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In this article, we explore some of the barriers that prevent learning about grand challenges. By grand challenges, we refer to transformational social and environmental issues and the critical barriers toward addressing them. Despite recent research contributions, initiatives, and calls for action to focus on such concerns, relatively little is known about the different barriers that hinder learning about grand challenges. To explore these issues, we draw from Rayner’s (2012) concept of uncomfortable knowledge, defined as knowledge that is disagreeable to organizations because it may challenge their value base, self-perception, organizing principles, or sources of legitimacy. Focusing on the example of recent programmatic attempts to advance “responsible education” in business schools, we identify three barriers to learning about grand challenges: Cognitive overload, emotional detachment, and organizational obliviousness. We conclude by outlining several implications on how to overcome these barriers, adding to recent academic and policy debates on how to make business school education more attuned to the transformational and social challenges of our time.

This chapter introduces the topic of cooperation and co-innovation between the audiovisual media and education sectors. It first discusses the emergence of educational film approximately a hundred years go – together with a new institutional framework, industry media, rulebooks, etc. It then discusses the ways public service media have addressed educational programming over the decades, including developing complex cross-media strategies and educational content databases more recently. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to the emergence of educational digital games, with their own institutional setups, production cultures, and training programmes. The chapter points, however, to a relative lack of cooperation between commercial game producers and educational institutions to date.

Purpose – The aim of this study is to determine the effects of inquiry instruction incorporating with STEM learning on Chemistry Education of Malikussaleh University students’ science process skills and science attitudes.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The pre-experimental design, which is a mixed method approach is used in the study that included a pretest-posttest one group model and descriptive quantitative.

Findings – As a result of data analysis that STEM learning significantly enhances students’ science process skills and attitudes toward inquiry instruction. This study examines how participation in a semester long inquiry-based STEM learning project that involves interdisciplinary skills, sociological research on attitudes, and behaviors enhances the scientific and quantitative literacies of STEM students.

Research Limitations/Implications – Quantitative research is needed to determine the more common effects of learning outcomes. However, this study only determines a self-assessment on science attitudes. The other one is a limitation on the participants and reviewing aspects of learning with more variables in order to obtain more optimal results.

Practical Implications – The results of this study have practical implications in terms of hands-on activities. The learning model can be used to explain the concept of multidisciplinary studies and particularly to students and their parents. It will be a useful model for lecturers, personal tutors, and any other practitioners involved in hands-on activities.

Originality/Value – This paper innovative at a conceptual level of education development for students, graduates, and it is very simple descriptive papers. It will be of value to anybody with an interest in education competitiveness issues.

The chapter concludes the section on cross-innovation and convergence processes between audiovisual media industries and the education sector. It addresses, first, that these processes are not driven by any specific technology, but by two broad and interdependent processes – individualisation that makes people in insecure careers search for personalised learning opportunities and the experience economy that produces expectations for learning experiences to be pleasurable and fun, that is, gamified. The chapter demonstrates the emergence of EdTech as a new dialogic subsector operating between the publicly operating education sector and the private media and information and communication technology industries. It demonstrates the inherent institutional diversity in and around this subsector and discusses the nature of the dialogues constituting it. It, lastly, addresses the risks deriving from global platformisation to the education sector and demonstrates how Estonia’s government-run platforms, effectively cross-innovation systems linking teachers, learners and content providers in dynamic ways, could present feasible alternatives to the global platforms.

Investments in gender training for agricultural researchers have not attained expected outcomes, bringing into question the efficacy of training approaches used. New approaches for transformative gender training need to draw on lessons learned from previous courses. This chapter analyses short gender training courses identified using a scoping methodology. Selected courses offered between 2005 and 2015 for scientists in Eastern Africa were critiqued against a theoretical framework for transformative gender training. Also shared is a training model (Gender Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation course) that addresses gaps in previous courses. The chapter identifies critical lessons for facilitating transformative gender training for non-gender research practitioners which include the need for inter-disciplinary grounding in the disciplines of gender and agriculture, having a phased course delivery and the value of continuous technical support during and after training. Gender training models should also allow for the deepening of gender awareness and consciousness by providing safe spaces for personal reflections on the root causes of gender inequalities and for the questioning of the internalized norms and biases.

Diversity management is seen as a decisive factor for ensuring the development of socially responsible innovations (Beacham and Shambaugh, 2011; Sonntag, 2014; López, 2015; Uebernickel et al., 2015). However, many diversity management approaches fail due to a one-sided consideration of diversity (Thomas and Ely, 2019) and a lacking linkage between the prevailing organizational culture and the perception of diversity in the respective organization. Reflecting the importance of diverse perspectives, research institutions have a special responsibility to actively deal with diversity, as they are publicly funded institutions that drive socially relevant development and educate future generations of developers, leaders and decision-makers. Nevertheless, only a few studies have so far dealt with the influence of the special framework conditions of the science system on diversity management. Focusing on the interdependency of the organizational culture and diversity management especially in a university research environment, this chapter aims in a first step to provide a theoretical perspective on the framework conditions of a complex research organization in Germany in order to understand the system-specific factors influencing diversity management. In a second step, an exploratory cluster analysis is presented, investigating the perception of diversity and possible influencing factors moderating this perception in a scientific organization. Combining both steps, the results show specific mechanisms and structures of the university research environment that have an impact on diversity management and rigidify structural barriers preventing an increase of diversity. The quantitative study also points out that the management level takes on a special role model function in the scientific system and thus has an influence on the perception of diversity. Consequently, when developing diversity management approaches in research organizations, it is necessary to consider the top-down direction of action, the special nature of organizational structures in the university research environment as well as the special role of the professorial level as role model for the scientific staff.