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Currently installed wastewater treatment systems in many developing countries are unsustainable, failing in either the social, economic or ecological dimension of sustainability. Nexus research looking at resources involved in wastewater treatment could support the transition towards more sustainable systems. Nexus thinking aims to overcome bio-physical systems thinking by including transdisciplinary research methods. Approaches for integrating results from different types of analysis and disciplinary backgrounds are scarce and have not been described extensively in nexus research. Transdisciplinary research suggests creating system, target and transformation knowledge as a common framework to describe meaningful transformations. Our goal is to show how a better understanding of the level of knowledge created by different types of analysis can pave the way towards integrating results for sustainability. In this article, three types of analysis, namely sustainability assessment, stakeholder perspective analysis and wickedness analysis, were applied in two pilot case wastewater treatment systems in Latin America. Through a three-step process, generated knowledge was assessed for each type of analysis individually while also highlighting synergies between them. The results demonstrate that structuring results by generated knowledge type can help combining outcomes in a meaningful manner. The findings show that technical flaws are present and fixable, and that issues relating to behaviours or values are more challenging to address but arguably more meaningful for systemic change.

Water is the key limiting factor in socioeconomic and ecological development, but it is adversely affected by climate change. The novel virtual water (VW) concept and water, energy, food, biodiversity, and human health (WEFBH) nexus approach are powerful tools to assess the sustainability of a region through the lens of climate change. Climate change-related challenges and water are complex and intertwined. This paper analyzed the significant WEFBH sectors using the multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model. The AHP model demonstrated quantitative relationships among WEFBH nexus sustainability indicators in the Greater Horn of Africa countries. Besides, the net VW imports and water footprints of major staple crops were assessed. The composite WEFBH nexus indices varied from 0.10 to 0.14. The water footprint of crops is increasing period by period. The results also revealed that most countries in the study area are facing WEFBH domains unsustainability due to weak planning or improper management strategies. The strong policy constancy among the WEFBH sector is vital for dissociating the high-water consumption from crop production, energy, environmental, and human health system. Thus, this study enhances insights into the interdependencies, interconnectedness, and interactions of sectors thereby strengthening the coordination, complementarities, and synergies among them. To attain sustainable development, we urgently call all public and private entities to value the amount of VW used in their daily activities and design better policies on the complex WEFBH nexus and future climate change.

PurposeThis study examines the information literacy practices of young video bloggers, focusing on the ways in which they construct their cognitive authority through a health-related information creation process.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws upon socially oriented information literacy research and nexus analysis as its methodological framework. Data, including YouTube videos, theme interviews and video diaries, were collected with three Finnish video bloggers and qualitatively analysed using nexus analytical concepts to describe the central elements of social action.FindingsThe study shows that video bloggers employ several information practices during the information creation process, including planning, information-seeking, organization, editing and presentation of information. They construct their cognitive authority in relation to their anticipated audience by grounding it on different types of information: experience-based, embodied and scientific. Trustworthiness, emphasized with authenticity and genuineness, and competence, based on experience, expertise and second-hand information, were recognized as key components of credibility in this context.Originality/valueThis study increases the understanding of the complex ways in which young people create information on social media and influence their audiences. The study contributes to information literacy research by offering insights into the under-researched area of information creation. It is among the few studies to examine cognitive authority construction in the information creation process. The notion of authority as constructed through trustworthiness and competence and grounded on different types of information, can be taken into account in practice by information professionals and educators when planning information literacy instruction.

This methodological article focuses on how to effectively map pre-service teachers’ use of discursive resources in professional identity production. By adopting a discourse analytical approach, this study views identity construction as a situational, real-time process occurring in interaction. The aim is to contribute knowledge about how to systematically map and analyze the resources that pre-service teachers use to construct their teacher identities during their education. Drawing on the framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis, this article presents a model that integrates two key concepts: discourse domains, which refer to the types of discourse commonly used in teacher education, and layers of discourse, which address societal levels in identity construction. The results suggest that using these concepts to map students’ use of discursive resources highlights how their knowledge of the teaching profession, their education and everyday experiences can be assets when constructing their teacher identities. While the model can be further refined and developed to better show the complexity of discursive resources in identity construction processes, it shows promise as a fruitful approach. By mapping and visualizing discursive resources through this model, this study offers valuable methodological insights into how to approach professional identity development among pre-service teachers.

