Volume 12 (2021): Issue 2 (December 2021)

This article asks how the site-specific parameters of pro-environmental behaviour can be seen in educational doctrines and in the practices of science education, and what impact they have on the development of environmental citizenship. Environmental citizenship as an agent of change is key to sustainability transition. Our viewpoint is that a contextual resource doctrine provides a framework of people’s environmental values, meaning both the capacity to fulfil the requirements of the doctrine and the ability to critically reflect it by rational-scientific arguments. Thus, place-specificity and sense of place should be highlighted in citizenship science education. In order to explain the multi-scalar nature of learning requirements, we apply the idea of ‘trans-contextualisation’ in science education. In the article we use examples which are derived from university students’ favourite places reflecting sense of place as well as three cases, which start from the near secondary school students’ environment and discuss local environmental issues. In this study we used qualitative and quantitative research methods. The results show that by promoting contextually sensitive environmental citizenship through Socio-scientific Issues (SSI) in science education, we could accelerate the transition to sustainable future. If cultural traditions, anecdotal and local knowledge are not incorporated in the expert scientific knowledge, sustainability transition is constantly in danger for remaining an isolated activity in the shadow of resource realism.

Since the Bandung Declaration of 2004, Indonesia has become concerned with the development of inclusive education. Even though teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education are important for successful implementation, there have been few research studies on them in Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to understand Indonesian teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education. This study surveyed 243 Indonesian teachers using the Teacher Attitudes toward Inclusion Scale (TATIS) instrument. The findings showed that 79.4 % of Indonesian teachers held a moderate attitude toward inclusive education. In addition, the number of teachers who had a high (8.6 %) attitude toward inclusive education was less than those who held a low one (11.9 %). Moreover, there were no significant differences based on demographic data such as gender, age, province, school type, highest education, teaching experience in general education, and teaching experience in inclusive education. A significant difference was found only when the level of schools grouped the teachers: teachers who teach in secondary schools had more positive attitudes toward inclusive education than teachers who teach in primary schools. The positive attitude of teachers towards inclusive education can make them more capable of controlled learning environments. Meanwhile, to improve their attitude, a sustainable training program can be carried out. Sustainable training organized by the Ministry of Education to improve teacher pedagogical and professional competence must be in line with Education for Sustainable Development (EDS).

Feasibility of maintaining an educational sustainable development (ESD) depends on exploring teachers’ concepts on their common practices in classroom settings. Speakers in multilingual contexts commonly switch their codes, languages, during their numerous social interactions. Nowadays, the phenomena, code switching, has expanded to cover any situation in which speakers switch from one accepted code into another. Through this perspective, various studies have been conducted to investigate different aspects of code-switching in EFL classrooms. The present study qualitatively investigated teachers’ perceptions on code-switching in their classrooms addressing two research questions, namely what types of code-switching EFL teachers were practicing in EFL classrooms and what were their perceptions on their code-switching. Four EFL teachers participated in the study. The analysis of the data collected through manual and electronic observations as well as structured interviews, indicated that intra-sentential and inter-sentential types of code-switching were practised throughout the classroom teaching processes. The main motives for resorting to code-switching were found to be EFL students’ lack of linguistic proficiency, keeping solidarity with the students and managing the classrooms.

Since human beings communicate, dialogue is a central topic, mainly in terms of partnerships in private, political or business contexts. Often, however, dialogue means double monologue. In order to transform it into a real dialogue, particular strategies are helpful, which can be found during the last centuries. Modern communication partners, thus, can evaluate dialogue-experiences from Biblical time until today to make their relationship sustainable and to apply open, personal, and symmetrical communication as a kind of cultural participation. As demonstrated in this paper, all dialogue participants can draw benefit from such evaluation by transferring and transforming past experiences into current situations, Therefore, the article evaluates texts from both religious and psychological perspectives, and emphasizes both, religious and secular narratives, values, models, rituals and attitudes. Thus, it invites people to make experiences with communication strategies in their relationships and daily life.

Little attention has been given to principles of Buddhist moral conduct in the West. There are ten virtuous actions of Buddhist moral conduct, called the Ten Virtuous Deeds of the Bodhisattvas. Drawing from the works of contemporary women thinkers and artists, this article considers how the beauty of human nature and spirituality can be cultivated based on Buddhist feminist perspectives. There are many oppressed women in Asian countries whose voices are not heard in society. Buddhist feminism based on the Ten Virtuous Deeds of the Bodhisattvas can probe deeply into the heart of the moral issues and nurture the powerful flow of spiritual energy for the women. This is a theoretical study that elaborates on women’s struggle for their liberation as inspired by the art of Rima Fujita.

