Online Panel: Transformative Learning & Knowledge Practices

Why do more complex problems arise the more we design? What are the design attitudes for societal transitions? How are they connected? This study explores why we need better design interventions and also evaluates, differentiates and simplifies the contemporary design attitudes that are shaped across the globe in the last decades that helps in solving complex or wicked problems for a better future. It also tries to find commonalities and differences between Ontological design, Speculative design, Pluriversal design and Transition design as approaches and links its connectedness to Pluriversal Thinking.

The Regenerative Lens: A conceptual framework for regenerative social-ecological systems
Sam Buckton

Societies must be transformed from degenerative patterns to those that support the flourishing of life. This will require significant shifts beyond technological and behavioural change and which include changes in systemic structures, patterns and dynamics and the beliefs, values and paradigms that underpin them. While interest in regenerative systems is growing, there is still limited cohered understanding of what constitutes such systems at social-ecological scales. This presentation introduces a new conceptual, cross-disciplinary and action-oriented framework, produced through a wide cross-disciplinary literature review and testing ideas with groups of researchers. Emerging from this process are four key insights about what constitutes regenerative social-ecological systems or what would be required within approaches seeking to bring about regenerative dynamics. The framework emphasises that to be regenerative, a system (e.g. household, community, city or region) needs to: (1) support the wellbeing of both itself and the wider system of which it is a part, such that internal and external wellbeing are mutually reinforcing; (2) foster such dynamics especially between humans and wider ecological systems; (3) embody an ecological worldview in which people and wider nature are considered interconnected and inseparable; and (4) uphold four core qualities of mutualism, high diversity, agency for humans and non-humans to act regeneratively, and continuous reflexivity. The framework can be applied as a lens to help create ambitious and imaginative ideas of what might be desired from successful transformation, help maintain transformational intent in change initiatives, and guide the development of transformational forms of evaluation.

The making of “Creative Approaches to Climate and Peace Education: An educator’s guide to using storytelling and art“
Julia Bentz

Ever more complex global issues require new and possibly different competences on the part of the younger generation and demand that teachers, practitioners, and lecturers constantly adapt their teaching methods and contents to a changing world. But what kind of approaches help teachers and practitioners to navigate these complexities in a learning setting? How does one engage young people with climate change, perceived by many as complex, and at the same time contributing to growing feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and anxiety among them? How can we as educators create and nurture a culture of peace in and around us while conflict continues to dominate the news? The idea of an educators’ guidebook using storytelling and art emerged from a creative process at the Summer Conference of the Georg Arnhold Program on Education for Sustainable Peace in August 2021. The event brought together researchers engaged in education for sustainability and peace from contexts. The exchange of knowledge and experience catalyzed several insights, including the importance of developing more creative resources for climate change and peace education, especially material integrating the two areas. Storytelling is an emerging tool which can create learning spaces where both storytellers and listeners can engage in deeper learning and where transformative change can happen. The created open-access book addresses the power of stories and art for learning about the global challenges via five themes: Hope and Imagination, Many Meanings of Peace, Healing Trauma and Creating Resilience Connection and Community, and Learning as a Journey. Each of these sections illustrates how stories can support the learning process, integrates personal stories and provides resources for practical application and further reading. It is meant to be a helpful and hopeful guide for colleagues such as teachers, practitioners, and action researchers to address global challenges in their classes and workshops.

Operationalizing ambiguity in sustainability research: Addressing the elephant in the room
Anita Lazurko

