Energy transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. However, in this transition, an often neglected pillar is raising awareness and educating individuals on the benefits, complexities, and urgency of renewable energy supply and energy efficiency. This paper exemplifies an educational practice to create awareness on sustainable energy transition by playing a “serious” game, the We Energy Game. Concretely, this qualitative study aims to analyze communicational and educational aspects of the game by making use of a validated framework for serious games analysis, and to expose the opinion of players after maintaining group discussions. The analysis reveals a detailed insight of narrative elements, messages, and gameplay mechanisms, but also educative aspects to be considered by teachers if they are interested in putting the game into practice in their classes. The group discussion reveals that the game has been more successful in achieving cognitive (understanding/knowledge) and affective (emotion/interest and concern) engagement than in motivating attitudinal or behavioral engagement.
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To contribute positively to systemic transitions within local communities, architects need to be critical, reflective, far-sighted communicators. This paper presents educational practices developing adaptive, systemic and co-creative approaches within the training of architectural Masters students. It evaluates the first outcomes of a four-year research by design studio executed by the Academy of Architecture in Groningen, in which experiential learning helps development of heightened awareness, appropriate mindsets and critical thinking, enabling students to identify problems and challenges specific to their profession. Students, stakeholders, teachers and researchers involved in the studio form a learning community that critically monitors the educational program. By working on "live" projects, the studio produces insights concerning local scale energy transition in the North of The Netherlands.Global issues urge fundamental changes in the Dutch energy system and recent accumulations of earthquakes resulting from natural gas exploitation in the region of Groningen make the 'energy transition' inevitable. Whilst alternatives, proposed by the Dutch government, mainly consist of isolated, mono-functional interventions, the studio investigates integrative systemic scenarios that seek to enhance resilience on a human scale by embedding the energy transition within local communities. However, systemic transitions may be unpredictable, as they tend to play out within complex spatial, social and economic arenas, involving multiple, multi-level stakeholders. Shove and Walker (2007) caution professionals, involved in long-term transitions, to remain critical during the "[continuous] cycle of problem-definition, intervention and response".Ziegler and Bouma argue that analysing is designing in the reversed direction. The first year's outcomes consist of adaptic architectonic interventions within local communities, integrating flows of energy, food and waste. Using interviews with the learning community, the paper describes the educational processes leading to these outcomes, focusing on the formation and elaboration of the appropriate questions concerning stakeholders' interests; how these questions are kept central and deepened throughout projects; how they are represented at their closure and, above all, how they renew awareness concerning future regional needs. Initial findings stress the necessity of a circular research by design process, not necessarily to solve, but to accurately define those needs.
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This report is a deliverable of the ESTRAC “Case Studies Regional Energy Transition” project, commissioned and funded by the research institute Energy Systems Transition Centre (ESTRAC). ESTRAC is a joint initiative of knowledge and research institutes in the Netherlands – including TNO, ECN (since April 2018 part of TNO), University of Groningen, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, the New Energy Coalition (NEC) and, more recently, PBL – as well as associated partners including Gasunie, Gasterra, EBN and NAM. In addition to funding from the ESTRAC partners, the Case Studies Regional Energy Transition project has benefitted from funding by the Green Deal program of the Dutch government.
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The transition towards a sustainable and healthy food system is one of the major sustainability challenges of today, next to the energy transition and the transition from a linear to circular economy. This paper provides a timely and evidence-based contribution to better understand the complex processes of institutional change and transformative social-ecological innovation that takes place in the food transition, through a case study of an open innovation and food transition network in The Netherlands, the South-Holland Food Family (Zuid-Hollandse Voedselfamilie). This network is supported by the provincial government and many partners, with the ambition to realize more sustainable agricultural and food chains, offering healthy, sustainable and affordable food for everyone in the Province of South-Holland in five to ten years from now. This ambition cannot be achieved through optimising the current food system. A transition is needed – a fundamental change of the food system’s structure, culture and practice. The Province has adopted a transition approach in its 2016 Innovation Agenda for Sustainable Agriculture. This paper provides an institutional analysis of how the transition approach has been established and developed in practice. Our main research question is what interventions and actions have shaped the transition approach and how does the dynamic interplay between actors and institutional structures influence institutional change, by analysing a series of closely related action situations and their context, looking at 'structure' and 'agency', and at the output-outcomes-impact of these action situations. For this purpose, we use the Transformative Social-Ecological Innovation (TSEI)-framework to study the dynamic interplay between actors and institutional structures influencing institutional change. The example of TSEI-framework application in this paper shows when and how local agents change the institutional context itself, which provides relevant insights on institutional work and the mutually constitutive nature of structure and agency. Above institutional analysis also shows the pivotal role of a number of actors, such as network facilitators and provincial minister, and their capability and skills to combine formal and informal institutional environments and logics and mobilize resources, thereby legitimizing and supporting the change effort. The results are indicative of the importance of institutional structures as both facilitating (i.e., the province’s policies) and limiting (e.g. land ownership) transition dynamics.
