Learning Ecology Research Articles

Constructing Sustainable Learning Ecology to Overcome Burnout of Teachers: Perspective of Organizational Identity and Locus of Control

This study examined how organizational identity, locus of control, and their interrelationships affect teacher burnout. Utilizing a quantitative survey, data were collected from 105 teachers. The Maslach Burnout Inventory measured three burnout dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Locus of control was assessed via Rotter’s scale. Organizational identity was measured through the Multiple Organizational Identification Scale, assessing personal self-esteem, emotional professional identity, evaluative identification, self-classification, and team factors. PLS-SEM analysis found that external locus of control had a significant positive association with emotional exhaustion. Emotional professional identity showed robust negative relationships with depersonalization and exhaustion. Differences emerged between novice and senior teachers—identity and self-esteem were more relevant for novices, while team factors were more impactful for experienced teachers. Variations also occurred across genders, with identity and self-esteem more salient for females and team dynamics more influential for males. The study highlights the complex interplay between individual, relational, and organizational factors in shaping teacher burnout. An external locus of control may exacerbate exhaustion, while emotional professional identity seems to provide resilience. Support initiatives should account for teachers’ evolving developmental needs and gender variations in burnout experiences. Fostering internal control beliefs, strong professional identity, and tailored support based on career stage and gender can potentially buffer against burnout. This study contributes insights to guide targeted efforts to promote teacher well-being, effectiveness, and retention. Learning in the workplace instead of paying more time for education services can be considered as overcoming burnout, redesigning and implementing digital teaching for sustainable teaching and learning for both teachers and students in order to construct a better learning ecology.

From Mind to Matter: Patterns of Innovation in the Archaeological Record and the Ecology of Social Learning

AbstractArchaeology and cultural evolution theory both predict that environmental variation and population size drive the likelihood of inventions (via individual learning) and their conversion to population-wide innovations (via social uptake). We use the case study of the adoption of the bow and arrow in the Great Basin to infer how patterns of cultural variation, invention, and innovation affect investment in new technologies over time and the conditions under which we could predict cultural innovation to occur. Using an agent-based simulation to investigate the conditions that manifest in the innovation of technology, we find the following: (1) increasing ecological variation results in a greater reliance on individual learning, even when this decreases average fitness due to the costs of learning; (2) decreasing population size increases variability in the types of learning strategies that individuals use; among smaller populations drift-like processes may contribute to randomization in interpopulation cultural diffusion; (3) increasing the mutation rate affects the variability in learning patterns at different rates of environmental variation; and (4) increasing selection pressure increases the reliance on social learning. We provide an open-source R script for the model and encourage others to use it to test additional hypotheses.

Promoting Empathy and Inclusiveness of Vulnerable Learners in Rural Learning Ecologies

Hatred and prejudice can significantly harm vulnerable learners who often face socio-economic and cultural challenges in rural learning environments. This needs to be addressed using collaboration efforts to promote education, empathy and inclusive values as well as by challenging and eliminating the underlying hatred and prejudices that fuel it. Thus, this paper explored John Dewey’s educational philosophy, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and its potential to reduce hatred and prejudice in education through transformative learning ecologies. The study utilised secondary data from various digital resources to understand the issue of hatred and prejudice in rural learning ecologies. The study adopted the hermeneutic interpretative technique to understand the data, noting assumptions, codes, patterns, and themes. The findings indicate that incorporating Dewey’s vision into SoTL can foster inclusive learning environments, particularly for rural students, promoting tolerance and acceptance. This approach encourages students to challenge discrimination, understand diverse perspectives and contribute to a more inclusive society, thereby fostering a more caring and respectful environment. Investments in infrastructure, professional development, curriculum updates, partnerships and community involvement are essential to fostering empathy, critical thinking, and the rejection of hatred and prejudice. The paper concluded that building bridges of understanding, fostering dialogue, and promoting respect and acceptance are crucial in countering hate and creating a more compassionate and inclusive society. This research recommended that educators should continuously improve their teaching strategies through research, collaboration and sharing best practices, and should respect vulnerable rural learners by creating a safe learning environment. An empirical study needs to be conducted to understand and minimise the impact of hatred and prejudice. Keywords: Empathy, Hatred and Prejudice, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Inclusive Education, Rural Learning Ecologies

Material use for EFL teacher learning in classroom ecology: a perturbation or affordance?