The central concept within this research work is Edu-tensegrity. It is the foundation of the Heasly Thinking Skills System and uses a geodesic dome as a refreshed visual depiction of the many varied elements in the whole world of education, given paradigm changes within lived experience of 21^st century education. This system uses a disciplined use of the art of Questioning, a ‘ME’ diagram, a fully explained process of decision-making, and finally a detailed diagram called the HUG/BUG for application of personally chosen behaviours. This paper explains the integrated connections of education concepts with similar knowledge content from other relevant academic disciplines. The aim allows for the academic support of teachers and lecturers as these paradigm changes are affected, relying on resilience and the authentic projects of our research communities, who are central to the concept of Edu-tensegrity. Edu-tensegrity is central to the twin concepts of Sustainability and Securitability, adding to the educational philosophy of this journal, and cementing the changing landscape of 21^st century education in a time of pandemic and change.

The authors of this paper applied a new approach combining text mining and principal component analysis (PCA) to objectively determine the actual state of regional COVID-19 strategy meetings and verified its utility. The authors used text mining to analyze meeting minutes and extracted words with high phase ubiquity by co-occurrence analysis. Then, they selected words symbolizing the meeting contents (“report,” “prevention,” “rules,” and “decision”) and performed PCA using the occurrence rates of these words as variables. Two principal components (PC1, PC2) were set. For PC1, we observed maximum factor loading for “decision” (0.81) and minimum for “report” (-0.72), so we considered this axis to show the “depth of meeting discussions.” For PC2, we observed maximum factor loading for “prevention” (0.81) and minimum for “rule” (-0.76). We considered this axis to show “regional infection status.” When we created a plot of all 44 meetings, Phase 1 occurred in quadrants 3 to 4 (knowledge sharing), phase 2 began in quadrant 1 (preparation for spread), and phase 3 shifted to quadrant 2 (response to spread) with significant differences between these phases. Our findings suggest that the actual state of regional COVID-19 strategy meetings could be objectively determined by using a combination of text mining and PCA.

This research was prepared in order to determine the change in students’ academic achievement, retention levels and attitudes, and problem solving skill and creative thinking skill as a result of programming teaching with authentic task-based applications. The research was prepared using an experimental design with pretest-posttest control group. In the study group of the research, 2^nd year Computer Technologies Department students who studied at Erciyes University in the 2017–2018 academic year and took the Web Design Fundamentals course and the Research Methods and Techniques course are included. One of the second-year branches was determined as experimental group (n = 30) and the other one was determined as the control group (n = 33). The teaching of programming to the experimental group students was carried out with authentic tasks. Lessons were conducted with the control group students using the traditional teaching method. Achievement test developed by the researchers as pre-test, post-test, retention test, as well as Attitude Scale Toward Computer Programming developed by Baser (2013), Problem Solving Inventory developed by Heppner and Peterson (1982) and adapted to Turkish by Sahin, Sahin and Heppner (1993), “How Creative Are You?” scale developed by Raudsepp (1977) and adapted to Turkish by Coban (1999) were used. With research, it was concluded that authentic task-oriented practices increased students’ programming academic success and attitudes towards programming, and also positively affected both students’ problem-solving skills and creative thinking skills.

Supervised Teaching Practice (PES) should promote the development of skills associated with the profile of the teacher-researcher, namely: observation, recording, analysis, reflection. At the same time, it should provide children with rich and diverse experiences that produce education for (with) citizenship. The research project developed at PES was based on the European project UKIDS (Erasmus +) and was based on learning by project methodology, allowing for interdisciplinary knowledge. The challenges set in the project offer a variety of tasks to work on aspects such as initiative, motivation and innovation, as well as, trust and responsible social participation. Specifically, the Trash Value challenge, proposes to give a new life to waste, respecting a sustainable environment. Based on the implementation of this challenge and using the egg cartons, it was investigated how this material potentiated the development of social skills, reasoning and mathematical communication of children in the 4^th year of schooling. The research methodology had characteristics of action-research, selecting different techniques and instruments for data collection. In addition to the pre-test and post-test carried out on the students and the teacher in charge of the class, audio recordings, field notes, photographic records and children’s productions were collected and organized in the form of multimodal narration. After conducting the study, it was possible to verify that the Trash Value challenge promoted the development of social skills, with a greater focus on cooperation, self-control and responsibility. Convergingly, problem-solving and mathematical communication skills have improved considerably, in an environment rich in children’s environmental awareness.

The article examines the complexities associated with effectively and comprehensively tackling the climate change crisis. Focusing on the need for education, the authors discuss a model of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) that supports the development of competencies, coalition building and the capacity to support and maintain positive action. Drawing upon principles highlighted by the United Nations, the paper outlines the breadth and depth of knowledge required to support transformative ESD. Firstly enhancing comprehensive knowledge that develops cognitive, affective and axiological dimensions and proficiency. This enhances critical engagement with information and enables individuals to act responsibly and align with others in coalition building. The second element refers to collaborative partnership that is crucial for changes to be effective. This has been one of the most challenging barriers preventing positive action on the catastrophe pf climate change. Finally, the paper emphasizes the need to develop the competencies for supporting collective action, which will enable sustained action across transnational, transdisciplinary and transnational boundaries.