There is an urgent need to engage with deep leverage points in sustainability transformations—fundamental myths, paradigms, and systems of meaning making—to open new collective horizons for action. Art and creative practice are uniquely suited to help facilitate change in these deeper transformational leverage points. However, understandings of how creative practices contribute to sustainability transformations are lacking in practice and fragmented across theory and research. This lack of understanding shapes how creative practices are evaluated and therefore funded and supported, limiting their potential for transformative impact. This paper presents the 9 Dimensions tool, created to support reflective and evaluative dialogues about links between creative practice and sustainability transformations. It was developed in a transdisciplinary process between the potential users of this tool: researchers, creative practitioners, policy makers, and funders. It also brings disciplinary perspectives on societal change from evaluation theory, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and more in connection with each other and with sustainability transformations, opening new possibilities for research. The framework consists of three categories of change, and nine dimensions: changing meanings (embodying, learning, and imagining); changing connections (caring, organizing, and inspiring); and changing power (co-creating, empowering, and subverting). We describe how the 9 Dimensions tool was developed, and describe each dimension and the structure of the tool. We report on an application of the 9 Dimensions tool to 20 creative practice projects across the European project Creative Practices for Transformational Futures (CreaTures). We discuss user reflections on the potential and challenges of the tool, and discuss insights gained from the analysis of the 20 projects. Finally, we discuss how the 9 Dimensions can effectively act as a transdisciplinary research agenda bringing creative practice further in contact with transformation research.
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In 2015, the UN set 17 global goals, the so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the year 2030, “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity”. Although these challenges are global, their impact manifests itself on a local level. An inspiring challenge for HU UAS Utrecht is to educate self-confident (upcoming) professionals who contribute to the realization of these global goals by creating local impact. In our opinion such professionals are socially involved, cope with complexity, think systemic and work trans-disciplinary. Furthermore, they ‘mix and match’ personal, societal and professional development, which will not be confined to formal education but lasts a lifetime. This complex challenge forges us to transform our thinking about education and how to organize learning, and about how, where and with whom we educate. UAS’s will have to cooperate with private, public and research partners and create communities in which all participants work, learn and develop themselves while facing new challenges.
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Biomimicry is an emerging discipline that seeks nature’s advice and brings diverse stakeholders together to create designs that emulate the way nature functions, not just the way it looks. The field itself is a multidisciplinary endeavor, yet biomimicry educators frequently work alone. Pedagogical methods based on trial and error may waste precious time. In this study, a set of four biomimicry experts from diverse disciplines and different areas around the globe collaborated to compare pedagogy and analyze student work to illuminate best principles for teaching students to translate biology into design solutions, a key step in the biomimicry design process. A total of 313 assignments created by 179 different students were evaluated. The results showed that the inclusion of art in the learning of science, namely the hand drawing of the biological mechanism can lead to higher quality of abstracted design principles. Stevens, L., Bidwell, D., Fehler, M., Singhal, A. (2022). The Art and Science of Biomimicry—Abstracting Design Principles from Nature. In: Rezaei, N. (eds) Transdisciplinarity. Integrated Science, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi-org.ezproxy.hhs.nl/10.1007/978-3-030-94651-7_29
