This book discusses a number of ways in which out-of-school science education can uniquely engage learners with ‘wicked’ global problems such as biodiversity loss and climate change. The idea for the volume originated in discussions among members of the ESERA special interest group on "Science Education in Out-of-School contexts". It emerged from these discussions that out-of-school institutions and experiences offer opportunities for critical engagement in wicked problems that go far beyond what is possible solely in the science classroom. The book opens with a principled discussion of the nature of wicked problems and what addressing them involves. This introduction clarifies key terms and ideas to create a coherent backdrop for the rest of the book. Subsequent chapters discuss the challenges of designing educational experiences to address wicked problems, as well as the teaching and learning that takes place. The authors offer perspectives across a range of out-of-school environments such as science centres, natural history museums, botanical gardens, geological sites, and local communities. The book concludes with a chapter that synthesises the findings from the various contributions and points to the messages for educators. Finally, the editors outline an exciting research agenda to build knowledge of education addressing wicked problems. The intended audience of the book includes teachers, educators/facilitators, teacher educators, curriculum developers, and early career researchers as well as established researchers.

A "wicked problem" isn't one with an evil nature, but a problem that is impossible or difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often hard to recognize. Classic examples of wicked problems include economic, environmental, and political issues. We now live in a world full of wicked problems, most of them urgent challenges calling out for creative, democratic, and effective solutions. Ed Weber, Denise Lach, and Brent Steel, of the Oregon State University School of Public Policy, solicited papers from a wide variety of accomplished scholars in the fields of science, politics, and policy to address this challenge. The resultant collection focuses on major contemporary environmental and natural resource policy issues, and proposes an assortment of alternative problem-solving methodologies to tackle such problems. New Strategies for Wicked Problems will appeal to scholars, students, and decision-makers wrestling with wicked problems and "post-normal" science settings beyond simply environmental and natural resource-based issues, while providing much needed guidance to policymakers, citizens, public managers, and other stakeholders.

This engaging and practical book offers science teacher educators and K-12 science teachers alike the tools to engage in a dialogic mode of collaborative action research (D-CAR), a collaborative mode of action research focused on teachers’ experiences with students, reflection upon these experiences, and peer learning. Renowned science educator Allan Feldman and co-authors from across numerous settings in K-12 science education present the theory, methodology, case studies, and practical advice to support the use of D-CAR as a means to enhance teachers’ normal practice and address the problems, dilemmas, and dissonances that science teachers must negotiate as they work to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population and engage with complex science teaching challenges that disproportionately affect marginalized students. The book will be of use to science teacher educators, pre-service and in-service science teachers, professional development specialists, or any science educator invested in developing creative, reflective, and thoughtful teachers.

Transdisciplinary Research (TR) is an emerging field in the knowledge society for relating science and policy in addressing issues such as new technologies, migration, and public health. This handbook provides a structured overview of the manifold experiences gained in these fields. In the first part, 21 projects from all over the world present their research approaches. In the second part, cross-cutting challenges of TR are discussed in reference to the same projects.

It feels like our world is spinning out of control. We see poverty, disease, and destruction all around us, and as we search for ways to make sense of the chaos, we're turning to new disciplines for answers and solutions. New, creative innovations are needed, and these new approaches demand different methods and different theories. This book is presented as a handbook for teaching and learning how to design for impact. In it, you'll learn how to apply the process of design to large, wicked problems, and how to gain control over complexity by acting as a social entrepreneur. You'll learn an argument for why design is a powerful agent of change, and you'll read practical methods for engaging with large-scale social problems. You can read this entire book online for free at http://www.wickedproblems.com/

The recognition and reconciliation of ‘opposites’ lies at the heart of our most personal and global problems and is arguably one of the most neglected developmental tasks of Western education. Such problems are ‘wicked’ in the sense that they involve real-life decisions that have to be made in rapidly changing contexts involving irreducible tensions and paradoxes. By exploring our human tendency to bifurcate the universe, Education for Wicked Problems & the Reconciliation of Opposites proposes a way to recognise and (re)solve some of our most wicked problems. Applying an original theory of bi-relational development to wicked problems, Adam proposes that our everyday ways of knowing and being can be powerfully located and understood in terms of the creation, emergence, opposition, convergence, collapse and trans-position of dyadic constituents such as nature/culture, conservative/liberal and spirit/matter. He uses this approach to frame key debates in and across domains of knowledge and to offer new perspectives on three of the most profound and related problems of the twenty-first century: globalisation, sustainability and secularisation. This book is a comprehensive study of dyads and dyadic relationships and provides a multidisciplinary and original approach to human development in the face of wicked problems. It will be of great interest to students and academics in education and psychosocial development as well as professionals across a range of fields looking for new ways to recognise and (re)solve the wicked problems that characterise their professions.