ABSTRACT Curriculum material use is an agentive, reciprocal and innovative practice, involving multiple stakeholders such as teacher, students and assessments that mutually shape one another. While it is generally acknowledged that teachers’ knowledge and skills deeply shape the way they use materials, little is known about how material use can possibly perturb or afford teacher learning. This, however, is deemed important considering the close relationships among material use, teacher learning and instruction. This study adopts a qualitative case study method to examine three EFL teachers’ experiences with new curriculum materials under a new round of national curriculum reform. Findings reveal that (1) new curriculum materials can perturb classroom ecology, prompting teachers to re-examine, reflect and innovate their beliefs and practices; (2) despite teachers’ general consensus on features of curriculum materials, the way they enact them in practice along with emerging learning opportunities are rather different; (3) opportunities for teacher learning through material use can be subjected to teachers’ existing knowledge, beliefs and experiences; (4) sometimes, lack of clear instructional guidance in the textbook renders teachers more agency and freedom to explore their ideas, which can be ultimately developmental.

A Learning Ecology Perspective of Energy Literacy among Youth: A Case Study from Alabama High Schools

Developing energy literacy and pathways for youth to clean energy careers are vital for sustainable development, aligning with various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), from climate action to quality education. Despite the increasing focus on nurturing energy-literate youth, there is a lack of comprehensive insights into how students develop their energy literacy within diverse learning environments. This study addresses the research question of what factors across various learning environments play a significant role in the development of energy literacy among youth. To address the research question, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding the development of energy literacy among high school students based on a learning ecology perspective. Focusing on students’ energy literacy, encompassing information search, attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge of energy, we examined the influence of school-based clean energy program participation, virtual information sources, and interactions with peers and family. Furthermore, we conducted an empirical analysis to identify factors associated with energy literacy among high school students from Alabama high schools. The student sample was intentionally recruited from case study high schools in Alabama that implemented a clean energy education pilot project. This sample includes both program participants and non-participants who completed pre- and post-program surveys, resulting in a total of 189 survey responses. Findings indicate a positive association between the school-based clean energy program and a significantly higher increase in energy-related information searches among program participants compared with non-participants. The virtual learning setting, especially video platforms, was also significantly associated with students’ energy-related information searches and positive attitudes toward energy. Findings also indicate that family relationships and pre-existing STEM interests significantly determine youth energy literacy. These findings provide valuable insights for the development and expansion of future energy education programs. If the energy education program incorporates these crucial learning factors and establishes an interconnected learning environment, the convergence of multiple learning aspects within the program can foster a synergistic learning ecosystem for youth energy literacy.

Local Ecological Learning: Creating Place-based Knowledge through Collaborative Wildlife Research on Private Lands.

Wildlife across all land tenures is under threat from anthropogenic drivers including climate change, invasive species, and habitat loss. This study focuses on private lands, where effective management for wildlife conservation requires locally relevant knowledge about wildlife populations, habitat condition, threatening ecological processes, and social drivers of and barriers to conservation. Collaborative socio-ecological research can inform wildlife management by integrating the place-based ecological and social knowledge of private landholders with the theoretical and applied knowledge of researchers and practitioners, including that of Traditional Owners. In privately-owned landscapes, landholders are often overlooked as a source of local ecological knowledge grounded in learning through continuous embodied interaction with their environment and community. Here we report on WildTracker, a transdisciplinary socio-ecological research collaboration involving 160 landholders in Tasmania, Australia. This wildlife-focused citizen science project generated and integrated local socio-ecological knowledge in the research process. The project gathered quantitative and qualitative data on wildlife ecology, land management practices, and landholder learning via wildlife cameras, sound recorders, workshops, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. Through this on-going collaboration, landholders, researchers, and conservation practitioners established relationships based on mutual learning, gathering and sharing knowledge, and insights about wildlife conservation. Our project documents how local ecological knowledge develops and changes through everyday processes of enquiry and interaction with other knowledge holders including researchers and conservation practitioners. Qualitative insights derived from the direct experience and citizen science practices of landholders were integrated with quantitative scientific assessments of wildlife populations and habitat condition to produce a novel model of collaborative conservation research.

