Learning Ecology Research Articles

INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUES IN COVID-19

This paper explores how conversations about digital culture, innovation, and online pedagogy can inform practices accentuated during the pandemic. The immediatism adopted by universities around the world due to the urgency of lockdowns is problematic in many ways. Firstly, the little time to switch to an online environment, advance online delivery, and ensure assessment is undeniable. Second, the extent to which universities were at different levels of digitally ready infrastructure and related staff and students’ development, training, and readiness to learn and teach remotely is also challenging. However, research shows the important role of digital culture in pedagogical choices inside the classroom, as much as it considers how individuals cope with technological innovation in their daily online practices. From a Freirean perspective, pedagogy is reflective and transformative and online pedagogies can reconceptualize knowledge and practice, minimize physical and intangible spaces, and redefine time, constructing new ecologies of learning for an inclusive pedagogy. This paper addresses the above by presenting data from interviews with instructors, administrative staff, and students at three universities in Brazil, Canada, and the UK. This qualitative study uses intercultural concepts of pedagogical innovation, and how participants have adapted their practices in digital culture. We further explore the pedagogical implications of their attitudes towards online learning, the reconstruction of their self-awareness, and aim at corroborating future comprehensions on how COVID-19 will impact higher education. This paper is timely in problematizing concepts that are important to understanding and dealing with digital culture, innovation, and online pedagogies in learning contexts post-COVID.

Lifelong informal language learning in the digital age: An ecological perspective on three learners’ learning journeys

ABSTRACT Informed by ecological approaches to second language development (SLD), the current study looked into three adult English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ quests of engaging in lifelong, informal language learning in the digital age. Data from in-depth interviews revealed that popular culture presented in different media forms offered learners with an entry point into English learning as well as continuous sources of information and entertainment in the digital age. In their informal language learning, the participants all stressed the important role of mastering the fundamental language elements (e.g. vocabulary and diction) and being able to apply their knowledge to real-life settings. Their depictions of their ideal self also revealed their learning goals and future aspirations. These research outcomes contribute to our understanding of the complex ecology of lifelong informal language learning in the digital age. As lifelong learning becomes ever more important in the modern knowledge-based society, these research results provide insights into ways of supporting learners inside and outside the formal classroom boundaries.

Bridging the ‘dual lives’: school socialization of young bi/multilinguals in the eyes of EFL teachers

ABSTRACT Over the last decade, teachers in Poland have observed an increase in the number of primary school children with bi/multilingual and culturally diverse backgrounds. Regardless of their complex experiences, they face many cultural, social, linguistic and educational challenges upon entering primary school. English teachers are often at the forefront, helping them navigate through the intricacy of their seemingly ‘dual lives’ (Li and Zhu. 2013. “Translanguaging Identities and Ideologies: Creating Transnational Space Through Flexible Multilingual Practices Amongst Chinese University Students in the UK.” Applied Linguistics 34 (5): 516–535, 531). The paper presents the results of an interview study among 23 Polish EFL teachers with a view towards investigating Polish EFL teachers’ experiences and ways of working with bi/multilingual children directed at child integration and socialization into the new environment. The collected data was coded following the content analysis approach (Krippendorff. 2003. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) and analysed from the ecological perspective (see Bronfenbrenner. 1979. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; van Lier. 2004. The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers), whereby successful child socialization was observed to be dependent on an intricate network of interrelated factors. The role of the exosystem, i.e. the school system, has been found the least supportive due to the absence of a comprehensive multilingual policy, and lack of teacher support via teacher training, all of which have been concluded to be of urgent need in the emergent multilingual setting.

Anatomy of an educational change: The safe learning model, Sierra Leone

This paper undertakes a critical analysis of a planned change, the Safe Learning Model (SLM), devised over time by Concern Worldwide, and implemented in 100 primary or elementary schools in a rural district of Sierra Leone. We situate the documentation pertaining to the SLM (micro) within its wider national (meso) and international (macro) context of influential policy texts. We undertake a mixed methods analysis of these macro, meso and micro documents, interrogated through the prism of various change paradigms (scientific management, progressivism, critical theory, teacher professionalism and social movement) and in doing establish where these various document clusters, their explicit and implicit influences, may be located along the arc of change paradigms, thus surfacing their ideological assumptions, intent and influences. The paper concludes that in seeking to improve the quality of teaching, learning, and living in this instance, scientific management casts long shadows. The power, perspectives and financial influence of international agencies dominate change discourses whereby ‘learning crises’ require urgent responses in the form of testing and measuring that prevail over more expansive pedagogical capacity building. Consequently, perpetuating a ‘weighing the pig’ mindset downplays or ignores the ecology of teaching and learning, particularly the centrality of teachers, as professionals and role models, more likely to be compliant than transformative.

