Circular design in everyday urbanism: Towards regenerative and restorative dynamic spaces in cities

Our habitats are being rapidly urbanised, renovated and restructured and, in this process, our cultural landscape is being radically altered. This unstoppable process of urbanisation across the globe has foremost implications for the environment, biodiversity, health and wellbeing of residents. The everyday city is a living laboratory that offers dynamic perceptions highlighting strands and synergies between senses, materials and spaces. This article reflects on the environmental effect of ecological design and circular economy on individual’s wellbeing at urban scale, so-called circular city. It deployed urban and ecological design principles to transform neglected spaces into healthy places through integrated grassroot experiments and models that empower local communities in innovative learning environments. For instance, urban greenspaces and community gardens are considered effective innovators in tackling problems associated with the deterioration of urban life such as waste, contamination and urban heat island effects. In the introduction section, this essay establishes a melted pot between the realms of urban planning, design and environmental psychology, particularly how human-caused problems such urban waste or vacant lands affect human health and wellbeing. The selected manuscripts for the special issue 11 of Visions for Sustainability titled “Wellbeing in Daily Built Environments” have emphasised the notion of wellbeing applied to design of the everyday city by interconnecting and balancing psychological, environmental, socio-spatial and cultural challenges. Projects, studies and materials presented in this selection propose a different way of thinking, playing and making our cities. They offer relevant literature and methodological supports from urban, architectural, aesthetics, perception and environmental psychology to inspire readers of this Journal to connect the states of the art in the fields of circular design and environmental psychology and also deepen on our understanding of processes and mechanisms underlying distinctive regenerative and restorative environments. It proposes a framework for understanding the dynamics of circular city, which can assist policy makers and planners to co-develop and design greenspaces with higher liveability and reuse or improve existing ones, ultimately humanising our urban environments and future replications

To Frame or Reframe: Where Might Design Thinking Research Go Next?

Design thinking is gaining widespread attention in the practitioner and academic literature. Successful implementation has been documented, and its value shown in empirical studies. There is little examination, however, of how design thinking practices fit with other approaches from which firms might choose to frame and solve problems such as agile, lean startup, scientific method, Six Sigma, critical thinking, and systems thinking. By digging into the basic capabilities underlying design thinking, academic researchers might better understand problem framing and solving in general and provide insight for practitioners as to where alternative approaches might be applied

Reinventing discovery learning: a field-wide research program

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature. Whereas some educational designers believe that students should learn new concepts through explorative problem solving within dedicated environments that constrain key parameters of their search and then support their progressive appropriation of empowering disciplinary forms, others are critical of the ultimate efficacy of this discovery-based pedagogical philosophy, citing an inherent structural challenge of students constructing historically achieved conceptual structures from their ingenuous notions. This special issue presents six educational research projects that, while adhering to principles of discovery-based learning, are motivated by complementary philosophical stances and theoretical constructs. The editorial introduction frames the set of projects as collectively exemplifying the viability and breadth of discovery-based learning, even as these projects: (a) put to work a span of design heuristics, such as productive failure, surfacing implicit know-how, playing epistemic games, problem posing, or participatory simulation activities; (b) vary in their target content and skills, including building electric circuits, solving algebra problems, driving safely in traffic jams, and performing martial-arts maneuvers; and (c) employ different media, such as interactive computer-based modules for constructing models of scientific phenomena or mathematical problem situations, networked classroom collective “video games,” and intercorporeal master–student training practices. The authors of these papers consider the potential generativity of their design heuristics across domains and contexts

Embodiment and embodied design

Picture this. A preverbal infant straddles the center of a seesaw. She gently tilts her weight back and forth from one side to the other, sensing as each side tips downward and then back up again. This child cannot articulate her observations in simple words, let alone in scientific jargon. Can she learn anything from this experience? If so, what is she learning, and what role might such learning play in her future interactions in the world? Of course, this is a nonverbal bodily experience, and any learning that occurs must be bodily, physical learning. But does this nonverbal bodily experience have anything to do with the sort of learning that takes place in schools - learning verbal and abstract concepts? In this chapter, we argue that the body has everything to do with learning, even learning of abstract concepts. Take mathematics, for example. Mathematical practice is thought to be about producing and manipulating arbitrary symbolic inscriptions that bear abstract, universal truisms untainted by human corporeality. Mathematics is thought to epitomize our species’ collective historical achievement of transcending and, perhaps, escaping the mundane, material condition of having a body governed by haphazard terrestrial circumstance. Surely mathematics is disembodied

The Community of Inquiry Framework Ten Years Later: Introduction to the Special Issue

This article introduces the special issue on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework which is being published ten years after the model was first introduced. Since that time the CoI framework has been used to guide and inform both research and practice worldwide. We are very honored to have articles by the original three authors of the CoI model in this special issue. The special issue also contains articles by leading CoI researchers as well as some scholars who are just beginning to use the framework

Using styles for more effective learning in multicultural and e-learning environments

Purpose – This Special Issue contains selected papers from the thirteenth annual European Learning Styles Information Network (ELSIN) conference held in Ghent, Belgium in June 2008. One of the key aims of ELSIN is to promote understanding of individual learning and cognitive differences through the dissemination of international multidisciplinary research about learning and cognitive styles and strategies of learning and thinking. Design/methodology/approach – Three papers within this special issue consider how style differences can inform the development of e-learning opportunities to enhance the learning of all (Vigentini; Kyprianidou, Demetriadis, Pombortsis and Karatasios; Zhu, Valcke and Schellens). The influence of culture on learning is also raised in the paper of Zhu and colleagues and those of Sulimma and Eaves which both focus more directly on cultural influences on style, learning and teaching. Findings – A number of key themes permeate the studies included in this Special Edition such as: the nature of styles; the intrinsic difficulty of isolating style variables from other variables impacting on performance; inherent difficulties in choosing the most appropriate style measures; the potential of e-learning to attend to individual learning differences; the role of culture in informing attitudes and access to learning; the development of constructivist learning environments to support learning through an understanding of individual differences; and most importantly how one can apply such insights about individual differences to inform and enhance instruction. Originality/value – The papers in this Special Issue contribute to enhanced knowledge about the value of style differences to design constructive learning environments in multicultural and e-learning contexts

Providing equivalent learning activities with software-based remote access laboratories

Laboratory-based learning activities are important components of engineering and surveying education and it is difficult to offering practical activities to distance education students. Remote Access Laboratory (RAL) systems are widely discussed as learning tools to offer students remote access to rigs or hardware. In some disciplines laboratory activities are purely software based and RAL systems can be used to provide access to software. As part of a larger study into the transferability of the remote laboratory concept to non-engineering disciplines this project evaluates the effectiveness of RAL based software activities in supporting student learning is investigated. In the discipline of Surveying and Spatial Science, RAL technology is used to provide Geographic Information System software access to distance students. The key research question discussed in this paper is whether RALbased software activities can address the same learning outcomes as face-to-face practical classes for software activities. Data was collected from students' discussion forums, teaching staff diaries and teaching staff interviews. The project demonstrates that students undertaking learning activities remotely achieve similar learning outcomes than student in practice classes using the same software. Ease of system access and usability are critical and the learning activity needs to be supported by comprehensive learning materials. This research provides a clear case in which the use of RAL technology has provided inclusive educational opportunities more efficiently and these general results are also applicable to experiments that involve physical hardware