COVID, clay, and the digital: The role of digital media in pottery skill development during the COVID-19 pandemic in Britain

The COVID-19 lockdowns in Britain during 2020 and 2021 deprived people of access to studios and workshops in which we typically understand the learning and practising of skilled crafts to occur through working amongst others with materials. Recent literature on skill and craft has argued that it develops through social, participatory, and embodied processes in shared situated contexts. I argue that attention to the role of digital media within these ecologies is key to understanding how people continued to learn new craft skills during the pandemic. Drawing on Material Engagement Theory and the concept of digital materiality from digital sensory anthropology, I develop a case study around people practising pottery in Britain during the pandemic. I demonstrate how engagements with digital media are central to skill development, highlighting how the ‘digital’ and ‘terrestrial’ cannot be disentangled, and thus emphasising the importance of attending to the total hybrid learning ecology.

Examining the relationships among motivation, informal digital learning of English, and foreign language enjoyment: An explanatory mixed-method study

AbstractThis explanatory mixed-method study seeks to understand the relationships between second language (L2) motivation (including the ideal L2 self and the ought-to L2 self) and students’ informal digital learning of English (IDLE) and whether such relationships are mediated by the most prominent positive emotion – enjoyment. A total of 391 Chinese university students participated in the survey, and 15 of them were interviewed later. Quantitative analysis revealed a strong positive relationship between the ideal L2 self and participants’ IDLE, which was partially mediated by foreign language enjoyment (FLE), while the hypotheses that the ought-to L2 self significantly predicted FLE and IDLE were rejected. The qualitative data added details to how a vivid and elaborate L2 vision contributed to enhanced English learning enjoyment and served as the most influential motivator for IDLE practices. Meanwhile, the external and instrumental motives could not predict Chinese university students’ enjoyment, disempowering them to invest in productive language learning practices in the informal and digitalized environment. The discussion of these findings and pedagogical implications helps to chart the path for utilizing the power of the ideal L2 self to engage Chinese university students with the extramural and digitalized language learning ecology.

Participating in professional development programmes or learning in the wild? Understanding the learning ecologies of Holocaust educators

AbstractHolocaust education, which refers to the teaching and learning of the Holocaust—the systematic genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II—is an essential component of history and social studies education in many countries. Its primary aim is to raise awareness of the Holocaust, promote understanding of its historical significance and develop critical thinking and empathy in students. However, despite the increasing specialisation and institutionalisation of Holocaust education, there is still a lack of understanding of how Holocaust educators acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to teach the subject effectively. This study aims to explore the learning ecologies of a group of Italian Holocaust educators, focusing on their motivations for initial and lifelong learning and their learning practices. Ten in‐depth interviews were conducted with teachers from different subject areas. The results showed that participants were driven by either personal or curricular motivations and interests and used a range of learning approaches for both initial and lifelong learning. Although few participants considered digital technologies and social media as a learning environment, they were found to be useful resources. The study concludes with practical implications for further research.