Teaching Professional Development and Learning Career Paths: Autobiographical Narrations by Science Teachers from Chile

Different studies show that personal, social and educational aspects, among others, interact in the continuous learning of teachers, with certain specificities in science teachers. A study was conducted with teachers who participated in the Program of Scientific Inquiry for Science Education (ICEC) of the Ministry of Education, in a university in the center of the country, using a biographical-narrative study with micro-stories. The professional development of science teachers and some learning generated from the Covid 19 pandemic was described. For this purpose, the study was conducted in two cases, asking about the story of being a teacher in Case 1, and, about the story of being a teacher in the pandemic in Case 2. Case 1 showed the place of initial teacher training in the biographies, the relationship between professional and personal learning, as well as the transcendental and social meanings of the teaching profession. Case 2 showed the prominence of collective and individual professional learning in contexts of crisis, as well as the new definitions of the professional role. These findings are discussed in relation to learning ecologies, personal learning environments, and inquiry in professional development.

Synergizing learning in and beyond the classroom in study abroad context: accounts from CSL sojourners in China

ABSTRACT Adopting a learning ecology perspective, this study examined sojourners’ formal classroom learning and the interactions between their learning in the classroom and their learning in the community. Data for the study were collected from semi-structured interviews and classroom observations involving 14 sojourners learning Chinese as a second language (CSL) at a Chinese higher education institution. The study found that the CSL sojourners made conscious efforts to create a reciprocal relationship between their second language (L2) interactions in the local community and their instructed learning in the programme, but in doing this they encountered a series of challenges. When these learners encountered challenges in attempting to use local interactions to support their instructed learning, they relied on communicative instruction in the classroom. While much of the in-class instruction that they received did not support their daily communication needs in the local community, several instructional activities involving the local community were identified to play a positive role in the process. These findings suggest that L2 study abroad programmes and classrooms should be reviewed/modified to more systematically encourage students to integrate their learning experiences across in-class and out-of-class contexts and supports from teacher education need to be in place as well.

Creatividad en momentos de pandemia: Entrevista a la Dra. María Cándida Moraes

In this interview, Dr. Maria Candida Moraes shares her opinions and points of view on issues related to creativity and how it can operate in situations such as the pandemic from complex thinking and a transdisciplinary perspective. Maria Candida, recognized by ASOCREA with the “Ricardo Marín Creativity Award”, is a world reference in an ecosystem pedagogy. From this ecosystem point of view, it provides us with a new look at creativity, as a complex and transdisciplinary process, and therefore, relational, emergent and transcendent self-ecoorganizer. In times of crisis such as the pandemic, education and creativity are more essential than ever to face them successfully. She explains how she has turned the pandemic into “creative adversity” by dedicating himself to writing a synthesis book of his entire intellectual and academic life with the title “The Ecosystem Paradigm: for a new ecology of human learning”. His words always bring light to the mind, peace to the heart and openness to the conscience.

A teaching design of ecological class based on immersive virtual reality spatial fusion.

This study investigated the effectiveness of the teaching design scheme called the Immersive Virtual Reality Teaching Model (IVRTM) on a small learner population at the researcher’s university. The study was based on one-term experimental teaching among the undergraduates. An ecological class was set up, extending classroom teaching to 3-layer teaching space, including a physical layer (classroom-based), an information layer (internet-based), and a virtual-reality layer (VR-based). The research aimed (1) to create an online-offline spatial ecological learning environment for higher learning efficiency with a series of learning activities, (2) to uncover the learning effectiveness of VR assistance in oral English, and (3) to acquire the students’ attitudes toward the IVRTM. The study approaches involved literature review, empirical method, questionnaire, interviews, and data analysis. The findings would have a positive significance for the promotion of new technology applications in SLA teaching and provide novel and preliminary references for teachers pursuing an effective teaching design of ecological classes based on IVR spatial fusion.

