Biophilic urban developments following dynamic flows of tree-shaped architectures

Latest theories and practices in Biophilic designs of the urban space regard the urban fabric as being composed of several interrelated layers of energetic structure influencing each other in a non-linear manner primarily. The interaction between two or more interfaces of the urban space layers evolves into new and non-predictable properties. Evolution and creation of new boundaries/interfaces follows laws related to fractal growth; most of the times this particular evolution is defined by laws of physics, such as Thermodynamics and Constructal Law. Designs that do not follow these laws may produce anti-natural and hostile environments, which do not fit into human beings’ evolution, and thus, fail to enhance life by all means. The author of this paper should like to illustrate how new developments of urbanism worldwide currently work upon conceptual and town planning models based not only upon cutting-edge technology, but also upon natural laws and patterns of life and human behaviours strictly related to flaws and movement dictated by natural phenomena. When abrupt interruption of the urban structure has occurred, a consequent design solution does not even guarantee flowing and freedom to morph. It is impossible to create harmonic designs which naturally “unite the animate with the inanimate”, as Adrian Bejan and Sylvie Lorente affirm, whenever urban sprawl fails to encompass Biophilic solutions related to tree-shaped architectures. The author argues that Constructal invasion into the urban space “as fundamental problems of access to flow: volume to point, area to point, line to point, and the respective reverse flow directions” can only guarantee high standard quality of life in either contemporary or future cities developments

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 5, Issue 2, Summer 2016

Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning is a peer-reviewed, biannual online journal that publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice and assessment of interdisciplinary education. Impact is produced by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at the College of General Studies, Boston University (www.bu.edu/cgs/citl)

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Sense of Place in the Anthropocene: A students-teaching-students course

Contemporary environmental education is tasked with the acknowledgement of the Anthropocene - an informal but ubiquitous term for the current geological epoch which arose from anthropogenic changes to the Earth system - and its accompanying socio-ecological implications. Sense of Place can be a hybridized tool of personal agency and global awareness for this task. Through the creation, execution and reflection of a 14-student students-teaching-students (STS) course at the University of Vermont in the Spring of 2019, Giannina Gaspero-Beckstrom and Ella Mighell aimed to facilitate a peer-to-peer learning environment that addressed sense of place, social justice and community engagement. The students-teaching-students framework is an alternative educational approach that supports the values and practices of the University of Vermont’s Environmental Program, as well as an intentional breakdown of the hierarchical knowledge paradigm. Using alternative pedagogies (predominately critical and place-based), we attempted to facilitate meaningful learning through creative expression, experiential education, community dialogue and personal reflection. Our intention with this was to encourage awareness and action

Research communication

In this paper we review briefly histories and ideologies underlying multiculturalism in Nordic countries, highlighting tensions between integrationist and inclusive approaches. We propose a cultural ecological framework through which we discuss the possibility of a transculturalism based on Fourth World engagement with the environment. Cultural ecology is about the reciprocal interactions and transactions between people and their environments. The Fourth World is a circum-global, pan-arctic region which includes the northern parts of some Nordic countries. We argue that whether or not there is a distinctively Nordic version of multiculturalism, Nordic countries have access to Fourth World ways of engaging with the environment which transcend notions of inter- and multiculturalism and the ideological tensions associated with them

A European research agenda for lifelong learning

It is a generally accepted truth that without a proper educational system no country will prosper, nor will its inhabitants. With the arrival of the post-industrial society, in Europe and elsewhere, it has become increasingly clear that people should continue learning over their entire life-spans lest they or their society suffer the dire consequences. But what does this future lifelong learning society exactly look like? And how then should education prepare for it? What should people learn and how should they do so? How can we afford to pay for all this, what are the socio-economic constraints of the move towards a lifelong-learning society? And, of course, what role can and should the educational establishment of schools and universities play? This are questions that demand serious research efforts, which is what this paper argues for

Environmentalism, performance and applications: uncertainties and emancipations

This introductory article for a themed edition on environmentalism provides a particular context for those articles that follow, each of which engages with different aspects of environmentalism and performance in community-related settings. Responding to the proposition that there is a lacuna in the field of applied drama and environmentalism (Bottoms, 2010), we suggest that the more significant lack is that of ecocriticism. As the articles in this journal testify, there are many examples of applied theatre practice; what is required is sustained and rigorous critical engagement. It is to the gap of ecocriticism that we address this issue, signalling what we hope is the emergence of a critical field. One response to the multiple challenges of climate change is to more transparently locate the human animal within the environment, as one agent amongst many. Here, we seek to transparently locate the critic, intertwining the personal – ourselves, human actants – with global environmental concerns. This tactic mirrors much contemporary writing on climate change and its education, privileging personal engagement – a shift we interrogate as much as we perform. The key trope we anchor is that of uncertainty: the uncertainties that accompany stepping into a new research environment; the uncertainties arising from multiple relations (human and non-human); the uncertainties of scientific fact; the uncertainties of forecasting the future; and the uncertainties of outcomes – including those of performance practices. Having analysed a particular turn in environmental education (towards social learning) and the failure to successfully combine ‘art and reality’ in recent UK mainstream theatre events, such uncertainties lead to our suggestion for an ‘emancipated’ environmentalism. In support of this proposal, we offer up a reflection on a key weekend of performance practice that brought us to attend to the small – but not insignificant – and to consider first hand the complex relationships between environmental ‘grand narratives’ and personal experiential encounters. Locating ourselves within the field and mapping out some of the many conceptual challenges attached to it serves to introduce the territories which the following journal articles expand upon

Repair Matters

Repair has visibly come to the fore in recent academic and policy debates, to the point that ‘repair studies’ is now emerging as a novel focus of research. Through the lens of repair, scholars with diverse backgrounds are coming together to rethink our relationships with the human-made matters, tools and objects that are the material mesh in which organisational life takes place as a political question. This special issue is interested to map the ways that repair can contribute to organisational models alternative to those centered around growth. In order to explore the politics of repair in the context of organization studies, the papers gathered here investigate issues such as: repair as a specific kind of care and socially reproductive labour; repair as a direct intervention into the cornerstones of capitalist economy, such as exchange versus use value, division of work and property relations; repair of infrastructures and their relation with the broader environment; and finally repair as the reflective practice of fixing the organizational systems and institutional habits in which we dwell. What emerges from the diversity of experiences surveyed in this issue is that repair manifests itself as both a regime of practice and counter-conduct that demand an active and persistent engagement of practitioners with the systemic contradictions and power struggles shaping our material world