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- All Subjects: Sustainability
- All Subjects: Education
- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Creators: Wiek, Arnim
- Creators: Mathur, Sarup
Description
The greatest challenge facing humanity in the twenty-first century is our ability to reconcile the capacity of natural systems to support continued improvement in human welfare around the globe. Over the last decade, the scientific community has attempted to formulate research agendas in response to what they view as the problems of sustainability. Perhaps the most prominent and wide-ranging of these efforts has been sustainability science, an interdisciplinary, problem-driven field that seeks to address fundamental questions on human-environment interactions. This project examines how sustainability scientists grapple with and bound the deeply social, political and normative dimensions of both characterizing and pursuing sustainability. Based on in-depth interviews with leading researchers and a content analysis of the relevant literature, this project first addresses three core questions: (1) how sustainability scientists define and bound sustainability; (2) how and why various research agendas are being constructed to address these notions of sustainability; (3) and how scientists see their research contributing to societal efforts to move towards sustainability. Based on these results, the project explores the tensions between scientific efforts to study and inform sustainability and social action. It discusses the implications of transforming sustainability into the subject of scientific analysis with a focus on the power of science to constrain discourse and the institutional and epistemological contexts that link knowledge to societal outcomes. Following this analysis, sustainability science is repositioned, borrowing Herbert Simon's concept, as a "science of design." Sustainability science has thus far been too focused on understanding the "problem-space"--addressing fundamental questions about coupled human-natural systems. A new set objectives and design principles are proposed that would move the field toward a more solutions-oriented approach and the enrichment of public reasoning and deliberation. Four new research streams that would situate sustainability science as a science of design are then discussed: creating desirable futures, socio-technical change, sustainability values, and social learning. The results serve as a foundation for a sustainability science that is evaluated on its ability to frame sustainability problems and solutions in ways that make them amenable to democratic and pragmatic social action.
ContributorsMiller, Thaddeus R. (Author) / Minteer, Ben A (Thesis advisor) / Redman, Charles L. (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Wiek, Arnim (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Economic development over the last century has driven a tripling of the world's population, a twenty-fold increase in fossil fuel consumption, and a tripling of traditional biomass consumption. The associated broad income and wealth inequities are retaining over 2 billion people in poverty. Adding to this, fossil fuel combustion is impacting the environment across spatial and temporal scales and the cost of energy is outpacing all other variable costs for most industries. With 60% of world energy delivered in 2008 consumed by the commercial and industrial sector, the fragmented and disparate energy-related decision making within organizations are largely responsible for the inefficient and impacting use of energy resources. The global transition towards sustainable development will require the collective efforts of national, regional, and local governments, institutions, the private sector, and a well-informed public. The leadership role in this transition could be provided by private and public sector organizations, by way of sustainability-oriented organizations, cultures, and infrastructure. The diversity in literature exemplifies the developing nature of sustainability science, with most sustainability assessment approaches and frameworks lacking transformational characteristics, tending to focus on analytical methods. In general, some shortfalls in sustainability assessment processes include lack of: * thorough stakeholder participation in systems and stakeholder mapping, * participatory envisioning of future sustainable states, * normative aggregation of results to provide an overall measure of sustainability, and * influence within strategic decision-making processes. Specific to energy sustainability assessments, while some authors aggregate results to provide overall sustainability scores, assessments have focused solely on energy supply scenarios, while including the deficits discussed above. This paper presents a framework for supporting organizational transition processes towards sustainable energy systems, using systems and stakeholder mapping, participatory envisioning, and sustainability assessment to prepare the development of transition strategies towards realizing long-term energy sustainability. The energy system at Arizona State University's Tempe campus (ASU) in 2008 was used as a baseline to evaluate the sustainability of the current system. From interviews and participatory workshops, energy system stakeholders provided information to map the current system and measure its performance. Utilizing operationalized principles of energy sustainability, stakeholders envisioned a future sustainable state of the energy system, and then developed strategies to begin transition of the current system to its potential future sustainable state. Key findings include stakeholders recognizing that the current energy system is unsustainable as measured against principles of energy sustainability and an envisioned future sustainable state of the energy system. Also, insufficient governmental stakeholder engagement upstream within the current system could lead to added risk as regulations affect energy supply. Energy demand behavior and consumption patterns are insufficiently understood by current stakeholders, limiting participation and accountability from consumers. In conclusion, although this research study focused on the Tempe campus, ASU could apply this process to other campuses thereby improving overall ASU energy system sustainability. Expanding stakeholder engagement upstream within the energy system and better understanding energy consumption behavior can also improve long-term energy sustainability. Finally, benchmarking ASU's performance against its peer universities could expand the current climate commitment of participants to broader sustainability goals.
