The article seeks to answer the question "Can ecopedagogy mitigate the impact of unsustainable education?" The aim of the article is a phenomenological and hermeneutical reflection on some issues relevant to ecopedagogy at the beginning of the Anthropocene era, when education policy, its governance, the transformation of the holistic…

In universities worldwide, there has been a movement away from mono-disciplinary towards multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary education, motivated by the notion that complex societal issues call for more than a single disciplinary perspective. To prepare students for a role in addressing these issues, flexibility within educational programs is…

Social workers engage with many professionals to address complex social problems. This includes leveraging the power of social work to support quality interventions on interprofessional teams. While generalist social workers are prepared to apply multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks and rely on interprofessional collaboration, specialized…

The Grand Challenges for Social Work were introduced by the American Academy for Social Work & Social Welfare in 2016, which are social problems that are interrelated and "exceedingly complex". We discuss the relevance of complexity theory, operationalized by complex adaptive systems (CAS), to the Grand Challenges. CAS moves beyond…

Wicked problems have been characterised by their high epistemological and axiological complexities. These are the kinds of problems that may invade our classrooms because many of them concern many stakeholders, including our students. Several approaches have been developed to address wicked problems in various contexts. However, little is known…

By arguing for "putting science education in its place," this essay cautions against overstating the role of science education with respect to global crises with technical components, like climate change. At the same time, it challenges the assumption that science education has no role in addressing equally urgent and widespread problems…

In recent years, new expectations have been placed on universities, demanding academic contributions towards solving large-scale, interdisciplinary challenges. This is in conflict with existing insights from university governance research, which emphasises that scientific communities focus on reproducing disciplinary practices that are unsuitable…

This article delves into the intricate relationship between children's rights and the broader landscape of human and more-than-human rights in times of planetary pluri-crises. While acknowledging the historical significance of the United Nation adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as a late 20th-century milestone, this…

There is a prevalent consensus among science education scholars that teaching socioscientific issues (SSI) has notable importance for promoting functional scientific literacy and raising responsible citizens. However, teachers encounter numerous problems when teaching SSI, so they may not prefer to teach them. Today, we still do not know many…

Problems framed as societal challenges have provided fresh impetus for transdisciplinary research. In response, funders have started programmes aimed at increasing transdisciplinary research capacity. However, current programme evaluations do not adequately measure the skills and characteristics of individuals and collectives doing this research.…

Even though agent-based modelling is seen as committing to a mechanistic, generative type of causation, the methodology allows for representing many other types of causal explanations. Agent-based models are capable of "integrating" diverse causal relationships into coherent causal mechanisms. They mirror the crucial, multi-level…

In the past two decades, the interdisciplinary push to denaturalise the concept of society has historicised the very object of social history. In this paper, I propose a way of studying the social history of education that eludes the presupposition of the social as a transcendental or pre-discursive object. My central claim is that it is possible…

This study marks a resting point within ongoing explorations of creativity, transdisciplinarity, materiality, and spatiality in Higher Education (HE) pedagogy. It interrogates how different materialities and spatialities shape learning to re-create practices to better respond to societal challenges. This is situated within an imperative to move…

Ann Oakley, pioneering social researcher for nearly 60 years, is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at IOE (Institute of Education), UCL's Faculty of Education and Society (University College London, UK). This article explores the innovation and influence of her work and the work of her close colleagues at the Social Science Research Unit…

Educators, researchers, and institutions have long recognized experiential education's value for fostering ongoing learning and skill development. In recent years, experiential education has gained increased traction in higher education, based on recognized need for graduates to encounter and actively reflect on lived experiences in various…