Systems thinking within the scope of education for sustainable development (ESD) – a heuristic competence model as a basis for (science) teacher education

Systems thinking is regarded as a key competence in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD), because it helps students to understand the complexity and dynamics of natural, social and economic systems. In our research group, we developed a competence model that distinguishes four dimensions of systems thinking in ESD. Based on this model, we designed different university courses in biology and geography teacher education and measured their effects on student teachers’ systems thinking and the pedagogical content knowledge for teaching systems thinking with two different tests. Both variables could be effectively promoted depending on the course.     

SWEDISH EXPLORERS,IN-SITU KNOWLEDGE,AND RESOURCE-BASED BUSINESS IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE

The period from 1870 to 1914 plays a unique role in the history of natural resource exploration and extraction. This article analyses, from a Swedish viewpoint, the connections between two actor categories of special importance in this context: scientific-geographical explorers and industrial actors. The article examines their activities in three broadly defined regions: the Arctic, Russia, and Africa. We show that the Swedes generally had far-reaching ambitions, on par with those of the large imperial powers. In some cases, notably in Africa, Sweden was not able to compete with the larger imperial powers; but in other cases, such as the exploration of the Arctic – from Spitsbergen to Siberia – and the industrial exploitation of coal at Spitsbergen and petroleum in Russia’s colonial periphery, Swedish actors played a leading role, in competition with players from the larger European nations. Our paper shows that scientific exploration and industry were closely linked, and that foreign policy also influenced the shaping of these links. We distinguish different types of knowledge produced by the Swedish actors, pointing to local, situated knowledge as the most important type for many resource-based businesses, although modern, scientific knowledge was on the increase during this period.     

Embodied knowledge of the Bolivian disappeared in Wara cajÍas and adriana montenegro’s desaparecidos (2008)

Until December 2016, the Bolivian government refused to declassify its military archives, which are believed to hold records of activities led during the consecutive dictatorships that lasted from 1964 to 1982. As these archives remained inaccessible, various Bolivian human rights organizations developed alternative tactics to give more visibility to this part of Bolivian history, and to induce Morales’s government into action. The film director Adriana Montenegro, the choreographer Wara Cajías, and the Asociación de Familiares Detenidos, Desaparecidos y Mártires por la Liberación Nacional de Bolivia (ASOFAMD) joined forces to develop one such alternative, and created the screendance Desaparecidos (2008). To evoke the embodied experience of the Bolivians that were tortured, assassinated and/or disappeared during the Hugo Banzer and Luis García Meza dictatorships, which took place between 1971 and 1982, Desaparecidos presents the body as the point of departure for the production of knowledge regarding the fates of the victims of the dictatorships. As a screendance though, it also experiments with the aesthetic principles of cinematographic language in order to enhance the premise of embodied experience as a system of knowledge production, and as a call to action for its viewers.     

‘Poor heathens’, ‘Cone-headed natives’ and ‘Good water’: the production of knowledge of the interior of Australia through German texts from around the 1860s

This essay critically reviews the textual archive related to the two German mission stations in the South Australian Lake Eyre basin: the Lutheran Hermannsburg mission at Killalpaninna and the Moravian mission at Kopperamanna. The multiple entanglements of these stations far beyond their missionary activity become evident through examining distinctly religious material, such as mission journals, and secular texts, in German-language newspapers and scientific journals. These include entanglement in German domestic affairs as well as German diasporic politics; and in debates over scientific advancement and British colonial expansion.     