ContributorsBuch, Rajesh (Author) / Wiek, Arnim (Thesis advisor) / Basile, George (Thesis advisor) / Williams, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Sustainability visioning (i.e. the construction of sustainable future states) is considered an important component of sustainability research, for instance, in transformational sustainability science or in planning for urban sustainability. Visioning frees sustainability research from the dominant focus on analyzing problem constellations and opens it towards positive contributions to social innovation and transformation. Calls are repeatedly made for visions that can guide us towards sustainable futures. Scattered across a broad range of fields (i.e. business, non-government organization, land-use management, natural resource management, sustainability science, urban and regional planning) are an abundance of visioning studies. However, among the few evaluative studies in the literature there are apparent deficits in both the research and practice of visioning that curtails our expectations and prospects of realizing process-based and product-derived outcomes. These deficits suggests that calls instead should focus on the development of applied and theoretical understanding of crafting sustainability visions, enhancing the rigor and robustness of visioning methodology, and on integrating practice, research, and education for collaborative sustainability visioning. From an analysis of prominent visioning and sustainability visioning studies in the literature, this dissertation articulates what is sustainability visioning and synthesizes a conceptual framework for criteria-based design and evaluation of sustainability visioning studies. While current visioning methodologies comply with some of these guidelines, none adhere to all of them. From this research, a novel sustainability visioning methodology is designed to address this gap to craft visions that are shared, systemic, principles-based, action-oriented, relevant, and creative (i.e. SPARC visioning methodology) and evaluated across all quality criteria. Empirical studies were conducted to test and apply the conceptual and methodological frameworks -- with an emphasis on enhancing the rigor and robustness in real world visioning processes for urban planning and teaching sustainability competencies. In-depth descriptions of the collaborative visioning studies demonstrate tangible outcomes for: (a) implementing the above sustainability visioning methodology, including evaluative procedures; (b) adopting meaningful interactive engagement procedures; (c) integrating advanced analytical modeling, sustainability appraisal, and creativity enhancing procedures; and (d) developing perspective and methodological capacity for long-range sustainability planning.
ContributorsIwaniec, David (Author) / Wiek, Arnim (Thesis advisor) / Childers, Daniel L. (Committee member) / Lant, Timothy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The rise in the number of students found to have autism has been staggering over the past ten years. Accommodating these students effectively and appropriately in a public school is a challenge many teachers are deemed with, sometimes without adequate training. This study was aimed at affecting the underlying social misunderstandings inherent to students with Autism Spectrum Disorder and an at-risk general education peer through a comprehensive intervention consisting of peer mentoring, interactive social stories and video modeling strategies. Observations, student interviews, vignettes and student and researcher journals served as data sources. Three fourth grade boys, including a student with autism, a peer with behavioral concerns and a model peer, participated in an intervention designed using a multiple baseline across behaviors. The target students, including the student with autism and the peer with behavioral concerns increased their ability to demonstrate three distinctive skills, attending to task, raising hand and academic responding. Analysis of the data also showed an overall increase in levels of engagement and motivation. Strong friendships developed among all three participants. Implications suggest that a comprehensive approach is effective in reducing unwanted social behaviors and promoting positive social skills and gives further insight into the target students' motivation.
