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The visualisation of knowledge structures through concept mapping can be employed to reveal critical links between theory and practice. This allows consideration of particular disciplinary knowledge structures and the active role of the student in manipulating these structures to gain understanding, in a manner that can encourage students to contribute to the evolution of practice. The focus on knowledge structures can highlight the relationship between the curriculum and the discipline, and provides a tool to facilitate the integration of contemporary educational theories that may underpin teaching and curriculum development, such as learning styles, threshold concepts, conceptual stasis and semantic gravity. Visualisation invites original connections to be made between ideas and re-orientated to reveal new ways of conceptualising teaching at university: to include the structural transformation of knowledge as a potential threshold concept in higher education.

While Cooperrider (2001, p. 32) suggests that appreciative inquiry is about “the artful creation of positive imagery,” most of the literature that describes the process of artful creation explains it as one in which the organizational members simply talk about these new images, vs. actually engaging in the creation of artistic representations of the desired future. This chapter moves the appreciative inquiry literature beyond the metaphorical understanding of the “art of” appreciative inquiry in order to reveal and explain how practitioners are actually engaging organizations in the artful creation of positive anticipatory imagery. In this chapter, the literature that labels and describes the process of artful creation in organizations is reviewed, described, and synthesized into five propositions – ultimately creating a framework for understanding artful creation as a unique organizational discourse: an aesthetic discourse. These five propositions reveal the common characteristics of artful creation: (1) presentational knowledge/language; (2) mediated dialogue; (3) symbolic constructions that act as metaphorical representation; (4) collaborative inquiry/co-creation; and (5) window to the unconscious. The chapter concludes by addressing the implications, seeking to answer the question “What is the value of an organization engaging with the process of artful creation?” Finally, the chapter suggests that the five propositions may guide future research in two areas: (a) the practice of the artful creation of positive anticipatory imagery in appreciative inquiry; and (b) the further development of a theoretical framework for understanding the “art of” appreciative inquiry as aesthetic discourse.

Undeniably, plastic usage is predominant in our daily lives, featuring in an endless list of items such as bottles, disposables, packaging and fabric. At prima facie, plastic disposal causes irreversible damage to the natural environment, especially oceans. However, it also impacts human health and wellbeing, especially since its toxins or microplastics find themselves in the food chain. Since plastic causes a myriad of negative effects on the natural environment and human health, the urgency to ban it has been addressed by international organizations and the European Union (EU). Being the smallest member state within the EU, Malta presents an insightful case study of how different levels of governance and a plethora of state and non-state actors engage in a game-like interaction. To this effect, this chapter sheds light on the implications of plastic pollution vis-á-vis sustainability and wellbeing, addressed through multi-level governance. The research core revolves around an investigation on the institutional intricacies in addressing the wicked problem of single-use plastic by mapping out the different layers of policy-making mechanisms that are involved, ranging from local to European and international governance, and from governmental to civil society centric strategies. A positivist ontology is activated to underpin the exploratory nature of this study. Through the application of content analysis of selected documentation, the extent of coordination and synergies among the different policy actors across a multi-layered governance platform is put under scrutiny. Quantitative findings are utilized to validate or contradict the original set of hypotheses and to propose a number of policy and governance recommendations that are useful to researchers and practitioners in the fields of public policy, politics, environmental science, public health and wellbeing, as well as insurance and risk management.

Working to improve organizations is the mainstay of organization development (OD) practice and includes figuring out the sources of workplace disruptions and dysfunctions. Casting aside the focus of most change-management initiatives, the organization, organizing intelligence (OQ) relies on paying attention to what people actually do, making meaning of complex, messy human-social organizing activities, in the interests of fostering productive workplaces. Resting on dialog with and among participants “feeling their way” as they organize their work, OQ is an exercise in synthesis rather than analysis. A holistic understanding of organizing activities is helped by exploring the roles of a triad of closely interwoven factors – organizing structures, work-practices, and relationships – in how people get things done, while understanding how these are interconnected. This chapter examines why the capacity for OQ matters, why and how OQ differs from widely practiced, technically framed, organizational analysis, and what distinguishes people with OQ from those with a more conventional interest in organizational change. A case study of the Dutch home-nursing organization, Buurtzorg, illustrates OQ in practice. With small groups of nurses who self-organize, this is a structure that changes both the way people work and their relationships, to the benefit of nurses and the quality of life and care of their patients, while reducing costs; clearly an example of a more productive workplace.

Increased interest in team dynamics has resulted in new methods for measuring teamwork over time. The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide a survey of recent developments in teamwork/collaboration measurement in an educational context. Key topics include conceptual frameworks, large-scale assessments, and innovative measurement techniques.

A range of methods for collecting and analyzing teamwork data are discussed, and five frameworks for measuring collaborative problem solving (CPS) over time are compared. Frameworks from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) project, Educational Testing Service (ETS), ACT, and von Davier and Halpin (2013) are discussed. Results of assessments developed from these frameworks are also considered.

New techniques for measuring team dynamics over time have great potential to improve education and work outcomes. Preliminary results of the assessments developed from these frameworks show that important advances in teamwork measurement have been enabled by innovative task designs, data-mining techniques, and novel applications of stochastic models.

This novel overview and comparison of interdisciplinary approaches will help to indicate where progress has been made and what challenges are ahead.