Purpose There are increasing expectations for educators to include sustainability as part of higher education Information and Communication Technology (ICT) curricula, but we still lack concrete ways how to integrate it into teaching. To be able to create meaningful learning experiences we need to understand how our students approach sustainability and what they base their thinking on.Design/methodology/approach We asked our students to consider technology development linked with the European Green Deal targets in their essays and utilized nexus analysis to focus on discourses in place, interaction order and the historical body revealed in the essays.Findings Learning about sustainability could be approached in the ICT courses in a structured way as a question of four intersecting elements: individuals, societal systems, current and emerging technologies, and relevancy of the topic, all of these linked with the agency of ICT professionals.Originality/value This study contributes toward sustainable ICT research and design of effective ICT education (1) by providing an understanding of how future ICT professionals approach sustainability and digital technology development, (2) by proposing a way to raise students’ consciousness of their own role as future professionals in developing more sustainable digital solutions and (3) generally helping students to see the big picture of sustainability through setting the scene with the wider targets.

This qualitative study examines how children living in a public housing neighborhood engage in multimodal, embodied meaning-making to restory their community. Focusing on two participants and in partnership with The Kids Club, this paper explores children’s spatial reclamation through embodied and spatialized literacies, complicating stories where children assert whose stories matter and why. Drawing on nexus analysis and narrative inquiry, this study conceptualizes the body as central to cognition and comprehension through texts in action. The sisters spatially reclaim neighborhood narratives via walking tours, heart maps, and photographs that function as multimodal action texts. These practices invite a rethinking of comprehension beyond traditional textual modes, illuminating how children navigate and transform literacy landscapes. This work contributes to conversations about equity in literacy environments and calls on educators and researchers to honor children’s multimodal literacy practices as vital forms of critical comprehension, storytelling, and belonging.

Low-grade waste heat is an underutilized resource in process industries, which may consider investing in urban symbiosis projects that provide heating and cooling to proximal urban areas through district energy networks. A long distance between industrial areas and residential users is a barrier to the feasibility of such projects, given the high capital intensity of infrastructure, and alternative uses of waste heat, such as power generation, may be more profitable, in spite of limited efficiency. This paper introduces a parametric approach to explore the economic feasibility limits of waste heat-based district heating and cooling (DHC) of remote residential buildings depending on network extension. A parametric model for the comparative water–energy–carbon nexus analysis of waste heat-based DHC and Organic Rankine Cycles is also introduced, and applied to an Italian and to an Austrian setting. The results show that, for a generic 4 MW industrial waste heat flow steadily available at 95 °C, district heating and cooling is the best option from an energy–carbon perspective in both countries. Power generation is the best option in terms of water footprint in most scenarios, and is economically preferable to DHC in Italy. Maximum DHC feasibility threshold distances are in line with literature, and may reach up to 30 km for waste heat flows of 30 MW in Austria. However, preferability threshold distances, above which waste heat-to-power outperforms DHC from an economic viewpoint, are shorter, in the order of 20 km in Austria and 10 km in Italy for 30 MW waste heat flows.Graphic abstract

The importance of familiarizing children with the Maker Movement, Makerspaces and Maker mindset has been acknowledged. In this literature review, we examine the complex social action of children, aged from 7 to 17 (K-12), engaging in technology Making activities as it is seen in the extant literature. The included papers contain empirical data from actual digital Making workshops and diverse research projects with children, conducted in both formal and non-formal/informal settings, such as schools or museums, libraries, Fab Labs and other makerspaces. We utilized the theoretical lens of nexus analysis and its concepts of interaction order and historical body, and as a result of our analysis, we report best practices and helping and hindering factors. Two gaps in the current knowledge were identified: (1) the current research focuses on success stories instead of challenges in the working, and, (2) histories of the participants and interaction between them are very rarely in the focus of the existing studies or reported in detail, even though they significantly affect what happens and what is possible to happen in Making sessions.

This article suggests that the understanding of an interview as a social practice can be enhanced by the notion of social action mediated by language and material tools as proposed in nexus analysis methodology. Interviews can be viewed either as a source of gathering information or social practice. The latter approach advocates for a greater sense of reflexivity about the interview situation. This article suggests that nexus analysis methodology can help concretize the greater reflexivity about interactional resources of an interview in different ways. One such way is to explore how parties in an interview interaction use material places to bring out discourses that may otherwise not have been triggered if conventional qualitative interview approaches were used. This is illustrated with interviews about the impact of gold mining on human well-being in the Ahafo Region of Ghana, carried out on a gold mining site. This article concludes that paying attention to the interview site has an unrealized potential to strengthen the reflexivity about the interview situation.

Multilingualism in indigenous language communities brings forth tensions and creativity related to language change. In this article, taking dynamic multilingual indigenous Sámi language practices as a focus of ethnographic and discourse analytical research, I examine rhizomatic discourses on changing language in multilingual Sámi spaces. Based on longitudinal research on multilingualism in Sámiland, I will argue that the interlinked discourses of endangerment, commodification and carnivalisation simultaneously circulate across Sámi spaces, and structure language practices and experiences. Furthermore, multilingual dynamics can lead to both contestation and creativity in language practices, and may call into question various established perceptions and definitions of language and of related concepts.