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The transition from secondary education to the first year of higher education is a phase in which students are faced with many challenges. First-year students may lack the academic capital that is needed to understand explicit and implicit rules of higher education. We investigated students’ participation in a preacademic program and the development of their academic capital. In a mixed method study, we showed that first-year students who participated in a preacademic program perceived peer mentors and teachers to be relevant sources of information, learned how to overcome educational barriers, and became more acquainted with explicit and implicit college requirements.
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This paper describes a research about the changing role and competences of teachers and the willingness of the teachers to change. The researchers developed and conducted a survey at Fontys University of Applied Sciences department engineering to find out how teachers teach and how they would want to teach. The conclusion drawn from this research results in five subjects of attention: 1 To investigate new teaching competences 2 To investigate new teaching strategies 3 To develop collaborating professional environments for teachers 4 To develop a formal declaration of how companies can participate effectively in the process of the transition of youngsters to professional practitioners 5 To investigate how the organization should change their culture and structure towards a professional learning environment for students and teachers. The above mentioned items will be subject of further research in the coming study year. The main goal is to develop a business case or strategic plan on how to implement change in teaching engineering education.
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Traditional educational approaches often include disciplinary boundaries that operate in silo’s, not considering dynamic systems. These pedagogies are insufficient for preparing students to navigate real-world problems within rapidly evolving landscapes, potentially resulting in substandard learner outcomes and insufficient research outputs. This challenge is exacerbated by the increasing myriad of global pressures brought about by climate change, population growth, geopolitical changes and the need for sustainable development. To address these issues, higher education requires an innovative and integrative framework to educational practices that not only delivers adequate transdisciplinary education, but also fosters adaptive thinking and critical reflection. In an effort to enhance transdisciplinary education in Bachelor-level projects, Learning Community students are required to integrate a PESTEL-based approach in complex research activities. Through this integrated approach, we consider different values of PESTEL factors, as well as how education can navigate the complex relationship between subjective human needs and more objective interests. For this purpose, we suggest a step-by-step rebuilding of the current curriculum, towards an actionable knowledge base that contributes to the development of multi- and interdisciplinary processes. Student projects relate to the NWO-funded Floating Future project, of which the Hanze University of Applied Sciences is a partner. It provides an opportunity for students from different disciplines to contribute to collaborative research-based projects that aims to better understand the potential of large scale floating infrastructure and address challenges related to urban resilience, circularity, climate change and energy transition. This article explores the effectiveness of including the PESTEL-framework in the curriculum, and whether it contributes to achieving high quality research outputs that support transdisciplinary systems thinking. Since floating cities and hybrid infrastructure require future-proofing due to a rapidly changing climate, the Learning Community provides the ideal case study to apply this complex integrated approach together with students, researchers, experts, companies, and governments. We employ a mixed-method approach for data collection and analysis, comprising of qualitative and quantitative data. This includes an assessment of student awareness through the evaluation of weekly discussions and interactive presentations, as well as an evaluation of Bachelor projects. Findings indicate that PESTEL facilitates collective and collaborative interactions across different disciplines within the institution, but also provides students access to external experts and relevant stakeholders. This curricular strategy has therefore proven to support transdisciplinary thinking within a dynamic and complex system, and enabled students to appreciate diverse perspectives, thereby fostering a more holistic understanding of complex problems.
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Bio-based and circular building materials and techniques can play an important role in the transition toward a more sustainable construction sector. This study focuses on the Northern Netherlands and explores those competencies (in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitude) required by construction workers to meet thechallenges of material transition. The perspectives on this topic of construction companies, vocational education institutions, and local networking initiatives have been collected and analyzed by using the thematic analysis method. The results indicate that the limited knowledge availability, combined with the restricted experimentation possibilities, shape the current experiences, as well as the positioning of these stakeholders, regarding the desired competencies of construction workers. It is found that mainly attitudinal aspects of the construction workers need to receive particular attention and prioritization. To achieve that, the results highlight the importance of knowledge exchange and awareness-raising initiatives, as well as the development of a flexible, regional, and comprehensive learning environment.
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Lectorale redeboekje naar aanleiding van de intrede in het lectoraat Systeemintegratie in de energietransitie
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This paper analyses the initiative AgroAgenda in the northern Netherlands. The AgroAgenda is a platform in which multiple stakeholders together stimulate a circular, and nature-inclusive agro-food system in the Dutch provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe. Stakeholders come from, among others, provincial governments, farmers’ and nature organizations, educational and research institutes and processing companies. They join forces to realize a system change, a transition, in the region, while promoting knowledge circulation, knowledge co-creation and joint learning. The platform, is a front runner of five national, comparable initiatives. The AgroAgenda has the potential to lead to a more nature-inclusive and circular farming. Several of the 40 experiments have already led to good results. However, to bring about a real system change, more attention to innovations in governmental organizations (including law and regulations), policy, the value chains (division of margins, pricing and marketing) and the educational system are needed.
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