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Innovatie is een complex proces waarin kennis een essentiële rol speelt. Om te kunnen innoveren moeten bedrijven en organisaties ‘business’-kennis ontwikkelen die het ‘potentieel handelen’ van het bedrijf of de organisatie in de innovatie ondersteunt. Prescriptieve kennis, mits methodisch opgebouwd, draagt daarin op twee manieren bij: in de eerste plaats met uitgewerkte, gedocumenteerde en geteste methoden om problemen aan te pakken en op te lossen; in de tweede plaats met nieuwe kennis over wat in de praktijk wel en niet werkt. In traditioneel innovatiebeleid wordt vaak een lineair innovatiemodel gebruikt waarin eerst fundamenteel onderzoek wordt verricht door wetenschappers, waarna de ontwikkelde kennis in bedrijfsleven en organisaties wordt toegepast in toegepast onderzoek. Dit lineaire model kent een aantal knelpunten. Verder hebben de begrippen fundamenteel en toegepast onderzoek weinig onderscheidend vermogen. Een vruchtbaarder onderscheid is dat tussen: formele wetenschappen, (filosofie, wiskunde, etc.), verklarende wetenschappen (natuurwetenschappen, sociologie, etc.) en ontwerpwetenschappen (ingenieurs wetenschappen, medische wetenschap, etc.). Ontwerpgericht onderzoek, als weldoordachte manier van handelen om kennis te verwerven, kan mogelijk voorzien in de toenemende behoefte aan oplossingen voor praktische, complexe, contextuele problemen. Professionals dragen in de praktijk bij aan de oplossing van unieke, real-life problemen in het veld met een repertoire van ontwerpkennis geldend voor klassen van gevallen. De ontwerpkennis moet dus steeds vertaald worden naar een unieke en specifieke casus. De veranderingen om ons heen geven aanleiding tot een maatschappelijke behoefte aan innovatie van het hoger onderwijs. Met name de hogescholen moeten zich meer gaan bezig houden met kennisontwikkeling door onderzoek en toepassing als “regionaal kenniscentrum, als kennispoort voor het regionale bedrijfsleven en ‘not for profit’ organisaties”. Lectoren en kenniskringen hebben daarbij tot doel te komen tot verbetering van de externe oriëntatie, curriculum¬vernieuwing, professionalisering van docenten en versterking van kenniscirculatie en kennisontwikkeling binnen hbo-instellingen. Het HBO is van huis uit gericht op de praktijk. Met de komst van de lectoren in het HBO ontstaat nieuw onderzoekspotentieel. Ontwerpgericht onderzoek past precies bij het praktische karakter van het HBO en voegt daar het reflectieve van academisch onderzoek aan toe. Door op deze manier praktisch relevant onderzoek te doen van wetenschappelijke kwaliteit kan het HBO helpen de kennisparadox te doorbreken.
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This chapter discusses the role of education in the preparation of the next generation of entrepreneurs in nature conservation. Departing from the traditional conservation education, which emphasizes ecological management, the chapter is a plea for incorporating entrepreneurship in the curricula of educational programmes on rewilding ecosystems. An Erasmus Intensive Programme on European Wilderness Entrepreneurship is presented as a case study. A set of competences is defined and operationalized based on the evaluation of the first edition of the programme undertaken in Rewilding Europe’s pilot area in Western Iberia. Aspects of the learning strategies and learning environment are presented and reviewed. The conclusion of this chapter is that to learn wilderness entrepreneurship competences, an environment should be created in which students, teachers and stakeholder co-learn at the boundaries of their comfort zones.
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Higher education has the potential to act as ecosystem catalysts, connecting with the places our institutions which they are a part of, for learning-based changes with wicked (sustainability) challenges. This, however, calls for reorienting and rethinking of the higher educational narratives and subsequent practices towards more ecological and relational ones. In this study, a pilot aimed to connect a course at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (The Netherlands) to an industrial park next to the university which is undergoing transition towards a sustainable living space. The pilot, which ran from September 2020 to February 2021, included 17 students from 9 nationalities and 12 different bachelor programmes, and was designed according to the concepts of an ‘ecology of learning’. In this semester long course, called Mission Impact, students reflected every five-weeks, to capture their learning experiences using a combination of arts-based and narrative reflection methods. Two questions guided the analysis: (1) what are the key design characteristics of an ecological approach to higher education that connects to sustainability transformations (in times of COVID-19) and (2) what does this type of education asks from to learners. The reflective artefacts were analysed using Narratives of T-Mapping and juxtaposed with autoethnographic insights maintained by the first author for triangulation. Preliminary results of this pilot include the structure in chaos, space for transformation, openness for emerging futures & action confidence as components of such an ecological education that connects to and co-creates sustainability transformations.
