Social Sustainability: A design research approach to sustainable development

While issues such as clean production and energy efficiency are still central in sustainable development discourse, attention is increasingly on patterns of consumption at multiple levels in society. This opens new opportunities and responsibilities for design research, as we shift from a focus on product lifecycles to people’s lifestyles. It also requires further understanding the ‘social sustainability’ aspects of the environment and development, including the complexity of problematics characterized by uncertainties, contradictions and controversies. In response, we propose a programmatic approach, in which a tentative assemblage of theoretical and experimental strategies frame a common ground for a collaborative and practice-led inquiry. We present a design research program based on two propositions: socio-cultural practices are the basic unit for design, and; transitions, and transition management, are the basic points of design intervention. Rather than affirming the status quo or the prevailing discourse, we argue for design research as a ‘critical practice’, in which cultural diversity, non-humans and multiple futures are considered

Enactivism and ethnomethodological conversation analysis as tools for expanding Universal Design for Learning: the case of visually impaired mathematics students

Blind and visually impaired mathematics students must rely on accessible materials such as tactile diagrams to learn mathematics. However, these compensatory materials are frequently found to offer students inferior opportunities for engaging in mathematical practice and do not allow sensorily heterogenous students to collaborate. Such prevailing problems of access and interaction are central concerns of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an engineering paradigm for inclusive participation in cultural praxis like mathematics. Rather than directly adapt existing artifacts for broader usage, UDL process begins by interrogating the praxis these artifacts serve and then radically re-imagining tools and ecologies to optimize usability for all learners. We argue for the utility of two additional frameworks to enhance UDL efforts: (a) enactivism, a cognitive-sciences view of learning, knowing, and reasoning as modal activity; and (b) ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), which investigates participants’ multimodal methods for coordinating action and meaning. Combined, these approaches help frame the design and evaluation of opportunities for heterogeneous students to learn mathematics collaboratively in inclusive classrooms by coordinating perceptuo-motor solutions to joint manipulation problems. We contextualize the thesis with a proposal for a pluralist design for proportions, in which a pair of students jointly operate an interactive technological device

Investigating learning in construction organizations

Learning in construction has received scant attention within extant theories of generic organizational learning. One of the apparently distinct characteristics of construction organization is that its business mainly runs through projects. In contrast, the origin of the organizational learning concept mainly stems from routine-based organizations. The present study investigates how these theories are applied in the construction domain. To be more specific, it focuses on contracting organizations that engage with the UK performance enhancement initiative known as Constructing Excellence. The paper summarises the theoretical perspective on the current state of knowledge about this topic and the full methodology to be adopted. In overall terms, the methodology takes a multifaceted approach involving six major stages. The first phases of this process are now complete. It takes the form of a business audit relating to the type and size of projects currently being undertaken and how the project teams are managed. In themselves, the results contain new empirical data that has informed the direction of the rest study. Two general groups of construction companies were identified: general contractors and specialist/subcontractors. Each of these groups has a different tendency for how they manage their project teams. The former tends to reform for each new project, while the latter favours staying together. The initial premise is that each of these practices implies different learning mechanisms. Further study and analysis will depart from these initial findings

Towards an ontology of networked learning

Networked learning, conceived of as networks of people, informational resources and technologies, constitutes what has been termed a ‘highly interwined’ technology. In this paper we develop our earlier argument that sociotechnical networks can form the basis for a non-determinist theory of learning technology. Firstly, we argue that Kling et al’s sociotechnical interaction network (STIN) is compatible with a realist ontology, drawing on Fleetwood’s ‘ontology of the real’ and Lawson’s proposition of the social nature of the artefact in networks of ‘positioned practices’. This, we suggest, gives a more secure basis for the STIN concept, and provides a clear alternative to actor network theory (ANT)-based views of sociotechnical networks which do not distinguish between the influence of human and material agents. This also, we argue, provides an alternative way of anchoring concepts from the social informatics literature, often influenced by Giddens’ structuration theory, in ways that can help networked learning research. Secondly, we explore some potential implications of such an approach for theories of networked learning and learning more widely. In particular, we suggest a possible ontology of elements of learning technology. The use of the word ‘learning’ here is somewhat problematic, as it is routinely used rather loosely to describe changes at multiple levels but which are likely to have rather different underlying mechanisms. A more thorough ontology of learning technology would allow us to distinguish between these uses and identify potentially distinct mechanisms at play in different forms and levels of learning. Thirdly, we use this approach to explore how viewing learning technologies as sociotechnical networks helps to clarify our thinking about identities in social networking for personal, learning and professional purposes

Dodgy data, language invisibility and the implications for social inclusion: A critical analysis of indigenous student language data in Queensland Schools

