Publications

Extensive research has established that spatial ability is a crucial factor for achieving success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). However, challenges that educators encounter while teaching spatial skills remain uncertain. The purpose of this study is to develop a research framework that examines the interrelationships, barriers, and enablers amongst various educational components, including schools, teachers, students, classrooms, and training programs, that are encountered when teaching for spatial ability development. A thorough examination of international research, in combination with a detailed review of the primary Science and Mathematics curricula in Ireland, Latvia, Sweden, and the Netherlands, is undertaken to acquire a more concentrated comprehension of the incorporation of spatial components in the curriculum. The review seeks to establish the fundamental factors that enable or hinder teachers in terms of curriculum, pedagogy, pedagogical content knowledge, and spatialized classroom practices.

There exists a plethora of studies that have related pupils’ spatial ability to their academic achievement and problem-solving skills, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. However, little is known about how spatial ability could be presented in a national curriculum. To increase the awareness and intention to develop pupils' spatial ability within the national curriculum, the compulsory curriculum document from the Swedish National Agency for Education which details all subject syllabi is examined and analysed using a content analysis method. The results show that two major dimensions could be used to locate the potential spatial ability development within the curriculum. The first is a visual dimension, which manifests as three different visual components: graphical, pictorial, and manufactured. The second is an epistemic dimension, which describes how pupils' different types of spatial knowledge can be nurtured, and inductively described as conceptual, procedural, and spatial citizenship knowledge. A three-by-three matrix framework is created based on the above dimensions and components. Policymakers and educators in Sweden, as well as in other countries, may draw insights from the framework created by this study and adapt it to educational practice, particularly in the realm of developing students' spatial ability through curriculum design and classroom instruction.

Effectively communicating vital sustainability topics, such as personal CO2e emissions stemming from daily activities, is challenging since there is a general lack of "carbon literacy." Despite efforts, like employing data visualizations, conveying this information in engaging and memorable ways remains difficult, often resulting in rapid forgetfulness. Our demonstration presents a pedagogical approach aimed at addressing this challenge. Through the integration of surprise elements, data physicalization, and embodied learning, we have developed two interactive mediated non-digital learning experiences focusing on CO2e emissions from food and from consumption. At the core of our pedagogical approach are physical artifacts representing CO2e emissions where the weight of the artifacts directly corresponds to the CO2e emissions they represent. By employing a structured interactive pedagogical setup involving peer discussion, hands-on manipulation of the artifacts, and subsequent explanations, we have created an engaging experience that encourages long-term learning.

Research shows that the global society as organized today, with our current technological and economic system, is impossible to sustain. We are living in an era in which human activities in highly industrialized countries are responsible for overshooting several planetary boundaries, with poorer communities contributing the least to the problems but being impacted the most. At the same time, technical and economic gains fail to provide society at large with equal opportunities and improved quality of life. This article describes approaches taken in computing education to address the issue of sustainability. It presents results of a systematic review of the literature on sustainability in computing education. From a set of 572 publications extracted from six large digital libraries plus snowballing, we distilled and analyzed 89 relevant primary studies. Using an inductive and deductive thematic analysis, we study (i) conceptions of sustainability, computing, and education; (ii) implementations of sustainability in computing education; and (iii) research on sustainability in computing education. We present a framework capturing learning objectives and outcomes as well as pedagogical methods for sustainability in computing education. These results can be mapped to existing standards and curricula in future work. We find that only a few of the articles engage with the challenges as calling for drastic systemic change, along with radically new understandings of computing and education. We suggest that future work should connect to the substantial body of critical theory, such as feminist theories of science and technology. Existing research on sustainability in computing education may be considered rather immature, as the majority of articles are experience reports with limited empirical research.

This paper presents a novel method for communicating environmental information in an engaging and memorable manner. Instead of traditional visual or written communication, our approach involves physical representation of data, using weight as the key element. Using food as a case study, we demonstrate the carbon footprint of food items through life-sized models that accurately reflect their actual weight. In an educational setting, students collectively discuss and estimate emissions for sample foods, followed by hands-on interaction. Each model's weight mirrors its carbon footprint, from 50 grams for half a kilo of potatoes to 13 kilograms for half a kilo of beef. Early tests show a significant "Wow!" factor, particularly for high-emission foods. This tangible experience leaves a lasting impression, potentially influencing future choices. Our approach can extend to other areas like energy. The paper concludes with design recommendations for future work.