The feminist research-creation pedagogies of BIPOC women’s cultural counter-mapping: Ecological learning through interrelationality, geontology, and cardinal ethics

Examining the connections between geontologic and interrelational theories of place counter-mapping practices offers important methodological and pedagogic lessons in environmental sustainability education. Notably, the cultural counter-mapping undertaken by BIPOC women can educate on how cardinal ethics and mapping underpin ecological learning. Using Elizabeth Povinelli’s geontologies, Rosi Braidotti’s post-human knowledge, and Felix Guattari’s three ecologies, in relation-with concepts of interrelationality in BIPOC scholarship: specifically, belonging (bell hooks, Aileen Moreton-Robinson), and the kinstillatory (Emily Johnson and Karyn Recollet) the article proposes how interrelational theories and geontologies reside in such scholarship and are central to environmental and sustainability learning. The article then exemplifies the impacts of BIPOC counter-mapping practices on environmental sustainability education through a research-creation project into the devastating ecological effects of the 2019/2020 Australian bushfires. Using the concept of cardinal ethics and a methodological protocol called inefficient mapping, the project, called Mapping Extinction, generates counter-mappings of emergent data into the ‘red list’ of Australian biodiversity facing dangerous levels of depletion after the fires. The article describes the guidance and learning offered by BIPOC women’s counter-mapping in theorising ecological knowledge in the Anthropocene.

Social media in the learning ecologies of communications students: Identifying profiles from students’ perspective

Social media can be a support during the initial training of communication professionals, although most studies on social media and learning have mainly focused on other professional groups. The purpose of this article is to explore how communication students learn and their use of social media platforms, in order to identify the role of social media in supporting communication students’ learning. Data was collected using a questionnaire sent to communication students of the UOC and analyzed using a clustering technique, to identify student profiles based on how they organize their learning and their use of social media platforms. Our results suggest that there are 5 main student profiles: (i) students that learn through many contexts with strong support of Wikipedia, Blogs and YouTube; (ii) students with preference for academically guided learning resources; (iii) students with preference for informal and digital learning contexts, supported by social networks; (iv) students with preference for physical and formal contexts with a slight support of interactive social media platforms and (v) students detached academically with low use of learning resources and occasional use of social media platforms. Findings show that in the formative stage, there is a different degree of utility of social media among communication students, with a division between platforms that we could designate as more static and sources of information (Wikipedia, blogs or YouTube) and more interactive and dynamic (Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn). The findings of this article can help to inform and make communication studies more flexible, collaborative and personalized oriented. In follow up studies, it would be interesting to delve further into how COVID-19 has affected the role of social media platforms.

Rendering Artful and Empathic Arts-Based Performance as Action

There is a critical need to consider ways to enrich the educational experiences and well-being of adolescents when the lack of empathy in the world is high. This paper presents the concepts of Artful Empathy and Artful and Empathic Learning Ecology. The concepts are exemplified from a multi-site case study within Australian secondary visual art studio classrooms. The article demonstrates how learning and making art in an artfully empathic ecology can support the legitimacy of diverse and marginalized voices. Arts-based performative approaches may facilitate empathic knowing across disciplines with global traction.

Deep learning as a tool for ecology and evolution

Abstract Deep learning is driving recent advances behind many everyday technologies, including speech and image recognition, natural language processing and autonomous driving. It is also gaining popularity in biology, where it has been used for automated species identification, environmental monitoring, ecological modelling, behavioural studies, DNA sequencing and population genetics and phylogenetics, among other applications. Deep learning relies on artificial neural networks for predictive modelling and excels at recognizing complex patterns. In this review we synthesize 818 studies using deep learning in the context of ecology and evolution to give a discipline‐wide perspective necessary to promote a rethinking of inference approaches in the field. We provide an introduction to machine learning and contrast it with mechanistic inference, followed by a gentle primer on deep learning. We review the applications of deep learning in ecology and evolution and discuss its limitations and efforts to overcome them. We also provide a practical primer for biologists interested in including deep learning in their toolkit and identify its possible future applications. We find that deep learning is being rapidly adopted in ecology and evolution, with 589 studies (64%) published since the beginning of 2019. Most use convolutional neural networks (496 studies) and supervised learning for image identification but also for tasks using molecular data, sounds, environmental data or video as input. More sophisticated uses of deep learning in biology are also beginning to appear. Operating within the machine learning paradigm, deep learning can be viewed as an alternative to mechanistic modelling. It has desirable properties of good performance and scaling with increasing complexity, while posing unique challenges such as sensitivity to bias in input data. We expect that rapid adoption of deep learning in ecology and evolution will continue, especially in automation of biodiversity monitoring and discovery and inference from genetic data. Increased use of unsupervised learning for discovery and visualization of clusters and gaps, simplification of multi‐step analysis pipelines, and integration of machine learning into graduate and postgraduate training are all likely in the near future.