Scenarios are increasingly popular tools for anticipating and navigating change in sustainability research and practice. However, scenario practice currently lacks the reflexivity required to a) critically reflect upon how choices made in the design of a scenario process influences scenario outcomes, and b) enrich these choices to produce scenarios that reflect the dynamics of change in complex social-ecological systems (SES), including transformation. This gap presents risks to the salience and legitimacy of scenarios, especially given the need to anticipate the complex and potentially transformative changes that humanity may experience in the 21st century. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a reflexive framework that 1) characterizes how key boundary judgments (i.e., choices that delineate what is included or excluded from a system) involved in a scenario process influence the scope of future potential reflected in scenario outcomes, and 2) proposes the degree to which this scope of future potential may reflect the dynamics of, and/or conditions for, SES change. A process of abductive inquiry in seminal literatures related to scenario practice and sustainability research, in addition to 72 social-ecological scenario case studies, produced the final framework (Boundaries of the Future). The framework is comprised of ten boundary judgments under categories of framing (e.g., epistemological lens), methodology (e.g., degree of formalization), and characterization (e.g., scale). The most expansive choice under each judgment enriches scenarios to consider the potential for transformation. Analysis of the 72 case studies used to develop the framework exhibits a bias away from transformative scenarios under some judgments. In sum, this study introduces a practical tool and research agenda to demystify and enrich scenario practice in sustainability science, particularly under increasing to reflexively ‘open up’ scenarios to the novel conditions of transformation.Ambiguity is widely recognized as an intrinsic aspect of addressing complex sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, in the practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research, ambiguity is often an ‘elephant in the room’ to be either side-stepped or reduced rather than explicitly mobilized. These responses threaten the salience and legitimacy of sustainability research by masking the pluralism of real-world sustainability challenges and the ways in which research renders certain frames visible or invisible. This risk is relevant to transformation, which emerges from novel framings that are often marginalized. Critical systems thinking (CST) grew out of the efforts of operational researchers to develop appreciation of both theoretical and practical aspects of ambiguity. Thus, we adapted key frameworks and lessons from CST literature to establish 1) a holistic conceptualization of ambiguity and 2) recommendations on how to operationalize ambiguity as a valuable (and potentially transformative) means of addressing sustainability challenges. We conceptualize ambiguity as: an emergent feature of the simultaneous and interacting boundary processes associated with being, knowing, and intervening in complex systems. This characterization 1) acknowledges the boundary of a researcher’s subjective orientation and its influence on how ambiguity is exposed and mediated (being), 2) characterizes knowledge as produced through the process of making boundary judgments, generating a partial, contextual, and provisional frame (knowing), and 3) situates a researcher as part of the complexity they seek to interpret, rendering any boundary process as a form of intervention that reinforces or marginalizes certain frames (intervening). We suggest reflexivity as a crucial capacity for transdisciplinary researchers to navigate persistent ambiguity and play an enabling role in transformation. We draw from CST literature and four case study reflections to offer the novel framework of ‘reflexive boundary critique’ to guide critical reflection on ambiguity, or the ‘elephant in the room’, at all stages of the research process.

The transformative role of ‘Voluntary Simplicity’ in encouraging meat reduction in urban India
Tani Khara

Today, in many parts of urban India, consumption has moved beyond its utilitarian function of serving essential human needs. Consumption has become a status symbol, and the pursuit of social classism has encouraged increasing levels of conspicuous consumption. When it comes to food, meat tends to be viewed as a status symbol. Changing cultural practices have encouraged the emergence of high-end meat shops in India’s major urban centres, where different meats symbolise status. Meat’s association with status, novelty and progress is why meat consumption is rapidly increasing which also makes India one of the world’s fastest growing markets in its consumption of meat. Given the environmental and ethical impacts of meat, encouraging sustainable dietary practices in the world’s most populous country is necessary. This paper explores how ‘Voluntary Simplicity’ (VS) can help encourage sustainable dietary practices in India. VS is where an individual willingly opts to reduce their material consumption. Research, among mainly Western consumers, has highlighted that awareness of the socio-environmental impacts of consumption choices has helped encourage practices like minimising food waste, buying local and ‘buycotting’ preferred goods and companies. While this topic remains underresearched in India, there is encouraging evidence for the potential for VS given long-standing Brahmin and Gandhian practices of simplicity and the Buddhist concept of ‘ahimsa’ which continue to make vegetarianism a popular dietary choice. On the other hand, young urban Indians are moving away from perceived traditional values of simplicity and collectivism, and are increasingly looking for ways to assert their identity and uniqueness. Against this changing urban backdrop, vegetarianism is also considered utilitarian while non-vegetarian foods represent symbols of modernity and high-class status. This paper will go deeper into opportunities and challenges for VS when it comes to encouraging transformation among contemporary urban Indian eating practices.