As part of the ‘Bridging the Language Gap’ project undertaken with 86 State and Catholic schools across Queensland, the language competencies of Indigenous students have been found to be ‘invisible’ in several key and self-reinforcing ways in sch

AODM as a framework and model for characterising learner experiences with technology

The task of characterising learner experiences with technology is increasingly becoming complex due to continuous technological advancements that enable learners to connect, collaborate, generate educational resources and promptly share them in various settings. The challenge for the educator is to understand how to effectively capture and represent learners’ current and future experiences with technology. This paper presents ‘Activity-Oriented Design Method’ (AODM) as a framework and model for characterising personalised and contextualised learner experiences with technology. The objective is to show how AODM can be used to understand learner experiences by examining learner practices with technology and interactions with each other. The aim is to assess the significance and adequacy of AODM as a framework and model that contributes to future understanding of learner experiences with technology. In order to support our arguments, we draw practical insights from two studies that applied AODM to e-learning investigations. The outcome of this analysis is an assessment of the capacity of AODM as a model and framework for characterising both current and future learner experiences with technology. Furthermore, the analysis illuminates the processes of change that inform the design and use of future technologies for learning

On the Economics of Innovation Projects Product Experimentation in the Music Industry

The paper is conceptual, combining project and economic organization literatures in order to explain the organization and management of market-based projects. It dedicates particular focus to projects set up in order to facilitate product innovation through experimentation. It investigates the internal vs. market economies of scale and scope related to projects, as well as the issues of governance, planning and coordination related to reaping such economies. Incorporating transaction cost perspectives as well as considerations of labour markets, the paper explains the management of market-organized innovation projects by virtue of localized project ecologies and local labour markets of leaders and boundary spanners. It illustrates its arguments with a case study of the Recorded Music industry.Project management, product innovation

Societal Change and Values in Arab Communities in Israel: Intergenerational and Rural–Urban Comparisons

This study tested and extended Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development to adolescent development in Arab communities in Israel undergoing rapid social change. The theory views sociodemographic changes—such as contact with an ethnically diverse urban setting and spread of technology—as driving changes in cultural values. In one research design, we compared three generations, high school girls, their mothers, and their grandmothers, in their responses to value-assessment scenarios. In a second research design, we compared girls going to high school in an ethnically diverse city with girls going to school in a village. As predicted by the theory, a t test and ANOVA revealed that both urban life and membership in the youngest generation were significantly related to more individualistic and gender-egalitarian values. Regression analysis and a bootstrapping mediation analysis showed that the mechanism of change in both cases was possession of mobile technologies

Ecological Awareness: Enacting An Ecological Composition Curriculum To Encourage Student Knowledge Transfer

In 2012, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Karen Taczak and Liane Robertson published a book entitled Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition and Sites of Writing, in which they advocate for explicit instruction to help students transfer the writing expertise they gain in college composition courses to other writing contexts. That same year, the online journal Composition Forum put out a special issue dedicated to knowledge transfer. Since then, the call to investigate, and indeed teach for, knowledge transfer in the field of writing studies has been echoing around the discipline. In responding to this call, this dissertation project applies an ecological model of writing to a First Year Composition curriculum and pedagogy to promote writing knowledge transfer. This study examines how the framework of an ecological model of writing, or “writing ecologies pedagogy” can support students’ transfer of prior knowledge into the FYC classroom, as they encounter threshold concepts identified in composition studies (Adler-Kassner and Wardle, 2015). In addition, this project examines how a writing ecologies pedagogy can support the transfer of threshold concepts beyond FYC. While initial steps have been taken to theorize prior knowledge and teach explicitly for transfer (Yancey, Robertson and Taczak; Reiff and Bawarshi), the focus to this point has been on genre awareness transferred from prior writing experiences and practices that happen before entering college—contexts solely dependent on students’ experience in school. This project attempts to expand the focus from experiences prior to FYC, to experiences after as well. It also expands beyond the context of school to include home and personal discourse communities to complete the picture of where students write, and for what purposes. This dissertation triangulates between survey data collected from students at the beginning and end of their FYC courses, and longitudinal interviews with seven students to follow their trajectories of within and beyond the composition course. The surveys reveal that students are, for the most part, able to appropriately negotiate useful prior knowledge with the threshold concepts presented within the writing ecologies courses. The interviews reveal that students are able to transfer the threshold concepts of “Writing is a Social and Rhetorical Act” and “Writing is Linked to Identity,” very strongly. The focus of explicit instruction within the writing ecologies courses promotes the transfer of these two threshold concepts, though not all of the threshold concepts that were initially outlined in the curriculum. Ultimately, therefore, findings from this project suggest that further research on the effects of a writing ecologies curriculum and pedagogy on the transfer of writing knowledge can help pedagogical theorists, instructors and composition researchers develop a deeper understanding of how an ecological model of writing development can support knowledge transfer for students throughout their college careers, and beyond