The focus on systems has been a part of science education for many decades, and more recently there has been a new emphasis on teaching with a "systems thinking" approach. Integrating systems thinking methods involves enhancing a student's understanding the complexity of systems, particularly the interactions that occur within and…

Campuses have never had such an intense focus on health promotion as they do at present as we work toward a post-pandemic future. This article examines the evolution of approaches from a student-centric focus to a systems approach, tracing the history of health promotion on Canadian campuses. Universities have evolved from the initial attempts at…

Learner emotions represent sudden, dynamic, and complex adaptations to the language classroom environment. Recent Second Language Acquisition research calls for a more holistic perspective in approaching classroom emotions, one that considers emotional variations between and across learners, and which foregrounds the interconnections among…

Arctic security is a complex and interconnected domain shaped by environmental change, geopolitical competition, economic interests, and sociocultural dynamics. Traditional security education often relies on reductionist methods that fail to capture these interdependencies, leading to fragmented decision-making. This paper introduces the Security…

As the world faces increasingly complex issues, there is a recognition in many disciplines that the existing paradigm of reductionist and linear thinking is not enough to address these issues. The agriculture, food, and natural resources fields are facing a host of issues that defy solutions in part because of the level of complexity. Systems…

While research has generated abundant insight into effective professional learning methods, the field continues to suffer from a lack of systemic approaches. In response, a group of national professional learning leaders recently developed a framework that links proven professional learning methods to the strategic priorities of higher education…

Constructed responses can be used to assess the complexity of student thinking and can be evaluated using rubrics. The two most typical rubric types used are holistic and analytic. Holistic rubrics may be difficult to use with expert-level reasoning that has additive or overlapping language. In an attempt to unpack complexity in holistic rubrics…

To mitigate climate change, immediate actions are needed, but who is responsible for taking these actions and what actions will people support? This article examines pre-service teachers' (N = 230) views on who is responsible for mitigating climate change and what they perceive as the most effective ways to do so. The data consist of essays,…

Purpose: Education for Sustainability in Higher Education (ESHE) sits within and across disciplinary settings that share the need for a framework that provides a basis for pedagogy, assessment and learning outcomes (Kalsoom, 2019). ESHE strives to create transformative learning spaces that help students gain the knowledge and skills they need to…

This article draws from a keynote address presented at the 2019 Doctoral Education Forum sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). A review of the literature reveals growth in doctoral education in the United States and the proliferation of types of doctoral degrees. The article describes an increase in the variety…

In October 2022, the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness (CAPR) released a systematic review of evaluation literature on developmental education reforms to identify interventions found to have positive effects on student outcomes entitled, "Five Principles for Developmental Education: A Review of the Evidence" (see…

Decision making in most universities is taught within the conventional OR/MS (Operations Research/Management Science) paradigm. This paradigm is known to be "hard" since it is consisted of mathematical tools, and normally suitable for solving structured problems. In complex situations the conventional OR/MS paradigm proves to be…

Central to the mission of most educational institutions is the task of preparing the next generation of citizens to contribute to society. Schools, colleges, and universities value a range of outcomes--e.g., problem solving, creativity, collaboration, citizenship, service to community--as well as academic outcomes in traditional subjects. Often…

This is a research-based action and strategy planning study incorporating a holistic systems approach to program continuance at a local college. In the spring semester of 2010, the college administration decided to discontinue three programs at the college due to declining enrollment. One of these programs was the Real Estate Department which had…

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to provide an account of the student experience at a higher education institution known for its holistic approach to sustainability education. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative study was conducted at Green Mountain College (GMC), an environmental liberal arts school in Poultney, VT; 55 students…