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The purpose of this paper is to explore the designed cultural ecology of a hip-hop and computational science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) camp and the ways in which that ecology contributed to culturally sustaining learning experiences for middle school youth. In using the principles of hip-hop as a CSP for design, the authors question how and what practices were supported or emerged and how they became resources for youth engagement in the space.

The overall methodology was design research. Through interpretive analysis, it uses an example of four Black girls participating in the camp as they build a computer-controlled DJ battle station.

Through a close examination of youth interactions in the designed environment – looking at their communication, spatial arrangements, choices and uses of materials and tools during collaborative project work – the authors show how a learning ecology, designed based on hip-hop and computational practices and shaped by the history and practices of the dance center where the program was held, provided access to ideational, relational, spatial and material resources that became relevant to learning through computational making. The authors also show how youth engagement in the hip-hop computational making learning ecology allowed practices to emerge that led to expansive learning experiences that redefine what it means to engage in computing.

Implications include how such ecologies might arrange relations of ideas, tools, materials, space and people to support learning and positive identity development.

Supporting culturally sustaining computational STEM pedagogies, the article argues two original points in informal youth learning 1) an expanded definition of computing based on making grammars and the cultural practices of hip-hop, and 2) attention to cultural ecologies in designing and understanding computational STEM learning environments.

This paper aims to investigate the potential for digital badges to support alternate learning and career pathways in formal and informal learning environments. Stakeholder groups in higher education and industry discussed how digital badges might transform current processes of admitting undergraduate students and hiring young professionals.

This research uses a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with 30 stakeholders in higher education and the technology industry.

Interview participants expressed optimism about the potential for digital badges to make learning pathways visible to learners and external audiences and to promote equity in STEM (STEM: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and careers. Participants noted several obstacles, largely focused on issues of credibility and logistics of working with badges across settings.

Though the research approach is limited in geographic scope, the findings have broad applicability and insight for the use of digital badges in general.

Education policymakers, employers and scholars will be able to use the insights from this investigation in their efforts to find innovative ways to expand and diversify the STEM workforce, as well as support a wider range of learners than is currently supported by initiatives aligned with the school-to-workforce pipeline metaphor.

This paper directly confronts issues of real-world applications of digital badges by discussing practical implications with college admissions officers and employers. The current study fills a need for research that investigates the use of digital badges across – as opposed to within – contexts.

Describes how first‐year civil engineering students interpreted the content and structure of an ecology course. Students’ learning processes were analysed from an intentional perspective, i.e. a perspective that takes into account the students’ educational aims and conceptions of the study situation. Interviews were carried out with six civil engineering students who had taken the ecology course. Classroom observations were carried out and the dialogue between the lecturers and the students recorded. Interviews were transcribed and analysed from an intentional perspective, i.e. meaning is ascribed to the students’ actions and utterances in terms of intent. Students contextualised the content of the ecology course in different ways – within natural science, cultural, social and political, applied and professional, and existential contexts. Students found the content of the ecology course to be a question of value judgement. Also, among the students there were feelings of accusation on behalf of engineers as professionals. Learning processes among the students were analysed in terms of contextual awareness and contextual inconsistency. Students mainly enhanced their knowledge in the sense that they tended to elaborate concepts solely on an empirical level and learned more facts. Suggests that environmental issues can be seen and dealt with from natural science, social science and philosophical perspectives, and that it is important that these different perspectives are explicitly addressed on a meta‐level. The tendency to enhance the amount of content matter to be taught without considering the meta‐level issues can cause the students problems in their efforts to learn. Suggested that the premises for teaching certain content should be made explicit by the teacher. To know why certain content has been included in the teaching may be of considerable help for the students in formulating relevant learning projects.

This article presented the results of studies that examined the appropriateness of the content, readability of printed learning materials and the effectiveness of external resources in ecology course offered at Universitas Terbuka. To integrate external resources, links to their websites were provided in the printed materials.

An in-depth interview with a content expert was employed to review the course content, while digital and printed learning materials were reviewed for readability and to determine the usefulness of the external resources. A total of 47 students completed surveys and a focus group discussion that included in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 selected students.

