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"Lang, Daniel"
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Lang Lang : playing with flying keys
In this life story, adapted by Michael French, Lang Lang not only recounts the difficult, often thrilling, events of his early days, but also shares his perspective on his rapidly changing homeland.
Book
Developing key competencies in sustainability through project-based learning in graduate sustainability programs
Purpose
This research aims to investigate the role of project-based-learning within graduate sustainability curricula through the lens of key competence development. Project-based learning has become a widely recommended pedagogy for sustainability education. It is hypothesized that through collaboration, student autonomy and real-world application, students develop key competencies for sustainability. This paper also aims to examine the connection between project-based learning and competence development on a program level from the student perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This two-year comparative case study follows the project-based-learning journeys of nine graduate sustainability students from three programs: the Master’s of Sustainability at Arizona State University, the Master’s of Sustainability Science at Leuphana University of Lüneburg and the Global Sustainability Science Master’s, an ASU and Leuphana collaboration. Over four semesters, the students each took part in four competence-oriented self-assessments and interviews to map their perceived learning throughout their programs. Additional contextual information was gathered from program and course materials and descriptions, instructor interviews and in vivo observations.
Findings
The defining aspects of project-based learning including collaboration, student autonomy and real-world connection do contribute to students’ self-perceived competence development. Student-driven and program-driven project-based learning experiences equally foster this result, as long as the pedagogical challenges of balancing support and student independence associated with each are mitigated through instructor actions, program design or individual student coping skills.
Originality/value
The results of this research can support higher education institutions in designing sustainability programs aimed at competence development through project-based learning. The focus on the curricular and program level combined with repeated overtime student-reported attribution to specific courses and activities bridges the gap between individual course case studies and theoretical recommendations for curriculum design. In addition to length and depth, this study also forefronts student experience of curricula as delivered.
Journal Article
Structuring and advancing solution-oriented research for sustainability
The sustainability challenges the world faces today call for concerted and immediate action. Complementing problem-oriented, descriptive-analytical research with solution-oriented research could strengthen sustainability science’s contribution to address these challenges. We introduce different types of solution-oriented sustainability research to structure the discourse, outline opportunities to advance this research trajectory, and close with recommendations on how to support particularly students and early career researchers in getting involved with solution-oriented sustainability research.
Journal Article
Leverage points for sustainability transformations: nine guiding questions for sustainability science and practice
The concept of leverage points offers great potential to consider how we can intervene in systems to create transformations for sustainability. In this special issue, we draw together a diverse collection of research that engages with this central idea. The papers cover three broad topics: (1) the use of a ‘leverage points lens’ for systems framings and understandings; (2) how individual interventions can be understood and critiqued from a leverage points perspective; and (3) the implications of a leverage points approach for research practice and action. Across these topics, we present the papers, and embed them within current critical debate in sustainability science. In doing so, we produce nine guiding questions to shape the research and practice of leverage points for sustainability transformation. These nine questions introduce conceptual clarity to untangle some of the deeper questions around which system we are engaging with, whose system counts, and whose sustainability we are seeking to create. They further shape how we deliver a leverage points research practice. We intend, therefore, that our guiding questions open up exploration across systems and worldviews, and help us to dance with systems.
Journal Article
Leverage points for sustainability transformation
Despite substantial focus on sustainability issues in both science and politics, humanity remains on largely unsustainable development trajectories. Partly, this is due to the failure of sustainability science to engage with the root causes of unsustainability. Drawing on ideas by Donella Meadows, we argue that many sustainability interventions target highly tangible, but essentially weak, leverage points (i.e. using interventions that are easy, but have limited potential for transformational change). Thus, there is an urgent need to focus on less obvious but potentially far more powerful areas of intervention. We propose a research agenda inspired by systems thinking that focuses on transformational 'sustainability interventions', centred on three realms of leverage: reconnecting people to nature, restructuring institutions and rethinking how knowledge is created and used in pursuit of sustainability. The notion of leverage points has the potential to act as a boundary object for genuinely transformational sustainability science.
