Trends and dilemmas facing environmental education in Portugal: from environmental problem assessment to citizenship involvement

Environmental education (EE) emerged in Portugal as an organized field of collective action about 30 years ago. At this time of the return to democracy, major social and environmental changes had begun to occur. Yet, after 30 years of EE, together with significant improvements in the education system and curricula, the real impacts of these mostly voluntary and aggressive efforts aimed at preparing future citizens to deal effectively and sensitively with environmental problem solving are not yet evident. The pathways and social context of these efforts aimed at upgrading EE in Portugal, and their apparent failure to meet their objectives, form the basis of the analysis in this paper. The authors examine the results of a survey questionnaire sent to 15,000 public and private schools all running projects formally associated with both EE and education for sustainable development (ESD). The primary purpose of the analysis was to identify the trends, constraints, and potentials for these EE/ESD projects and initiatives within primary and secondary schools. In addition, perspectives as to the emerging trends in ESD in Portugal are discussed, bearing in mind the shifting educational context

Can you tell if they’re learning? Using a pedagogical framework to measure pedagogical activity

The proliferation of Web-based learning objects makes finding and evaluating online resources problematic. While established Learning Analytics methods use Web interaction to evaluate learner engagement, there is uncertainty regarding the appropriateness of these measures. In this paper we propose a method for evaluating pedagogical activity in Web-based comments using a pedagogical framework, and present a preliminary study that assigns a Pedagogical Value (PV) to comments. This has value as it categorises discussion in terms of pedagogical activity rather than Web interaction. Results show that PV is distinct from typical interactional measures; there are negative or insignificant correlations with establishedLearning Analytics methods, but strong correlations with relevant linguistic indicators of learning, suggesting that the use of pedagogical frameworks may produce more accurate indicators than interaction analysis, and that linguistic rather than interaction analysis has the potential to automatically identify learning behaviour

How should we measure online learning activity?

The proliferation of Web-based learning objects makes finding and evaluating resources a considerable hurdle for learners to overcome. While established learning analytics methods provide feedback that can aid learner evaluation of learning resources, the adequacy and reliability of these methods is questioned. Because engagement with online learning is different from other Web activity, it is important to establish pedagogically relevant measures that can aid the development of distinct, automated analysis systems. Content analysis is often used to examine online discussion in educational settings, but these instruments are rarely compared with each other which leads to uncertainty regarding their validity and reliability. In this study, participation in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) comment forums was evaluated using four different analytical approaches: the Digital Artefacts for Learning Engagement (DiAL-e) framework, Bloom's Taxonomy, Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) and Community of Inquiry (CoI). Results from this study indicate that different approaches to measuring cognitive activity are closely correlated and are distinct from typical interaction measures. This suggests that computational approaches to pedagogical analysis may provide useful insights into learning processes

Environmentalism after the pandemic

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the explosive emergence of environmentalism accompanied by increasingly influential scientific, regulative and managerial roles for the environmental sciences. Since then, there has been a comprehensive increase of awareness and understanding of a whole spectrum of global to local environmental and socio-cultural dilemmas. Environmentalism has experienced a complicated set of tendentious relations with the various forms of capitalism. We argue here that any transformation to truly sustainable futures requires either a transformative integration of green growth within a modified capitalism, or a progressive shift to radically new ways of experiencing and living around sustainable localism. The pandemic has brought the world extraordinarily almost to a halt. It has offered a unique opportunity to consider, debate, and possibly implement sustainable livelihoods in myriads of different cultural and political settings via progressive social, political and economic reforms. By reconceptualising historical ideas of environmentalism into a new set of global to local arrangements post-pandemic, we can begin to shape and to live into sustainability, ideally across the whole planet. It is vital to progress with hope and through the yearnings of young people, and not with despair and through degeneration by clinging onto the old ways