The results revealed that the content of ecology course was conceptually valid. However, two key aspects needed to be emphasized, including the application of ecology phenomena for further development of the science and its applications in real-life situations. Regarding readability, students stated that the course materials were easily comprehended. In terms of the benefit, 79% of the students found the external resources interesting and helpful in understanding the learning materials.

Printed learning materials were crucial for students, specifically those residing in remote areas. Therefore, the institution should ensure that the materials were high-quality, easy to comprehend and enriched with up-to-date content/materials through scannable links to external resources.

The value added to the findings of this study was that the provision of links to external resources within printed learning materials improves students' understanding of the course content.

Three distinctive domains of inquiry in comparative and international education (CIE) point to epistemic fault lines that simultaneously enable and disable the possibilities for social transformation in the cultural ecologies that demarcate, but also entangle, the so-called Global South and the North. Historically, these domains of inquiry – language/multilingualism, education, and development – engage arenas in which ideas about wellbeing, social arrangements, and the politics of knowledge (and of power) are constantly constructed, contested, and renegotiated. This analysis pinpoints some of the discursive technologies, which guarantee that active scholarly innovations and differentiation proceed in ways that ultimately leave intact the territorialized regionalizations of development differences. It reflects on ongoing fieldwork from the South to highlight three spheres of social control, and struggle, illustrative of the coloniality of difference and the expanding institutionalization of learning (as schooling) in an era of global interventionism. These loci – the sources of knowledge traditions, the sites of its enactment, and the power of knowledge transactions – represent overlapping activation points through which education interventions both stimulate and stultify social transformations. Specifically, the sources, sites, and power of knowledge offer empirical and discursive tools for historiographic reconsideration of the role of linguistic diversity and education in social change processes, and, crucially, for shifting critical focus from merely the occidentality of contemporary education traditions to the universalism of its social imaginaries. In this critical reading of new understandings of language(s) as invention, therefore, lies analytic opportunities for rethinking epistemic dilemmas in linking education and “development” in CIE scholarship.

Worldwide, dichotomies exist within macro- and micro-educational planning of systems of education. Inner Mongolia represents an interesting case in the sense that its educational system has been influenced by its historical and passive reliance on China’s political reforms and ongoing identity issues. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how cultural ecology and isomorphism can be compared and managed in the form of a dualism, involving complex organisational structures, operational procedures, and learning outcomes. These may be macro in focus but may also promote the development of social and cultural identity at micro levels. Emphasis is placed upon examining cultural ecology, a concept advocated by the cultural anthropologist, Roy Rappaport, but with concern for embracing indigenous knowledge as a complement to traditional educational attainment.

This discussion further considers the feasibility and implementation of a rubric (the Denman-James Rubric (DJR)) that is a custom-tailored pilot project designed to visually demonstrate one’s mastery of creativity and communication, reflective thinking, and analytical and problem solving skills. A demonstration of the DJR is presented to highlight the progress made in its usage and utility in Inner Mongolia and elsewhere.

A primary research goal is to investigate whether differing teaching and learning approaches and the use of alternative assessments over a period of time can promote, encourage, and empower students into taking greater ownership of their learning.

This narrative is an original look at Inner Mongolia’s educational system and how it has been influenced by its historical and passive reliance on China’s political reforms and ongoing identity issues.

This chapter provides a theoretical framework that links ecojustice education to concepts of eco-intelligence and collective social intelligence. This theoretical framework informs the creation of innovative university academies that highlight sustainability and the revitalization of the cultural commons. The culture commons or those intergenerational face-to-face practices are evident in all communities worldwide. These practices include craft knowledge, the knowledge of growing, cultivating and preparing food, medicinal practices, and other forms of knowledge that are largely non-monetized and do not contribute to environmental degradation. Academies are sustained multiday events that incorporate the knowledge and work of activists, community members, faculty, and students who come together for the purpose of providing a platform for the discussion and resolution of critical environmental issues. Two examples are provided and details about the construction and execution of these events are provided.