discipline; critical inter-disciplinarity; complexity; science; doctoral school course; responsible research and innovation
Abstract :
[en] Our existential sustainability challenges involve human–environment–technology systems that are complex, dynamic and tightly coupled. But at universities, knowledge, in teaching and research, is mostly organized into discrete parcels, the disciplines. These are further divided into the categories of natural sciences, social science and the humanities. This paper addresses the question of how in their training of researchers, universities can equip them to better understand their roles and also to act as change agents. It describes a doctoral school course in transferable skills that is offered across faculties. The unique aim of the course is to provide a space for reflection on different research paradigms and the way they differ in their framing the role of a scientific researcher in pluralist societies that face existential challenges. The course introduces diverse more recent approaches to scientific inquiry that harness the potential of democratizing science in our networked knowledge society, including critical interdisciplinarity, post-normal science, citizen science and transformative sustainability science, that complement normal disciplinary research practices.
Research center :
University of Luxembourg: Sustainability Science
Disciplines :
Social & behavioral sciences, psychology: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Author, co-author :
König, Ariane ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Social Sciences (DSOC)
Ravetz, Jerome; University of Oxford
RABER, Bo Manuel ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Social Sciences (DSOC)
STANKIEWICZ, Jacek ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Social Sciences (DSOC)
ROJAS AEDO, Ricardo Arturo ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine (FSTM) > Department of Physics and Materials Science (DPHYMS)
HONDRILA, Kristina ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Social Sciences (DSOC)
PICKAR, Karl Arthur ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Social Sciences (DSOC)
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
Taking the Complex Dynamics of Human–Environment–Technology Systems Seriously: A Case Study in Doctoral Education at the University of Luxembourg
Bakker A. (2018). Design Research in Education: A Practical Guide for Early Career Researchers. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Barth M. (2015). Implementing Sustainability in Higher Education: Learning in an Age of Transformation. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Bishop D. (2019). Rein in the four horsemen of irreproducibility. Nature 568:435. 10.1038/d41586-019-01307-231019328
Boix-Mansilla V. (2010). Learning to synthesize: the development of interdisciplinary understanding, in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, eds Frodeman R. Klein J. T. Mitcham C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 288–309.
Brown J. S. Collins A. Duguid P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educ. Res. 18, 32–42. 10.3102/0013189X018001032
Brundiers K. Barth M. Cebrián G. et al. (2021). Key competencies in sustainability in higher education—toward an agreed-upon reference framework. Sustain. Sci. 16, 13–29. 10.1007/s11625-020-00838-2
Costanza R. Kubiszewski I. Kompas T. Sutton P. C. (2021). A global metauniversity to lead by design to a sustainable well-being future. Front. Sustain. 2:33. 10.3389/frsus.2021.65372132141468
Dewey J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan Company.
Dillon J. Wals A. E. J. (2006). On the danger of blurring methods, methodologies and ideologies in environmental education research. Environ. Educ. Res. 12, 549–558. 10.1080/13504620600799315
Drenth G. D. Elahi S. König A. (2018). Exploring alternative futures with scenarios, in Sustainability Science: Key Issues, ed König A. (Oxfordshire: Routledge), 113–132.
Du Bois-Reymond E. (1886). Reden von Emil du Bois-Reymond. Erste Folge. Leipzig: Veit.
Eigenbrode S. D. O'Rourke M. Wulfhorst J. D. Althoff D. M. Goldberg C. S. Merrill K. et al. (2007). Employing philosophical dialogue in collaborative science. BioScience 57, 55–64. 10.1641/B570109
Fenwick T. J. Edwards R. Sawchuk P. (2011). Emerging Approaches to Educational Research: Tracing the Socio-Material. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Fioramonti L. Giordano C. Basile F. L. (2021). Fostering academic interdisciplinarity: Italy's pioneering experiment on sustainability education in schools and universities. Front. Sustain. 2:631610. 10.3389/frsus.2021.631610
Funtowicz S. O. Ravetz J. R. (1992). The good, the true and the post-modern. Futures 24, 963–976. 10.1016/0016-3287(92)90131-X
Funtowicz S. O. Ravetz J. R. (1993). Science for the post-normal age. Futures 25, 739–755. 10.1016/0016-3287(93)90022-L
Funtowicz S. O. Ravetz J. R. (2015). Peer review and quality control. Int. Ency. Soc. Behav. Sci. 17, 680–684. 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.85016-3
Giatti L. L. (2019). Participatory Research in the Post-Normal Age: Unsustainability and Uncertainties to Rethink Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Berlin: Springer.
Gibbons M. Limoges C. Nowotny H. Schwartzman S. Scott P. Trow M. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Gill A. J. Xenitidou M. Gilbert N. (2010). Understanding Quality in Science: A Proposal and Exploration, in Fourth IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems Workshop, Budapest, 116–121.
Glasser H. Hirsh J. (2016). Toward the development of robust learning for sustainability core competencies. Sustainability 9, 121–134. 10.1089/SUS.2016.29054.hg
Gough S. Scott W. (2007). Higher Education and Sustainable Development. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Grunwald A. (2016). Nachhaltigkeit verstehen. Munich: Oekom Verlag.
