Human activity, driven by developments in science and engineering, is close to destroying the planet. To move away from this damaging trajectory, we need to develop sustainability-focused science and technologies. This requires a systemic shift, changing the way science and technology is currently learned and practiced. Our work in this area focuses on understanding two inter-related issues:
- How environment-oriented technologies are built by rural innovators
- How environment-oriented actions and values are developed through farming practice
Insights from these projects are used to propose new curricula and policy directions, particularly related to engineering education and environment education. This work is informed by, and seeks to extend, situated and embodied cognition theories.
Significant Publications
- Doing to being: farming actions in a community coalesce into pro-environment motivations and values pdf
- Beyond Efficiency: Engineering for Sustainability Requires Solving for Pattern pdf
- Sum, Quorum, Tether: design principles for external representations that promote sustainability pdf
- The socio-technical connection is plastic, but only when design starts from problem identification pdf
- Developing a curricular framework for ecological sensibilities: Exploring the activity of urban gardening as a relevant and critical intervention pdf