Environmental tipping points and food system dynamics: Main report

First paragraph: Environmental tipping points occur when there are step changes in the way the biophysical world works – whether loss of soil fertility, collapse of a fishing stock, or sudden changes in weather patterns, such as those that caused the grasslands in North Africa to become deserts, 6000 years ago. These non-linear shifts arise following a critical degree of change, resulting from either many small cumulative changes or one large shock, “tipping” the system over a threshold and into a new stable state. Entering an alternative stable state is associated with a change to system function, usually being difficult to reverse or “tip” back into the original state. Increasingly we recognise that human-environment interactions are affecting the likelihood that critical thresholds for tipping points will be crossed, leading to step-changes in the provision of environmental goods and services, and impacting upon food security

Streaming video: some practicalities

There are a number of difficulties in using videos and animations in learning and teaching packages, e.g., students lose them, fail to return them on time, and damage VHS tapes, CD-ROMs and DVDs. Additionally, it is not always possible for students to obtain access to such materials when they want them, e.g., laser video discs can only be accessed on site, the download times for video material from the Internet can be very long especially at certain times of the day, and material taken directly from the Internet is often not specific to the student’s needs. An answer to these difficulties is to deliver, i.e., ‘stream’, the appropriate video and audio material, subject to copyright clearance and licensing, on the institution’s Intranet. A number of sources, e.g., British Universities Film and Video Council (http://www.bufvc.ac.uk/), have described and discussed the background to this topic in considerable detail and the names of commercial companies, which can provide ‘streaming’ services, are available via the BUFVC web site. At Southampton we have delivered the videos on ‘Practical Laboratory Chemistry’, produced by the Chemistry Video Consortium (http://www.chemistry.soton.ac.uk/cvc/), over a local 100Mbps network by two routes. In this Technical Note we shall not discuss the theoretical aspects of ‘streaming’ (see above) but rather we shall describe our practical experiences, which we hope will be useful

Transformative social innovation and (dis)empowerment

This article responds to increasing public and academic discourses on social innovation, which often rest on the assumption that social innovation can drive societal change and empower actors to deal with societal challenges and a retreating welfare state. In order to scrutinise this assumption, this article proposes a set of concepts to study the dynamics of transformative social innovation and underlying processes of multi-actor (dis)empowerment. First, the concept of transformative social innovation is unpacked by proposing four foundational concepts to help distinguish between different pertinent ‘shades’ of change and innovation: 1) social innovation, (2) system innovation, (3) game-changers, and (4) narratives of change. These concepts, invoking insights from transitions studies and social innovations literature, are used to construct a conceptual account of how transformative social innovation emerges as a co-evolutionary interaction between diverse shades of change and innovation. Second, the paper critically discusses the dialectic nature of multi-actor (dis)empowerment that underlies such processes of change and innovation. The paper then demonstrates how the conceptualisations are applied to three empirical case-studies of transformative social innovation: Impact Hub, Time Banks and Credit Unions. In the conclusion we synthesise how the concepts and the empirical examples help to understand contemporary shifts in societal power relations and the changing role of the welfare state

The economic crisis as a game changer? Exploring the role of social construction in sustainability transitions

Continuing economic turbulence has fuelled debates about social and political reform as much as it has stimulated actions and initiatives aimed at a more fundamental transition of dominant economic systems. This paper takes a transition perspective to explore, from a Western European viewpoint, how the economic crisis is actually viewed through a variety of interpretations and responded to through a range of practices. We argue that framing societal phenomena such as the economic crisis as "symptoms of transition" through alternative narratives and actions can give rise to the potential for (seemingly) short-term pressures to become game changers. Game changers are then defined as the combination of: specific events, the subsequent or parallel framing of events in systemic terms by engaged societal actors, and (eventually) the emergence of (diverse) alternative narratives and practices (in response to the systemic framing of events). Game changers, when understood in these terms, help to orient, legitimize, guide, and accelerate deep changes in society. We conclude that such dynamics in which game changers gain momentum might also come to play a critical role in transitions. Therefore, we argue for developing a better understanding of and methodologies to further study the coevolutionary dynamics associated with game changers, as well as exploring the implications for governance