Project-Based Inquiry (PBI) Global during a Pandemic: A New Learning Ecology Perspective

Building on new learning ecology theory and situated in the COVID-19 pandemic context, a qualitative research design was used to examine student and teacher perspectives on Project-Based Inquiry (PBI) Global. Drawing on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Project-Based Learning (PjBL), PBI Global supports participants toward engaging in inquiry-to-action aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Data sources for this study included transcripts from student and teacher focus groups conducted before, during, and after the PBI Global process. Three themes emerged (1) creating global awareness of water issues, (2) learning to collaborate in remote and hybrid contexts, and (3) enhancing self-efficacy through iterative learning. The discussion focuses on the affordances and challenges of engaging in PBL during non-voluntary online learning, as well as study limitations and directions for future research.

Cultivating a Political Learning Ecology

Abstract This article details a collaboratively designed and taught honors course, Cultures of the Anthropocene: Climate Change and Survivance. The authors invite readers to consider interinstitutional political learning ecologies a viable and vibrant model of instruction for early-career scholars and experienced teachers seeking professional development and a profound pedagogical challenge.

高校劳动教育数字化的发展途径探索

The digitization of education in China is currently centered around teaching digitization, gradually expanding to various application scenarios. The combination of theory and practice, labor ability and professional competence in labor education provides a broader space for the development of digital education. Digital platforms can provide diverse learning pathways, virtual learning communities, digital collaborative technologies, digital learning ecology, and digital education evaluation systems for labor education in universities. This article explores the development path of digitalization of labor education from these five aspects.

Researching Game-Based Learning: A Brief Synthesis Project

The purpose of this research synthesis project is to survey existing digital game-based learning (DGBL) research in order to generate preliminary categories that articulate analytically distinguishable cognitive competencies. These include orientations, attitudes, interactions, and dispositions that enable cognitive development through playing games. We compile an initial literature scan, limiting the language to English, then search via keyword “game-based learning” through the following educational research databases: Eric, Education Source, Communication & Mass Media Complete, Education Index Retrospective, and Teach Reference Center. This returned over 1,500 results, which we refined by filtering out papers focused on gamification, those researching populations outside of educational contexts (e.g., private business and healthcare), systematic and scoping reviews, and papers published before 2010. This focused the results closer to 1,300 papers, which we divided into two categories, research focused on learning ecologies, and research using “motivation” in its key words and/or abstract. One clear and unexpected result was the way in which DGBL research inconsistently discusses motivation, and how it mainly seems to be used as a catch-all for measuring GBL outcomes. This brief synthesis reveals that much more attention needs to be paid to whether and how potentially pat constructs like motivation are being deployed in GBL studies.

Research on the Construction of Technology-rich Classroom Learning Environment to Develop English Language Learning and Higher-order Thinking

Background and Aim: Applying emerging technologies to explore new learning ecology has become the focus of current education reform. Foreign language majors in China were once criticized for their lack of critical thinking abilities. This paper aims to construct a technology-rich classroom learning environment and explore its impact on participants’ English learning and higher-order thinking. Materials and Methods: This research is a quasi-experimental research design using a quantitative research approach. English language teaching experiment was conducted on 60 samples selected by using the purposive sampling method. Participants were university second-year business English majors, and their English listening, speaking and higher-order thinking skills were pre- and post-tested. Data were collected through tests and quantitative questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and paired-sample T-tests on the hypothesis were conducted by using the statistical software Jamovi. Results: Participants showed a high evaluation of the constructed technology-rich classroom learning environment. Their English listening skills and speaking competency have been efficiently improved, especially listening comprehension, speaking content, and language use. Their higher-order thinking was also improved, especially their analytical ability and cognitive maturity. Meanwhile, participants demonstrated a high level of cognitive engagement and learning satisfaction. Conclusion: This study proposed a model for technology-rich learning environment design, as well as a constructivist instructional design model, revealing the mechanism of technology promoting learning and providing relevant methods. The study also demonstrated that the simultaneous development of foreign language learning and higher-order thinking could be achieved in a technology-rich environment. This paper also puts forward suggestions for further enriching instructional design and technology-rich learning environment design.

