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Transformative learning for Urban Sustainability: futures of transdisciplinary educational models, structures and tools

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Urban Sustainability has recently developed into a highly rhetorical, contested societal discourse that is hotly debated in local and global power struggles over who has the right to envision and decide upon what our desired futures should look like. Exacerbating such struggles is the fact that many of the current socio-environmental problems connected to sustainability transcend spatial, temporal, sector and disciplinary boundaries. Taking into consideration all aspects of the environmental impacts of socio-economic development, and the complex interactions which occur between development and environment in cities is hard, and to this extent, education for sustainability is crucial to seek ways and means for achieving sustainable impacts in all human activities.

The contribution of renovated learning models, in this respect, is essential for the transition from the “silos” mentality - that addresses separately issues of education in energy, transport, water, waste, local economic system- to approaching complex challenges as social inclusion, well-being for all, future-oriented policy making with new educational collaborative models.

Interdisciplinarity (ID) and transdisciplinarity (TD) as knowledge regimes, are critically demanded to address the challenges of our era. Interdisciplinarity implies a process of integration of different insights, values, and fields of knowledge, for example between the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences (AHSS), among themselves and with Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM). How can this be achieved in the realm of transformative education for Urban Sustainability?

The aim of this Special Issue is to explore to what extent and how inter- and trans-disciplinary research, methods, tools and practices of education and transformative learning can contribute to address the future developmental and societal challenges in the realm of urban sustainability transitions.

Editors

  • Dr. Giulia Sonetti Dr. Giulia Sonetti  &

    Dr. Giulia Sonetti

    Transdisciplinary Researcher at CENSE-NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal My work within transdisciplinary projects and transformative learning spans the past ten years and has been located in all over the world, but especially around EU funded projects on sustainability transitions. I love co-creating contexts for transformational learning experiences in the service of systemic change both in formal and informal academic settings. My present research and teaching focuses on key leverage points for sustainability education, as well as care-full and decolonising practices about human-nature relationships.

  • Dr. Bianca Vienni-Baptista Dr. Bianca Vienni-Baptista

    Dr. Bianca Vienni-Baptista

    Bianca Vienni-Baptista, with a PhD in Cultural Studies, is a SNSF Group Leader and lecturer of the Transdisciplinarity Lab (ETH Zurich, Switzerland). She works in the field of Science and Technology Studies, focusing in particular on the study of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge production processes. Bianca is Principal Investigator of the project «Investigating interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity: intersections of practices, culture(s) and policy in collaborative knowledge production» (INTERSECTIONS), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF-PRIMA).

Articles (13 in this collection)