Universities have the potential, and the responsibility, to take on more ecological and relational approaches to facilitating learning-based change in times of interconnected socioecological crises. Signs for a transition towards these more regenerative approaches of higher education (RHE) that include more place-based, ecological, and relational, ways of educating can already be found in niches across Europe (see for example the proliferation of education-based living labs, field labs, challenge labs). In this paper, the results of a podcast-based inquiry into the design practises and barriers to enacting such forms of RHE are shown. This study revealed seven educational practises that occurred across the innovation niches. It is important to note that these practises are enacted in different ways, or are locally nested in unique expressions; for example, while the ‘practise’ of cultivating personal transformations was represented across the included cases, the way these transformations were cultivated were unique expressions of each context. These RHE-design practises are derived from twenty-seven narrative-based podcasts as interviews recorded in the April through June 2021 period. The resulting podcast (The Regenerative Education Podcast) was published on all major streaming platforms in October 2021 and included 21 participants active in Dutch universities, 1 in Sweden, 1 in Germany, 1 in France, and 3 primarily online. Each episode engages with a leading practitioner, professor, teacher, and/or activist that is trying to connect their educational practice to making the world a more equitable, sustainable, and regenerative place. The episodes ranged from 30 to 70 min in total length and included both English (14) and Dutch (12) interviews. These episodes were analysed through transition mapping a method based on story analysis and transition design. The results include seven design practises such as cultivating personal transformations, nurturing ecosystems of support, and tackling relevant and urgent transition challenges, as well as a preliminary design tool that educational teams can use together with students and local agents in (re)designing their own RHE to connect their educational praxis with transition challenges. van den Berg B, Poldner K, Sjoer E, Wals A. Practises, Drivers and Barriers of an Emerging Regenerative Higher Education in The Netherlands—A Podcast-Based Inquiry. Sustainability. 2022; 14(15):9138. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159138
Many students in secondary schools consider the sciences difficult and unattractive. This applies to physics in particular, a subject in which students attempt to learn and understand numerous theoretical concepts, often without much success. A case in point is the understanding of the concepts current, voltage and resistance in simple electric circuits. In response to these problems, reform initiatives in education strive for a change of the classroom culture, putting emphasis on more authentic contexts and student activities containing elements of inquiry. The challenge then becomes choosing and combining these elements in such a manner that they foster an understanding of theoretical concepts. In this article we reflect on data collected and analyzed from a series of 12 grade 9 physics lessons on simple electric circuits. Drawing from a theoretical framework based on individual (conceptual change based) and socio-cultural views on learning, instruction was designed addressing known conceptual problems and attempting to create a physics (research) culture in the classroom. As the success of the lessons was limited, the focus of the study became to understand which inherent characteristics of inquiry based instruction complicate the process of constructing conceptual understanding. From the analysis of the data collected during the enactment of the lessons three tensions emerged: the tension between open inquiry and student guidance, the tension between students developing their own ideas and getting to know accepted scientific theories, and the tension between fostering scientific interest as part of a scientific research culture and the task oriented school culture. An outlook will be given on the implications for science lessons.
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In order to be able to integrate ICT into Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE), teachers need much time and support for mastering ICT tools, learning the basis of IBSE, and getting experience in applying these tools in pupil investigations. For this purpose, we have developed a course within the teacher education program of universities in the Netherlands. During the course, pre-service teachers learn to use and apply one of three ICT tools i.e. data logging, video measurement, or modeling to design and implement an inquiry-based lesson in the classroom. The course participants are expected to study on their own most of the time through a blended setting including life sessions, in-between tasks, and an online platform with support materials and with close supervision. The challenges are the lack of time and the heterogeneous background of pre-service teachers, many of whom opted for teaching later in life, not immediately after university and already hold first year teaching jobs. This paper presents the first case study on implementation of the course in early 2013 with 12 pre-service teachers. The learning scenario was implemented quite faithfully as the life sessions were executed pretty smoothly, and finally, almost all participants went through a complete cycle of designing, implementing, and evaluating an ICT-IBSE lesson. Within a limited time, the heterogeneous group of pre-service teachers achieved a reasonable level of competence regarding the use of ICT in IBSE. There was still a considerable difference between intended inquiry activities and actual realized inquiry which parallels result from the literature [1], [8]. The blended setting with support materials contributes to this result if course participants really spend considerable time outside the life sessions. Also discussed in this paper are revision for further rounds of development based on case studies in the Netherlands and investigation on applicability of the course setting and materials in different contexts e.g. in-service training, other countries.
