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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
Description
Criticisms of technocratic and managerial sustainability responses to global environmental change have led scholars to argue for transformative shifts in ideology, policy, and practice favoring alternative, plural transformation pathways to sustainability. This raises key debates around how we build transformative capacity and who will lead the way. To further this critical dialogue, this dissertation explores the potential for sustainability experiential learning (SEL) to serve as a capacity building mechanism for global ecological citizenship in support of transformation pathways to sustainable wellbeing. In the process it considers how the next generation of those primed for sustainability leadership identify with and negotiate diversity—of perceptions, values, agency, and lived experiences—in what constitutes sustainable wellbeing and the approaches needed to get there.
Inspired by the STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre’s transformation pathways approach, this research proposes a Transformative Capacity Building model grounded in a Transformation Pathways to Sustainable Wellbeing framework that integrates and builds upon tenets of the original pathways approach with transformative learning, Value-Believe-Norm, and global ecological citizenship (eco-citizenship) theories and concepts. The proposed model and framework were applied to an in-depth ethnographic case study of sustainability experiential learning communities formed within the four Summer 2015 Global Sustainability Studies (GSS) programs at Arizona State University. Using mixed methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and Photovoice, this study examines the values, perceptions, and perceived agency of participants post-program in relation to the knowledge-making and mobilization processes that unfolded during their international GSS programs. Of particular interest are participants’ cognitive, moral, and affective engagement as SEL community members.
Through multi-level thematic analyses, key values, perceptions, agency and engagement themes are identified and influencing relationships highlighted across the different SEL communities and programs. Implications of these factors and their relationships for capacity building for eco-citizenship and future program development are considered. The dissertation concludes by translating study findings into actionable pathways for future research AND practice, including the proposal of program development and implementation recommendations that could enable future sustainability experiential learning programs to better contribute to transformative capacity building for eco-citizenship.
Inspired by the STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre’s transformation pathways approach, this research proposes a Transformative Capacity Building model grounded in a Transformation Pathways to Sustainable Wellbeing framework that integrates and builds upon tenets of the original pathways approach with transformative learning, Value-Believe-Norm, and global ecological citizenship (eco-citizenship) theories and concepts. The proposed model and framework were applied to an in-depth ethnographic case study of sustainability experiential learning communities formed within the four Summer 2015 Global Sustainability Studies (GSS) programs at Arizona State University. Using mixed methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and Photovoice, this study examines the values, perceptions, and perceived agency of participants post-program in relation to the knowledge-making and mobilization processes that unfolded during their international GSS programs. Of particular interest are participants’ cognitive, moral, and affective engagement as SEL community members.
Through multi-level thematic analyses, key values, perceptions, agency and engagement themes are identified and influencing relationships highlighted across the different SEL communities and programs. Implications of these factors and their relationships for capacity building for eco-citizenship and future program development are considered. The dissertation concludes by translating study findings into actionable pathways for future research AND practice, including the proposal of program development and implementation recommendations that could enable future sustainability experiential learning programs to better contribute to transformative capacity building for eco-citizenship.
ContributorsGwiszcz, Julianna Marie (Author) / Eder, James (Thesis advisor) / Haglund, LaDawn (Committee member) / Wutich, Amber (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Dear reader, I hope you will read this entire dissertation. If you are reluctant because of its length, I invite you to contact me for a conversation instead. Over the past eight years I have been a part of three unfolding histories: colonialism, sustainability science, and the Atlas of Creative Tools (the Atlas). In this dissertation I describe how I am a part of these histories. I advocate for partnering them so that the Atlas is used by people in the field of sustainability science to advance cognitive justice in their work. This advocacy is supported by research conducted using a mixed-methods approach. I combine qualitative methods used to study each of the three histories with the experiential knowledge I gained from being a part of them. Throughout the dissertation I move back and forth between academic research and experiential knowledge. Each informs the other. This back-and-forth movement is itself a method to interrogate the assumptions of dissertation writing. My purposes for doing so are two-fold. I want to honor the dissertation as a form of knowledge production that can promote cognitive justice while also pointing out how it hinders it. Additionally, the back-and-forth interrogation method involves using creative tools from the Atlas in the text itself. This demonstrates how the Atlas can be used to promote cognitive justice while producing knowledge in sustainability science. I structure this dissertation to aid you in four ways. First, I provide a view of sustainability science as a contested space that people can and do use to advance cognitive justice. Second, I write about my research and analysis of the Atlas so that my descriptions can be used right away by other practitioners who are working with the Atlas. Third, my methods for interrogating the dissertation itself are meant to be used, modified, and built on by others. Finally, I hope that the connections I make between the Atlas and sustainability science are helpful for your work, and that they inspire you to try the Atlas and see how you can use it to promote cognitive justice in your own contexts.
ContributorsNock, Matthew (Author) / Haglund, LaDawn (Thesis advisor) / Manuel-Navarrete, David (Thesis advisor) / Lerman, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023