Journal Article
What are the ingredients for food systems change towards sustainability?-Insights from the literature
Many detrimental effects on the environment, economy, and society are associated with the structure and practices of food systems around the world. While there is increasing agreement on the need for substantive change in food systems towards sustainability, divergent perspectives exist on what the appropriate points of intervention and strategies to achieve such change are. Change in diets and nutrition, the importance of social food movements, and sustainable farming practices are all disparately featured in the literature; yet, there is little effort to compare and integrate these perspectives. This review offers a comprehensive overview of perspectives on food systems change towards sustainability. We discern where there is convergence and assess how the literature reflects emergent theory on sustainability transformation. We analyzed more than 200 peer-reviewed articles employing an approach that combines quantitative and qualitative analysis. First, we performed a semantic hierarchical cluster analysis of the full texts to identify thematic clusters representing different perspectives on sustainability transformations and transitions of food systems. Second, we conducted a qualitative text analysis for representative articles of each cluster to examine how deep changes in the food system are conceptualized. We identified five distinct approaches to food systems change that are currently discussed, i.e. Alternative food movements, Sustainable diets, Sustainable agriculture, Healthy and diverse societies, and Food as commons. Each approach provides a nuanced perspective on identified sustainability problems, envisioned sustainable food systems, and proposed actions to change food systems towards sustainability. The findings offer guidance for researchers and practitioners working on food systems change towards sustainability.
Journal Article
Financing higher education in Canada: a study in fiscal federalism
Drawing boundaries in federal systems is often a practical and constitutional challenge for public finance and the delivery of higher education. This paper studies arrangements between national and provincial governments as they affect post-secondary performance in Canada. The study investigates several categories of interaction between levels of government: transfer payments, student financial aid, research infrastructure, tax credits and policy, and philanthropy, accountability, and student accessibility. The study concludes that the interface between federal and provincial policy, although messy and improvable, divides mainly along lines between fiscal practice and programme delivery. The scale of public investment in higher education usually divides equally between federal contributions, which, except for research, are in most respects indirect, and provincial contributions, which are direct. Because provinces control tuition fees, the balance of total spending falls to them. Policies about quality, accessibility, affordability, and programme delivery reside with the provinces and their political priorities. Both levels of government are concerned about human capital formation and the role of higher education in economic growth but take different approaches. It is in this area that the federal-provincial interface is most problematic, and points to a problem endemic to the Canadian model of fiscal federalism.
Journal Article
Mass-spectrometry-based draft of the Arabidopsis proteome
Plants are essential for life and are extremely diverse organisms with unique molecular capabilities
1
. Here we present a quantitative atlas of the transcriptomes, proteomes and phosphoproteomes of 30 tissues of the model plant
Arabidopsis thaliana
. Our analysis provides initial answers to how many genes exist as proteins (more than 18,000), where they are expressed, in which approximate quantities (a dynamic range of more than six orders of magnitude) and to what extent they are phosphorylated (over 43,000 sites). We present examples of how the data may be used, such as to discover proteins that are translated from short open-reading frames, to uncover sequence motifs that are involved in the regulation of protein production, and to identify tissue-specific protein complexes or phosphorylation-mediated signalling events. Interactive access to this resource for the plant community is provided by the ProteomicsDB and ATHENA databases, which include powerful bioinformatics tools to explore and characterize
Arabidopsis
proteins, their modifications and interactions.
A quantitative atlas of the transcriptomes, proteomes and phosphoproteomes of 30 tissues of the model plant
Arabidopsis thaliana
provides a valuable resource for plant research.
Journal Article
Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research: finding the common ground of multi-faceted concepts
Inter- and transdisciplinarity are increasingly relevant concepts and research practices within academia. Although there is a consensus about the need to apply these practices, there is no agreement over definitions. Building on the outcomes of the first year of the COST Action TD1408 “Interdisciplinarity in research programming and funding cycles” (INTREPID), this paper describes the similarities and differences between interpretations of inter- and transdisciplinarity. Drawing on literature review and empirical results from participatory workshops involving INTREPID Network members from 27 different countries, the paper shows that diverse definitions of inter-and transdisciplinarity coexist within scientific literature and are reproduced by researchers and practitioners within the network. The recognition of this diversity did not hinder the definition of basic requirements for inter- and transdisciplinarity. We present five basic units considered as building blocks for this type of research. These building blocks are: (1) creation of collective glossaries, (2) definition of boundary objects, (3) use of combined problem- and solution-oriented approaches, (4) inclusion of a facilitator of inter-and transdisciplinary research within the team and (5) promotion of reflexivity by accompanying research. These were considered five basic units for effective inter- and transdisciplinary research although the 4th building block was also considered as “matrix” that holds all the others together.
Journal Article