ContributorsZamora, Roxanne N (Author) / Puckett, Kathleen (Thesis advisor) / Warren, Gina M (Committee member) / Mathur, Sarup (Committee member) / Hart, Juliet (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Sustainability challenges with severe local to global impacts require fundamental shifts in what industrial societies aspire to, generate, consume, and represent, as well as how they function. Transition governance is a promising framework to support these transformational efforts. A key component of transition governance is the construction of transition strategies, i.e., action schemes for how to transition from the current state to a sustainable one. Despite accomplishments in building theory and methodology for transition governance, the concepts of what transition strategies entail and how they relate to specific interventions are still underdeveloped. This dissertation further develops the concept of transition strategies, and explores how different stakeholder groups and allies can develop and test transition strategies across different scales, in the specific context of urban sustainability challenges. The overarching research question is: How can cities build and implement comprehensive transition strategies across different urban scales, from the city to the organizational level? The dissertation comprises four studies that explore the dynamic between transition strategies and experiments at the city, neighborhood, and organizational levels with empirical examples from Phoenix, Arizona. The first study reviews and compares paradigms of intentional change, namely transition governance, backcasting, intervention research, change management, integrated planning, and adaptive management in order to offer a rich set of converging ideas on what strategies for intentional change towards sustainability entail. The second study proposes a comprehensive concept of transition strategies and illustrates the concept with the example of sustainability strategies created through a research partnership with the City of Phoenix. The third study explores the role of experiments in transition processes through the lens of the neighborhood-level initiative of The Valley of the Sunflowers. The fourth study examines the role organizations can play in initiating urban sustainability transitions using exemplary strategies and experiments implemented at a local high school. The studies combined contribute to the further development of transition theory and sustainable urban development concepts. While this research field is at a nascent stage, the thesis provides a framework and empirical examples for how to build evidence-based transition strategies in support of urban sustainability.
ContributorsKay, Braden Ryan (Author) / Wiek, Arnim (Thesis advisor) / Loorbach, Derk (Committee member) / Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958- (Committee member) / Tiger, Fern (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Cities around the globe struggle with socio-economic disparities, resource inefficiency, environmental contamination, and quality-of-life challenges. Technological innovation, as one prominent approach to problem solving, promises to address these challenges; yet, introducing new technologies, such as nanotechnology, into society and cities has often resulted in negative consequences. Recent research has conceptually linked anticipatory governance and sustainability science: to understand the role of technology in complex problems our societies face; to anticipate negative consequences of technological innovation; and to promote long-term oriented and responsible governance of technologies. This dissertation advances this link conceptually and empirically, focusing on nanotechnology and urban sustainability challenges. The guiding question for this dissertation research is: How can nanotechnology be innovated and governed in responsible ways and with sustainable outcomes? The dissertation: analyzes the nanotechnology innovation process from an actor- and activities-oriented perspective (Chapter 2); assesses this innovation process from a comprehensive perspective on sustainable governance (Chapter 3); constructs a small set of future scenarios to consider future implications of different nanotechnology governance models (Chapter 4); and appraises the amenability of sustainability problems to nanotechnological interventions (Chapter 5). The four studies are based on data collected through literature review, document analysis, participant observation, interviews, workshops, and walking audits, as part of process analysis, scenario construction, and technology assessment. Research was conducted in collaboration with representatives from industry, government agencies, and civic organizations. The empirical parts of the four studies focus on Metropolitan Phoenix. Findings suggest that: predefined mandates and economic goals dominate the nanotechnology innovation process; normative responsibilities identified by risk governance, sustainability-oriented governance, and anticipatory governance are infrequently considered in the nanotechnology innovation process; different governance models will have major impacts on the role and effects of nanotechnology in cities in the future; and nanotechnologies, currently, do not effectively address the root causes of urban sustainability challenges and require complementary solution approaches. This dissertation contributes to the concepts of anticipatory governance and sustainability science on how to constructively guide nanotechnological innovation in order to harvest its positive potential and safeguard against negative consequences.
ContributorsFoley, Rider Williams (Author) / Wiek, Arnim (Thesis advisor) / Guston, David H. (Committee member) / Seager, Thomas P (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben A (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Bullying impacts as many as one in three children (or more in some studies). The impact of bullying on children is similar to other forms of abuse like sexual abuse or physical abuse, far-reaching and potentially long term. The impact isn't solely on the child who is being bullied, it also impacts the child who is doing the bullying. It may have short and long term consequences as well. Martial arts has often been suggested to reduce bullying behaviors (and sometimes suggested as increasing bullying behaviors) but there has been limited research on this level of violence between kids and martial arts as an intervention. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of martial arts (in particular the Karate for KidsTM program) on bullying behaviors. 223 children were given a standardized questionnaire (the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire) and their parents/guardians were given a short parent survey to measure bullying behaviors in beginner, intermediate and advanced martial arts students. Results showed significant differences between the groups and indicated a reduction in the incidence of children being bullied and a strong indication in a reduction in the child's tendency to bully others after extended martial arts training. These findings suggest that parents, guardians or other child professionals who are interested in reducing bullying behaviors should consider martial arts classes for children.