Making Skins: Initiation,Sorcery, and Eastern Min Notions of Knowledge

In this paper I consider the Kwermin notion of knowledge as ‘making skin’ of physical experience. The skin is acted upon in women's scarification and male initiations with the aim of instilling dispositions in the novices that are conducive to their becoming competent adult beings in their particular sociocultural environment. The scarification of women's abdominal skin is thought to enhance the fertility of their wombs, whereas the acts upon male novices’ skins in the initiation rituals are focused upon making them fierce warriors, vigorous husbands, and respectful communicators with ancestral spirits. It is argued that through the male initiations the Min reenact their joint origins from the ground at Yam (‘mother’) on Oksapmin land. Contrary to this initiatory emphasis on proper skin‐knowledge as fitness of being, sorcerers, and witches are greatly feared as they wrongfully penetrate the skin, either infusing the victim with suicidal desire or extracting its life‐substance until the victim withers and dies.     

考古木材降解评价的物理指标

为寻找一种能较为科学、方便地反映木材降解程度的指标,共收集不同地方出土的13种木材,8个树种,对这些树种的考古木材与新鲜木材的含水率、干缩性、基本密度、气干密度、综纤维素等指标进行对比分析。实验表明,基本密度和最大含水率(饱水含水率)基本上能够反映古木的降解程度,可以作为反映古木降解程度的物理评价指标。     

Transdisciplinary Enrichment of a Linear Research Process: Experiences Gathered from a Research Project Supporting the European Biodiversity Strategy to 2020

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of a research project conducted by a network of environmental research institutes called Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER). Our analysis constitutes a reflection on this research project based on a proposed ideal-typical transdisciplinary research process developed by . The aim of the PRESS project (PEER Research on EcoSystem Services) was to provide support for the development and implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020, with a special emphasis on the ecosystem services concept. Our analysis of the research phases of the PRESS project shows that not all of the project elements accord with the notion of a full-scale transdisciplinary process. Despite this, a number of lessons can be learned regarding the use of different boundary objects for knowledge integration and the various roles played by researchers. We also identify some constraints with regard to synchronizing policy and project cycles and consider the advantages and disadvantages of research network structures in facilitating long-term cooperation.     

A Content Analysis of Imago Mundi, 1935–2010

ABSTRACT

The 592 research articles in the first 62 volumes of Imago Mundi, from 1935 to 2010, are analysed to discern trends in the scholarly approaches, biases and interests of historians of cartography. Particular attention is paid to map historians’ preferred historical periods and topical subjects of study, to their nationalistic tendencies and to the shifting importance of traditional, internal and socio-cultural approaches to map history.     

Making science at home: visual displays of space science and nuclear physics at the Science Museum and on television in postwar Britain

The public presentation of science and technology in postwar Britain remains a field open to exploration. Current scholarship on the topic is growing but still tends to concentrate on the written word, thus making theorizing, at this stage, difficult. This paper is an attempt to expand the literature through two case studies that compare and synthesize displays of scientific and technological knowledge in two visual media, the Science Museum and television, in the 1950s and 1960s. The topics of these case studies are space exploration and nuclear energy. The thesis this paper explores is that both media fleshed out strategies of displays based on the use of categories from everyday life. As a result, outcomes of large-scale public scientific and technological undertakings were interwoven within audiences’ daily life experiences, thus appearing ordinary rather than extraordinary. This use of symbols and values drawn from private life worked to alleviate fears of risk associated with these new fields of technological exploration and at the same time give them widespread currency in the public sphere.     

Firm Performance,Innovation Modes and Territorial Embeddedness

This paper seeks to identify different innovation modes and their territorial embeddedness, relating them to firms’ innovative and economic performance. We also analyse the relationship between the different innovation modes and the economic impact of the crisis on firms’ performance. These relationships are tested by regression and latent class models for the Portuguese population of firms, using a sample of 397 firms classified according to technological intensity, size and region. Our results show three different innovation modes: a DUI (Doing, Using and Interacting) mode, an STI (Science, Technology and Innovation) mode and a TEI (Territorial Embeddedness Innovation) mode in which territory plays a key role. These innovative modes are related in different ways to firms’ economic and innovative performance and also have marked distinctions in terms of resilience to the economic crisis. These findings lead to a reflection on regional innovation policy in the European context.