Texas field crickets (Gryllus texensis) use visual cues to place learn but perform poorly when intra- and extra-maze cues conflict.

Central place foraging field crickets are an ideal system for studying the adaptive value of learning and memory, but more research is needed on ecologically relevant cognition in these invertebrates. Here, we test the visuospatial place learning of Texas field crickets (Gryllus texensis) in a radial arm maze. Our study expands previous work on G. texensis cognition for accuracy measures and extends our previous findings on females to both sexes. Additionally, our study examines whether crickets use intra- or extra-maze cues to locate a food reward using a maze rotation that puts the cues in conflict. We found that male and female crickets improved performance over trials when measured by accuracy variables but not latency variables. Thigmotaxis negatively impacted performance in both sexes. In a reward-absent trial, both male and female crickets demonstrated place memory. When intra- and extra-maze cues conflicted during a rotation trial, crickets' performance was not better than chance. Our rotation results suggest that crickets may experience reciprocal overshadowing of conflicting cues - a result most often seen in other taxa with conflicting multi-modal cues. We conclude that crickets do not rely solely on: (1) a single-cue association, (2) route-following, or (3) their own scent cues to navigate the maze. Instead, male and female Texas field crickets seem to learn the location of the reward using a combination of proximal and distal cues. The possibility to test large numbers of wild-caught or laboratory-reared individuals opens the door to future investigations on the evolutionary ecology of visuospatial learning in these invertebrates.

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

Learning new words by reading books: Does semantic information help?

Encountering new words during reading is a common experience of any adult reader and it constitutes an important source of word knowledge. Despite the ubiquity of this phenomenon, studies remain scarce in adults. Here, we addressed new word acquisition in adults using a natural contextual exposure, and we focused on the influence of context informativeness on orthographic learning. Indeed, previous studies suggest that the availability of semantic information plays an important role in orthographic learning in adults, but no such advantage was found in children. We hypothesised that this discrepancy comes from the fact that new word learning was examined almost only through artificial settings in adults. On the contrary, in the present study, adult participants were exposed to new words by reading a book. Half of the new words were embedded in informative contexts (easy to infer new word meaning) and the other half in less informative contexts. Both recall and recognition tasks were used to assess orthographic and semantic learning. The results showed efficient learning of the orthographic form and no reliable effect of the context informativeness. Regarding semantic learning, we found that if a word was correctly spelled, its definition was more likely to be retrieved. This shows that the orthographic and semantic dimensions of a word co-occurring in context are likely to influence each other during lexical acquisition. More generally, the present experiment showed that using an ecological learning design is essential to understand the mechanism of new word learning.

Extending a learning ecology with virtual reality mobile technology: oral proficiency outcomes and students’ perceptions

ABSTRACT Purpose This paper aimed to explore the potential of virtual reality (VR) to develop the oral proficiency of English as Foreign Language (EFL) students and their perceptions of using VR mobile technology in EFL learning. Design/methodology/approach Drawn from an ecological perspective utilizing a mixed methods design, 23 students in an undergraduate English language program were invited to take part in a VR intervention with pre- and post-test assessments on oral proficiency, followed by individual face-to-face interviews. Findings and originality/value The quantitative findings showed that there were significant changes in overall oral proficiency, with notable differences in fluency and coherence, lexical resource, and pronunciation, and a slightly significant difference in grammatical range and accuracy. Interviews with the students revealed detailed affordances of VR in supporting the language learning process. Findings also indicated potential challenges and limitations that can arise from the use of VR mobile technology in EFL classrooms.