Discourses, dialogue and diversity in biographical research: An ecology of life and learning

Discourses, dialogue and diversity in biographical research: An ecology of life and learning

A learning ecology-based approach for enhancing Digital Holocaust Memory in European cultural heritage education

This study adopts a conceptual research approach to examine recent developments in Digital Holocaust Memory regarding the use of digital technology for teaching and learning about the Holocaust. In order to promote heritage education, this paper proposes a conceptual framework that links the field of Digital Holocaust Memory with the approach of learning ecologies. A key element of this framework is the idea that technological advances can enhance learning by fostering participatory cultures and empowering users. The aim of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of how digital technology can be used to create meaningful learning experiences about the Holocaust, and to propose a theoretical lens based on an ecological approach to learning. In addition, the study aims to present a framework that can assist students in developing their own Holocaust-related learning experiences. The focus is on understanding Holocaust remembrance and learning as complex, multidirectional and multi-layered phenomena, influenced by the specific learning environment, the use of digital technology, and historical, political and cultural contexts. By taking into account the specific cultural, social and economic characteristics of the learning environment, this framework provides a comprehensive approach to designing educational interventions that meet the needs of learners, teachers and stakeholders.

A view from the garden: Interrupting politics of attainment and re-orienting education towards sustainable futures

There is growing recognition amongst scholars that addressing the current global ecological crisis requires a new ecological awareness, and a different model of education, in order to live together on a ‘planet under pressure’. Against this backdrop, several studies internationally have pointed to initiatives such as school gardens, with the capacity to address sustainability issues, enhance participation, engagement and responsibility of young people from different backgrounds and locales. However, questions remain about the extent to which garden spaces may leverage current educational discourses, and the work of schools, to meet the needs of all. This article draws upon interviews with teachers, head teachers and student teachers who had been involved in growing food with children in school garden spaces. Drawing on the concept of ‘learning ecology’, data illustrate the co-existence of multiple views and purposes of engaging children with gardening in school, and the impact of linear discourses of education framing the teachers’ gaze. Findings from the study are twofold: (i) they illustrate that gardens have the potential to interrupt economic discourses around attainment defined as cognitive gains and (ii) that such awareness is paramount to re-direct attention to that which is often marginalised and forgotten in educational policy discourses.

Machine learning in marine ecology: an overview of techniques and applications

AbstractMachine learning covers a large set of algorithms that can be trained to identify patterns in data. Thanks to the increase in the amount of data and computing power available, it has become pervasive across scientific disciplines. We first highlight why machine learning is needed in marine ecology. Then we provide a quick primer on machine learning techniques and vocabulary. We built a database of ∼1000 publications that implement such techniques to analyse marine ecology data. For various data types (images, optical spectra, acoustics, omics, geolocations, biogeochemical profiles, and satellite imagery), we present a historical perspective on applications that proved influential, can serve as templates for new work, or represent the diversity of approaches. Then, we illustrate how machine learning can be used to better understand ecological systems, by combining various sources of marine data. Through this coverage of the literature, we demonstrate an increase in the proportion of marine ecology studies that use machine learning, the pervasiveness of images as a data source, the dominance of machine learning for classification-type problems, and a shift towards deep learning for all data types. This overview is meant to guide researchers who wish to apply machine learning methods to their marine datasets.

How Adaptive are Adaptive Aspirations: Exploring the Ecology of Organizational Learning

How Adaptive are Adaptive Aspirations: Exploring the Ecology of Organizational Learning

Interrogating the notion of giving voice: designing for polyphony in game-based learning ecologies

ABSTRACT This paper illuminates how a young person and adults learned to design for robust learning in the context of video-game play. We argue that consequential learning can emerge through the intentional design of learning spaces where normative conceptions of novice and expert are re-imagined. Our analyses revealed that everyday digital game play was a rich zone of learning, fostering principled polyphony: the orchestration and symphonic arrangement of multiple voices and tools. Drawing on a cultural historical approach, we show how young people and adults create new social futures, through robust collaboration and the creation of syncretic sociotechnical arrangements.