This collection explores the broad landscape of current and future out-of-school science learning environments. Written by leading experts and innovators in informal science learning, these thoughtful and critical essays examine the changing nature of informal institutions such as science museums, zoos, nature centers, planetariums, aquaria, and botanical gardens and their impact on science education. The book examines the learning opportunities and challenges created by community-based experiences including citizen science, makerspaces, science media, escape rooms, hobby groups, and gaming. Based on current practices, case studies, and research, the book focuses on four cross-cutting themes – inclusivity, digital engagement, community partnerships, and bridging formal and informal learning – to examine how people learn science informally. The book will be of interest to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) educators – both in and out of school – designers of science and experiential education programs, and those interested in building STEM learning ecosystems in their communities.

The aim of this book is to support and inspire teachers to contribute to much-needed processes of sustainable development and to develop teaching practices and professional identities that allow them to cope with the specificity of sustainability issues and, in particular, with the teaching challenges related to the ethical and political dimension of environmental and sustainability education. Bringing together recent scholarship on the topic, this book translates state-of-the-art academic research into teaching models, methods and tools. Starting with an outline of the challenge of sustainability, it offers insights and models for understanding the interesting yet ambiguous concept of ‘sustainable development’ and the complex process of transforming society in a more sustainable direction (Part I). It then goes on to provide a guide to preparing courses and lessons as well as tools for reflection about teaching practices and the multiplicity of approaches to addressing ethical and political challenges in sustainable development teaching (Part II). Finally, the book offers useful conceptual frameworks, models and typologies about the concrete design and implementation of sustainable development teaching (Part III). This book will be essential reading for students of education, as well as teachers in compulsory and higher education and sustainability education researchers.

From climate change to GM foods, we are increasingly confronted with complex, interconnected social and environmental problems that span disciplines, knowledge bases and value systems. This book offers a transdisciplinary, open approach for those working towards resolving these 'wicked' problems and highlights the crucial role of this 'transdisciplinary imagination' in addressing the shift to sustainable futures. Tackling Wicked Problems provides readers with a framework and practical examples that will guide the design and conduct of their own open-ended enquiries. In this approach, academic disciplines are combined with personal, local and strategic understanding and researchers are required to recognise multiple knowledge cultures, accept the inevitability of uncertainty, and clarify their own and others' ethical positions. The authors then comment on fifteen practical examples of how researchers have engaged with the opportunities and challenges of conducting transdisciplinary inquiries. The book gives those who are grappling with complex problems innovative methods of inquiry that will allow them to work collaboratively towards long-term solutions.

In Creating Wicked Students, Paul Hanstedt argues that courses can and should be designed to present students with what are known as “wicked problems” because the skills of dealing with such knotty problems are what will best prepare them for life after college. As the author puts it, “this book begins with the assumption that what we all want for our students is that they be capable of changing the world....When a student leaves college, we want them to enter the world not as drones participating mindlessly in activities to which they’ve been appointed, but as thinking, deliberative beings who add something to society.”There’s a lot of talk in education these days about “wicked problems”—problems that defy traditional expectations or knowledge, problems that evolve over time: Zika, ISIS, political discourse in the era of social media. To prepare students for such wicked problems, they need to have wicked competencies, the ability to respond easily and on the fly to complex challenges. Unfortunately, a traditional education that focuses on content and skills often fails to achieve this sense of wickedness. Students memorize for the test, prepare for the paper, practice the various algorithms over and over again—but when the parameters or dynamics of the test or the paper or the equation change, students are often at a loss for how to adjust.This is a course design book centered on the idea that the goal in the college classroom—in all classrooms, all the time—is to develop students who are not just loaded with content, but capable of using that content in thoughtful, deliberate ways to make the world a better place. Achieving this goal requires a top-to-bottom reconsideration of courses, including student learning goals, text selection and course structure, day-to-day pedagogies, and assignment and project design. Creating Wicked Students takes readers through each step of the process, providing multiple examples at each stage, while always encouraging instructors to consider concepts and exercises in light of their own courses and students.