More Like this

1. Limiting Claims about Museums, STEM, and Social Issues

   Fraser, John; Norlander, Rebecca J; Nock, Kathryn (September 2023, Taylor and Francis Group / Routledge)

   Diamond, J; Rosenfeld, S (Ed.)

   Museum workers believe that museums are critical vectors for social change. The 2022 ICOM definition of museums made claimed that museums are necessary for fixing social wrongs, paths for cultural diplomacy, and venues for advancing a sustainable future. Unfortunately, there seems to be a scarcity of evidence to back up these social impact claims. An effort to synthesize research in the USA published in the first two decades of the 21st century sought to describe what can be considered common understanding in the museum field about how social issues and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) come together in museum practice. Our study focused on the methods and data reporting: we examined where claims may overshoot what should be considered generalizable fact. To do that, we analyzed a subset of papers assembled through a configurative review of the Museums, STEM, and Social Issues domain in the USA.1 The initial review described the topics and types of research related to our focal subject. Here, we focus on the choices made about the research methods. By selecting only those papers that assessed the intersection of STEM and social issues in museums, we were able to look across three primary sources of knowledge: peer-reviewed journals, grey literature from a national online repository, and dissertations or theses in the ProQuest database. We used these reports to understand whether there is sufficient evidence to make claims about the museum sector or museums as a class capable of supporting the many claims about their impacts. In this case, we focused only on museums’ capacity to use STEM to engage audiences with social issues and acknowledge the exclusion of humanities content as a path for social change. 

   more » « less
2. Adaptive capacity beyond the household: a systematic review of empirical social-ecological research

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac68fb  

   Vallury, Sechindra; Smith, Ada P.; Chaffin, Brian C.; Nesbitt, Holly K.; Lohani, Sapana; Gulab, Sabrina; Banerjee, Simanti; Floyd, Theresa M.; Metcalf, Alexander L.; Metcalf, Elizabeth C.; et al (May 2022, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract The concept of adaptive capacity has received significant attention within social-ecological and environmental change research. Within both the resilience and vulnerability literatures specifically, adaptive capacity has emerged as a fundamental concept for assessing the ability of social-ecological systems to adapt to environmental change. Although methods and indicators used to evaluate adaptive capacity are broad, the focus of existing scholarship has predominately been at the individual- and household- levels. However, the capacities necessary for humans to adapt to global environmental change are often a function of individual and societal characteristics, as well as cumulative and emergent capacities across communities and jurisdictions. In this paper, we apply a systematic literature review and co-citation analysis to investigate empirical research on adaptive capacity that focus on societal levels beyond the household. Our review demonstrates that assessments of adaptive capacity at higher societal levels are increasing in frequency, yet vary widely in approach, framing, and results; analyses focus on adaptive capacity at many different levels (e.g. community, municipality, global region), geographic locations, and cover multiple types of disturbances and their impacts across sectors. We also found that there are considerable challenges with regard to the ‘fit’ between data collected and analytical methods used in adequately capturing the cross-scale and cross-level determinants of adaptive capacity. Current approaches to assessing adaptive capacity at societal levels beyond the household tend to simply aggregate individual- or household-level data, which we argue oversimplifies and ignores the inherent interactions within and across societal levels of decision-making that shape the capacity of humans to adapt to environmental change across multiple scales. In order for future adaptive capacity research to be more practice-oriented and effectively guide policy, there is a need to develop indicators and assessments that are matched with the levels of potential policy applications. 

   more » « less
3. Agent-Based Modeling for Integrating Human Behavior into the Food–Energy–Water Nexus

   https://doi.org/10.3390/land9120519  

   Magliocca, Nicholas R. (December 2020, Land)

   null (Ed.)

   The nexus of food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) has become a salient research topic, as well as a pressing societal and policy challenge. Computational modeling is a key tool in addressing these challenges, and FEWS modeling as a subfield is now established. However, social dimensions of FEWS nexus issues, such as individual or social learning, technology adoption decisions, and adaptive behaviors, remain relatively underdeveloped in FEWS modeling and research. Agent-based models (ABMs) have received increasing usage recently in efforts to better represent and integrate human behavior into FEWS research. A systematic review identified 29 articles in which at least two food, energy, or water sectors were explicitly considered with an ABM and/or ABM-coupled modeling approach. Agent decision-making and behavior ranged from reactive to active, motivated by primarily economic objectives to multi-criteria in nature, and implemented with individual-based to highly aggregated entities. However, a significant proportion of models did not contain agent interactions, or did not base agent decision-making on existing behavioral theories. Model design choices imposed by data limitations, structural requirements for coupling with other simulation models, or spatial and/or temporal scales of application resulted in agent representations lacking explicit decision-making processes or social interactions. In contrast, several methodological innovations were also noted, which were catalyzed by the challenges associated with developing multi-scale, cross-sector models. Several avenues for future research with ABMs in FEWS research are suggested based on these findings. The reviewed ABM applications represent progress, yet many opportunities for more behaviorally rich agent-based modeling in the FEWS context remain. 

   more » « less
4. Addressing Issues of Justice in Design Through System-Map Representations

   Cheville, R Alan; Thomas, Rebecca; Thomas, Stewart (June 2024, ASEE PEER)

   Over the last several years the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) program at Bucknell University has established a four-year ‘design thread’ in the curriculum. This six-course sequence utilizes a representational approach, having students frame design challenges through diagrams and drawings before starting to implement solutions. The representations students create provide eight lenses on the design process; several of these lenses capture elements of societal implications and social justice. Within the design course sequence, the third-year particularly emphasizes the larger societal and human contexts of design. A challenge in the third-year course has been having engineering students who are acculturated to quantitative and linear methods of problem solving shift their perspectives to address complex societal topics. In the social sciences such topics are usually described textually with rich qualitative descriptions. In an attempt to engage engineering students, the authors have utilized graphical design representations rather than textual descriptions into the course. Such representations better align with engineering epistemology, potentially making the large body of work in the social sciences more accessible to students. This paper reports on how a particular representation, the system map, has third-year students explore systemic structures and practices that impact design decisions and processes. Students use system maps to identify ways design projects can impact on society in ways that have both positive and potentially negative consequences. Qualitative analysis of student artifacts over five course iterations was used in an action research approach to refine how to effectively integrate system map representations that capture societal issues and address issues of justice. Action research is an iterative methodology that utilizes evidence to improve practice, in this case the improving students’ facility with, and conceptions of, the societal impact of engineering work. This practice-focused paper reports on how system maps can be used in engineering and what supporting practices, e.g. interviews and research, make their use more effective. Ways to utilize system maps specifically, and representations more generally, to connect technical aspects of engineering design to social justice topics and issues are 

   more » « less
5. WIP: The Field of Engineering Education Research as Seen Through the Peer Review Process

   Cutler, Stephanie; Beddoes, Kacey; Croninger, Rachel M.V. (January 2019, American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   This Work-In-Progress paper highlights the work being done as part of an on-going project to explore the field of Engineering Education Research (EER) through the perspective of the peer review process. The overarching objective of this project is to identify the kinds of scholarship readily accepted into the field of engineering education research through peer review processes, and the kinds that are not. By identifying what approaches, topics, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies are accepted and not accepted through the peer review process, the field can be more open to discussion of the advancement of EER. More broadly, identifying such boundary knowledge can facilitate new understanding of how the social construction of knowledge occurs in interdisciplinary fields beyond engineering education. As a first step toward these larger objectives, we review relevant literature and outline our participants as well as our analytic plan. 

   more » « less