Guston D. H. (2000). Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrity and Productivity of Research. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Haklay M. (2015). Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Heron J. Reason P. (1997). A participatory inquiry paradigm. Qual. Inq. 3, 274–294. 10.1177/107780049700300302
Hulme M. (2009). Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jasanoff S. Kim S. -H. (2015). Dreamscapes of Modernity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Kemp S. P. Nurius P. S. (2015). Preparing emerging doctoral scholars for transdisciplinary research: a developmental approach. J. Teach. Soc. Work 35, 131–150. 10.1080/08841233.2014.98092926005286
König A. (2018). Sustainability Science: Key Issues. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
König A. Budwig N. (2016). Changing requisites to higher education in the face of 21st century sustainability challenges. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 16, 88–89. 10.1016/j.cosust.2015.08.011
Krohn W. (2010). Interdisciplinary cases and disciplinary knowledge, in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, eds Frodeman R. Klein J. T. Mitcham C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 31–50.
Kuhn T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Maggs D. Robinson J. (2016). Recalibrating the anthropocene: sustainability in an imaginary world. Environ. Philos. 13, 175–194, 10.5840/envirophil201611740
Maxwell N. (2021). How universities have betrayed reason and humanity—and what's to be done about it. Front. Sustain. 2:18. 10.3389/frsus.2021.631631
Mercer N. (2000). Words and Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Mercer N. (2019). Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge: the Selected Works of Neil Mercer. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Merton R. K. (1973). The Sociology of Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Newell B. Proust K. (2018). Escaping the complexity dilemma, in Sustainability Science: Key Issues, ed König A. (Oxfordshire: Routledge), 96–112. 26361551
Nowotny H. Scott P. Gibbons M. (2003). “Mode 2” revisited: the new production of knowledge. Minerva 41, 179–194. 10.1023/A:1025505528250
Osberg D. Biesta G. J. J. (2007). Beyond presence: epistemological and pedagogical implications of “strong” emergence. Interchange 38, 31–51. 10.1007/s10780-007-9014-3
Ramirez R. Wilkinson A. (2016). Strategic Reframing: The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ravetz J. (1971). Chapter 14: Practical problems. Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 350–363.
Ravetz J. (2003). Models as metaphors: a new look at science, in Public Participation in Sustainability Science: A Handbook, eds Kasimir B. et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 62–77.
Ravetz J. (2018). Heuristics for sustainability science, in Sustainability Science: Key Issues, ed König A. (Oxforshire: Routledge), 337–344.
Reason P. Bradbury H. (eds) (2008). The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: SAGE Publications Inc
Rein M. White S. M. (1980). Knowledge for practice: the study of knowledge in context for the practice of social work. Working Paper, Division for Study and Research in Education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Schneidewind U. Singer-Brodowski M. (2013). Transformative Wissenschaft: Klimawandel im deutschen Wissenschafts und Hochschulsystem. Marburg: Metropolis Verlad.
Schön D. A. (1983). Preface and Chapter 1. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, xi–22.
Shapin S. Schaffer S. (1985). Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Shils E. (1978). The order of learning in the United States from 1865 to 1920: the ascendancy of the universities. Minerva 16, 159–195. 10.1007/BF01096013
Shirk J. L. Ballard H. L. Wilderman C. C. Phillips T. Wiggins A. Jordan R. et al. (2012). Public participation in scientific research: a framework for deliberate design. Ecol. Soc. 17:29. 10.5751/ES-04705-170229
Smith R. (2006). Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals. J. R. Soc. Med. 99, 178–182. 10.1177/01410768060990041416574968
Sterling S. (2004). Higher education, sustainability, and the role of systemic learning, in Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability; Problematics, Promise, and Practice, eds Corcoran P. B. Wals E. J. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 49–70.
Sterling S. (2013). The sustainable university: challenge and response, in The Sustainable University: Progress and Prospects, eds Sterling S. Maxey L. Luna H. (Abingdon: Routledge), 17–50.
Sterling S. Glasser H. Rieckmann M. Warwick P. (2017). “More than scaling up”: a critical and practical inquiry into operationalizing sustainability competencies, in Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education, eds Corcoran J. Weakland P. Wals A. E. J. (Wageningen, NL: Wageningen Academic Publishers), 153–168.
Swart R. J. Raskin P. Robinson J. (2004). The problem of the future: sustainability science and scenario analysis. Global Environ. Change 14, 137–146. 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.002
Tassone V. Eppink H. (2016). The EnRRICH tool for educators: (Re-) Designing curricula in higher education from a “Responsible Research and Innovation” perspective. EU Horizon 2020. Available online at: https://www.livingknowledge.org/fileadmin/Dateien-Living-Knowledge/Dokumente_Dateien/EnRRICH/D2.3_The_EnRRICH_Tool_for_Educators.pdf (accessed February 26, 2021).
Vygotsky L. S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wals A. E. J. (2015). Beyond Unreasonable Doubt: Education and Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability in the Anthropocene. Wageningen, NL.
Wals A. E. J. Peters M. A. (2018). Flowers of resistance: Citizen science, ecological democracy and the transgressive education paradigm, in Sustainability Science: Key Issues, eds König A. (Oxfordshire: Routledge), 30–52.
Wegerif R. Major L. (2019). Buber, educational technology, and the expansion of dialogic space. AI Soc. 34, 109–119. 10.1007/s00146-018-0828-6
Weingart P. (2010). A short history of knowledge formations, in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, eds Frodeman R. Klein J. T. Mitcham C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 3–15.
Wennerås C. Wold A. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature 387, 341–343. 10.1038/387341a09163412
Wiek A. Lang D. J. (2015). Transformational sustainability research methodology, in Sustainability Science—An Introduction, eds Heinrichs H. Martens P. Michelsen G. (Berlin: Springer), 1–12.
Wiek A. Withycombe L. Redman C. L. (2011). Key competencies in sustainability: a reference framework for academic program development. Sustain. Sci. 6, 203–218. 10.1007/s11625-011-0132-6