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ABSTRACT Purpose: This short paper describes the dashboard design process for online hate speech monitoring for multiple languages and platforms. Methodology/approach: A case study approach was adopted in which the authors followed a research & development project for a multilingual and multiplatform online dashboard monitoring online hate speech. The case under study is the project for the European Observatory of Online Hate (EOOH). Results: We outline the process taken for design and prototype development for which a design thinking approach was followed, including multiple potential user groups of the dashboard. The paper presents this process's outcome and the dashboard's initial use. The identified issues, such as obfuscation of the context or identity of user accounts of social media posts limiting the dashboard's usability while providing a trade-off in privacy protection, may contribute to the discourse on privacy and data protection in (big data) social media analysis for practitioners. Research limitations/implications: The results are from a single case study. Still, they may be relevant for other online hate speech detection and monitoring projects involving big data analysis and human annotation. Practical implications: The study emphasises the need to involve diverse user groups and a multidisciplinary team in developing a dashboard for online hate speech. The context in which potential online hate is disseminated and the network of accounts distributing or interacting with that hate speech seems relevant for analysis by a part of the user groups of the dashboard. International Information Management Association
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This short paper describes the first prototyping of a self-evaluation process of Curriculum Agility at a Faculty of Technology in Sweden. The process comprises guided, semi-structured, individual interviews at different organisational levels within the faculty, a joint narrative based on those interviews, prioritizing development strategies per level, and jointly mapping them on importance and implementation time. The self-evaluation is part of and based on the research on the principles of Curriculum Agility. The results show the interplay in timely curriculum change for futureproof engineering education between the teaching staff, the systems and the people who control the systems. The self-evaluation brings together the different perspectives and perceptions within the faculty and gives insight in how those affect he willingness towards and occurrence of curriculum development. This work in progress indicates how doing such a qualitative self-evaluation paves the road for transparent strategic dialogues on a holistic level about what to give attention and organize differently.
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Dit liber amicorum, is geschreven door collega’s uit Nederland en elders in de wereld, ter ere van Frank de Jong, een zeer gewaardeerde lector van Aeres Hogeschool Wageningen, tevens hoogleraar aan de Open Universiteit. Frank was een van de eerste lectoren binnen Aeres Hogeschool en hij heeft bijgedragen aan en invloed gehad op de ontwikkeling van het praktijkgericht onderzoek binnen de faculteit in Wageningen en Aeres Hogeschool als geheel. Frank bestierde twee lectoraten: Responsief onderwijs én Kenniscreatie en ecologisch handelen. Het individu dat leert in een bepaalde context (sociaal of cultureel) staat centraal in zijn denken. Gandhi schreef eens dat ‘je zelf de verandering moet zijn die de wereld wil zien’. Hij benadrukte daarmee dat samen werken, samen leren en samen creëren start bij hetindividu. We moeten dus eerst zelf omarmen en belichamen wat we willen leren enontwikkelen. Dat typeerde Frank als lector. Hij probeerde te belichamen wat hij zelf onderzocht. Dat bleek een zoektocht. Een zoektocht waarin Frank zijn toehoorders soms bijna dwong om zijn gedachtegoed te omarmen. Ook als academic director van de Master Leren en Innoveren had hij invloed op de wijze waarop er geleerd werd. Met succes: de master is al jaren een topopleiding. Het beeld dat uit het liber amicorum naar voren komt, is dat van een hardwerkende, doelgerichte en vooral verbindende collega. Frank weet wat hij wil en kan daarin overtuigend zijn. Het spiegelt ook zijn vermogen om onderwijs, onderzoek en verschillende kennisdomeinen met elkaar te verbinden. Het is onze oprechte hoop dat dit boek niet alleen een eerbetoon aan Frank is, maar ook een bron van inspiratie voor professionals die geïnteresseerd zijn in hoe het individu leert en hoe kennis tot stand komt.
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Universities have become more engaged or entrepreneurial, forging deeper relations with society beyond the economic sphere. To foster, structure, and institutionalize a broader spectrum of engagement, new types of intermediary organizations are created, going beyond the “standard” technology transfer oces, incubators, and science parks. This paper conceptualizes the role of such new-style intermediaries as facilitator, enabler, and co-shaper of university–society interaction, making a distinction between the roles of facilitation, configuration, and brokering. As a case study, the paper presents the Knowledge Mile in Amsterdam as a novel form of hyper local engagement of a university with its urban surroundings that connects the challenges of companies and organisations in the street to a broad range of educational and research activities of the university, as well as to rebrand the street.
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