Expanding learning environments in initial teacher education

ABSTRACT The development of a collaborative culture in the teaching profession is a challenge that ought to be addressed in initial teacher education. The involvement in a European programme that connects different educational institutions allowed student teachers to explore a learning environment created to enhance the use of technology, foreign languages and innovative methodologies. Student teachers from two countries, Italy and Spain, used digital resources to collaborate and design a project for kindergarten and primary children. By means of a qualitative study the impact of the involvement in a teacher network and the actions that must be undertaken so as to take into account learning ecologies in university teaching was analysed. In this case study, the voices and perceptions of all the participants are shown highlighting the suitability, opportunities and challenges of the involvement in a teacher collaborative network in initial teacher education. The positive impact on teaching practices suggests the potential of expanding student teachers learning environments created by digital technology.

Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Sustainable Learning In Rural South Africa

Calls for a decolonized curriculum in South Africa are gaining momentum. Contrary to the school curriculum that privileges knowledge from a western perspective, indigenous knowledge systems appreciate and draw from local content and forms of knowing. A number of studies have expressed the value of indigenous knowledge systems, and the need for educational processes to be properly contextualised within the local knowledge and language in South Africa. This paper suggests a break away from the current western modalities in teaching and learning and argues for unlocking and unleashing indigenous [local and latent] knowledge systems through decolonizing the curriculum. However, the uptake of such in the midst of a longstanding 'colonized' curriculum seems to be daunting. Guided by Appreciative inquiry, the paper reports on the three rural teachers' understanding towards sustainable learning through indigenous narratives as they consciously work against western hegemony and ideology (epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies). Rural learning ecologies in South Africa are constituted by over ten million learners. The learners are expected to learn western knowledge and apply such in search of sustainable livelihoods. Data generated through these stories, analysed through critical discourse analysis (at textual, social and discursive levels). The study finds that dislodging the dominant western epistemologies demystifies authenticity of learning practices, learning content and embraces indigenous communities and their knowledge. The implication involves the appreciation of indigenous knowledge systems as genuine and acceptable knowledge that may not necessarily need to be sanctioned though western modes.

Utilizing theory to elucidate the work of creating equity for transformation within the science classroom

AbstractIn this paper, we outline how science teachers might engage in the work of creating educational equity. While acknowledging the historical inherent inequities associated with issues of access, opportunities to engage in science learning for individuals of marginalized identities (e.g., BIPOC individuals and women), and achievement, we broaden this definition to include social justice as a framework by which we can develop opportunities for the fostering of students' affinity identities with science. To this end, we draw on theorizations of equity within educational research, specifically discussed as excellence, equality, fairness, a zero‐sum game, and most recently, social justice. Additionally, we utilize McKinney de Royston and Nasir's (2017) Racialized Learning Ecologies framework. This framework provides a useful lens to notice the layers of (in)equity within education. We then extend this ecological model into science education and present three lenses (i.e., layers) through which equity operates within science teaching and learning. We conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of doing the work of equity, that is, recognizing, interpreting, and redressing inequity in science classrooms. Ultimately, we provide an actionable definition of equity that has the potential to facilitate transformative and socially just science teaching and learning.

Transitions and trajectories for school students requiring additional support: a local lens

ABSTRACT Background In many countries, educational opportunities and choices may differ according to factors related to location. This may have a significant impact on young people’s life chances and trajectories. The in-depth, ethnographic study reported here focuses attention on rural/non-rural variations in transition programmes for school students requiring additional support. Purpose The research sought to explore why, seemingly counterintuitively, students requiring additional support in rural Swedish areas might experience more successful transitions than students in some less rural locations. Methods Data included field observations from selected municipalities and interviews with school staff and local officials. Using themes drawn from the data, the Local Learning Ecologies framework was adopted as an analysis tool to capture the detail of relevant macro-, micro- and intermediate-level factors and experiences. Findings Fine-grained analysis of the rich data suggested that the national expansion of school choice and decentralisation in Sweden has affected the organisation of transition programmes. In particular, decentralisation has led to the concentration of national programme provision in city centres, meaning that some students in municipalities may have abundant options but require substantial commuting to access them. Overall, important factors for successful transitions may include short distances between school institutions (facilitating information flows); collaboration between teachers, other professionals and students, and clear options for students. Conclusions The study highlights that although decentralisation may have, on the face of it, appeared to broaden options for young people in some (particularly commuter-belt) municipalities, their trajectories appear to have become more opaque and choices potentially more restricted. In contrast, short distances between institutions and better collaboration between staff, students and local entrepreneurs in rural municipalities seem to provide clearer options for students within transition programmes.