenge; that there is a need for a massive upscaling of efforts to understand and shape desired forms of change; and that, in addition to helping answer important questions about how to facilitate change, a key role of the social sciences, humanities and the arts in addressing climate change is to critique current societal patterns and to open up new thinking. Through such critique and by being more explicit about what is meant by transformation, greater opportunities will be provided for opening up a dialogue about change, possible futures and about what it means to re-shape the way in which people live

Human rights, state wrongs, and social change: the theory and practice of emancipation

This article demonstrates the significance of human rights for challenging state violence and terrorism. It is intended to enhance understanding of the concept of emancipation. Critical Security Studies has tended to focus on the individual as the agent of her/his own liberation. Yet many victims of oppression are not able to free themselves. Drawing on historical materialism, it is argued that collective agency on behalf of the oppressed has a necessary role to play in emancipatory politics. Emancipation is contingent on the capacity of specific agents, located socially and historically, to identify practices that might bring about change, structures that might be transformed, and appropriate agents that are in the best position to facilitate such change. This article shows how such collective social action has forced a reversal of some of the Bush administration’s repressive policies, and has partially succeeded in curtailing the arbitrary use of US state power. This has been achieved through the national and international human rights architecture. Therefore, Marxian claims that human rights should be eschewed are mistaken, since they fail to acknowledge the emancipatory potential of human rights, the opportunities they provide for collective social action, and the role they can play in transformative social change

Identification of levels of sustainable consciousness of teachers in training through an e-portfolio

The contents of Education for Sustainable Development should be included in teachers’ initial and advanced training programs. A sustainable consciousness is one of the main foundations for determining the key competences for sustainability. However, there are not many empirical studies that deal with consciousness from education. In this context, the e-portfolio appears as a tool that promotes reflection and critical thinking, which are key competences for consciousness development. This work intends to propose a categorization system to extract types of consciousness and identify the levels of consciousness of teachers in training. For this research work, which is of an eminently qualitative nature, we have selected 25 e-portfolios of students (teachers in pre-service training) in the last year of the School of Education at the University of Macerata (Italy). The qualitative methodological procedure that was followed enabled deducing three bases that shape the consciousness of teachers in training: thinking, representation of reality, and type of consciousness. We concluded that the attainment of a sustainable consciousness in teachers requires activating and developing higher levels of thinking, as well as a projective and macrostructural representation of reality

Teacher education for effective technology integration

About a decade ago, several researchers used Shulman's (1986) framework about Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) - a body of knowledge that constitutes a special amalgam of content, pedagogy, learners, and context - as a theoretical basis for developing TPCK or TPACK: a framework for guiding teachers' cognition about technology integration in teaching and learning (Angeli, Valanides, & Christodoulou, 2016). Different models of TPCK/TPACK are proposed in the literature, each with a different focus (on practice, instructional design, context, etc.) and with a different theoretical interpretation about the nature and development of the knowledge that teachers need to have to be able to teach with technology (e.g., Angeli & Valanides, 2005, 2009, 2013; Koehler & Mishra, 2008; Niess, 2005).In this direction, research is being carried out to identify TPCK design procedures for initial teacher education. In teaching, when transferring TPCK to design and methodological practices, there is a need to consider a number of factors, especially: the different modes of adopting technologies; the integration of tool affordances, content and pedagogy; the implementation of learning environments; the operationalization of knowledge; and detailed analysis of teaching models and approache