ContributorsMoody, Gregory Harold (Author) / Digangi, Sam (Thesis advisor) / Zucker, Stan (Committee member) / Mathur, Sarup (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to provide insight into immigrant Latino parents' perspectives on parental involvement in elementary school settings as influenced by the Title I Family Literacy Program (TFLP). A comparison is made of Latino parents who have been participating in the TFLP for more than one year, participants new to the program and Latino parents who chose not to participate in the TFLP. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected via a survey and individual interviews of randomly selected members of each comparison group. All research participants were immigrant Latino parents with children at one of ten Title I elementary schools operating a TFLP. The schools are part of a large, urban school district in the Southwest. Findings indicate the TFLP has a positive effect on parental involvement practices of immigrant Latino parents. Participating parents showed increased confidence in their ability to support their children's education and program participants are more engaged in school activities. The results of this study imply participation in the program for one year or more has the most impact on families. Parents who participated for more than one year communicated a high sense of responsibility toward their influence on their child's education and upbringing and an understanding of strategies needed to effectively support their children. This research also identifies barriers parents face to participation in the TFLP and parental involvement in general. Implementation of family literacy programs in other districts would need to follow guidelines similar to this TFLP to achieve comparable results. More research is needed on the effects of this program on parents, children, and school staff.
ContributorsNiven, Christine (Author) / McCoy, Kathleen (Thesis advisor) / Ventura, Mário (Committee member) / Mathur, Sarup (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Despite the increasing number of elementary and secondary school students with language and learning disabilities and federal laws mandating ongoing collaboration among diverse school professionals, the implementation and maintenance of Interprofessional Collaborative Practices (ICP) and classroom-based therapy services among teachers and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) is low. Teachers and SLPs need training to implement and maintain ICP and classroom-based therapy services. An interprofessional community of practice (ICoP) framework was developed to operationalize ICP competencies into measurable knowledge, skills, attitudes, and practice behaviors. These were incorporated into designing, implementing, and assessing the ICoP framework’s activities and outputs. Thus, the purpose of this mixed methods action research study was to examine the impact of the ICoP framework on teacher and SLP participants’ knowledge and self-efficacy of ICP competencies. The study also sought to build participants’ capacity to implement and maintain classroom-based therapy services for students with language and literacy impairments in an inclusive classroom setting. Participants included four general education teachers, five special education teachers, and three SLPs in a K-8 public school district in the southwest region of Arizona. Inferential statistics and thematic analysis were used to analyze participants’ responses to surveys, semi-structured interviews, and logbook entries before and after the eight-week innovation. Results from the data analysis showed that teachers and SLPs demonstrated a significant increase in knowledge and self-efficacy of ICP.
ContributorsMiller, Rebecca (Author) / Puckett, Kathleen (Thesis advisor) / Lilly, Kristen (Committee member) / Mathur, Sarup (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Given the increasing number of students with dis/abilities entering higher education institutions (HEI), it is imperative higher education faculty have the knowledge, skills, and disposition to effectively support students with dis/abilities. Therefore, this study engaged higher education faculty at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (MLFTC) at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU is an institution that prides itself on being inclusive. Accordingly, MLFTC enrolls many students with a dis/ability. In spring of 2022, more than 350 MLFTC students had disclosed their dis/ability and registered for accommodations. However, there were likely many more students attending MLFTC who had chosen not to disclose their dis/ability status. Consequently, faculty members need a proactive approach to meeting the needs of students with a wide range of knowledge, skills, and experiences including students with dis/abilities.Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers an effective framework to proactively support students with dis/abilities, even if they choose not to disclose their dis/ability status. Faculty need professional development and collaboration opportunities to develop to integrate inclusive instructional strategies aligned to UDL. This study was designed to provide higher education faculty members opportunities to develop their skills to integrate UDL in their classrooms. The participants completed three asynchronous online modules about the principles of UDL and three Innovation Configuration (IC) map design sessions. During the IC map design sessions, they co-developed an IC map articulating how they would like to see UDL operationalized in their courses. Data was collected throughout the project through a pre/post inventory, transcripts of the IC map design sessions, interviews, a classroom observation, and the co-developed IC map. The results show that faculty collaboration likely has a positive impact on faculty integrating instructional strategies aligned to UDL. However, collaboration may have a limited impact on the underlying belief system faculty have about the use of inclusive practices, especially for students who do not have a dis/ability or have chosen not to disclose their dis/ability through official university channels.
ContributorsPinkerton, Tanya (Author) / Mathur, Sarup (Thesis advisor) / Puckett, Kathleen (Committee member) / Weinberg, Andrea (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023