In this paper, we discuss the ethical responsibilities of being a role model as an engineering teacher in higher education. We draw on virtue ethics, care ethics, ethics of freedom and role modeling theory, using Grande's framework for engineering education. We argue that the three ethical theories give different views on the ethics of role modeling as a teacher. Virtue ethics implies that the teacher should behave as virtuously as possible to encourage students to emulate character traits. Care ethics implies that the ethics of role modeling is fundamentally about care practices, emphazising relationships and values such as attentiveness and responsibility. Ethics of freedom urges the teacher to grant individuals opportunities to develop and be free from the control of others. By using role modeling and ethical theory, we aim to show how theory has an impact on both teaching practices and could underpin empirical research in engineering education.

When the optional CDIO Standard for Sustainable Development was introduced in 2020, the CDIO community was encouraged “to document the work and share their experiences, in particular reflecting on the usefulness of the new standards for future refinement and development”. This paper is a response to that call, providing insights in how this optional Standard has been used for evaluating and enhancing the status of sustainability in the Civil Engineering and Urban Management program and Electrical Engineering program at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Details are shared on how sustainability is integrated in the programs, and opportunities and barriers for enhancing the status of sustainability in the two programs, and in engineering education in general, are discussed. The paper concludes that the CDIO Standard for Sustainable Development provides a framework and terminology for dialogue and collaboration, within as well as between programs, that can be used for driving change, from an add-on approach, through integration approaches, towards transformative approaches to sustainability in engineering education.

Facilitating active engagement of students, prospective students, and teachers in addressing societal challenges is of paramount importance for society. One such challenge is sustainable development, an issue that many acknowledge at a foundational level but find challenging to personally connect with. In this paper, we share our initial findings on the use of "physicalization" of environmental data as an educational tool. We have created tangible objects that represent environmental data, providing prospective university students, current students, and teachers with a hands-on, tangible learning experience, ultimately aiming to generate interest and active engagement in these subjects. We hope that this, in turn, increases the likelihood that students will continue to pursue these topics throughout their educational journeys and future careers.

Higher education has been criticised for its instrumental character, which constrains possibilities for meaningful change towards sustainability. Drawing on the concept of radical futurity, we develop a conception of education that we call "emergentist education". We integrate literature from futures studies, education for sustainable development, philosophy of education, and bring into dialogue experiences from three futures-facing educational contexts at a Swedish university. We identify three key areas to conceive of emergentist education and its value in practice: disciplinary and institutional norms, convening around anticipatory emotions, and deepening the paradox of sustainability as emergent through radical futurity. We apply a diffractive analysis through these key areas to demonstrate how a reorientation of education as emergentist might allow students and teachers to contest visions of futures. This work helps in approaching the liberation of education to allow young people to come together whole-heartedly around what matters to them.

In this article, we address the questions: How is the purpose of higher education constructed within policy texts from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), England and Sweden? How does this position students in making the transition from Bachelor to Masters? We do this through analysis of two recent policy documents from each of the EHEA, England and Sweden, identifying key discourses including the meanings, oppositions, contradictions and logics that structure the texts. We look at what aspects of ‘global policyspeak’ are common across them, what are their particularities and how these are shaped by distinct histories. We argue that all the texts represent neoliberal policies in sharing an economic rationale for higher education and in individualising the benefits of university education. Students are, in their transition from Bachelor to Masters, expected to maximise their employability and their ability to contribute to the national and global knowledge economy. However, there are also differences between the policy documents, tensions within them and alternative discourses, such as a focus on dialogue and academic freedom that challenge the reduction of higher education to the economic.

This Research Full Paper explores different implementations of and teachers’ experiences from challenge-driven education and similar learning approaches in engineering education and other higher education contexts. Through an action research approach key concerns among the teachers and similarities and differences between the studied courses can be identified. The study highlights the potential in these learning approaches, as means for breaking and going beyond the traditional boundaries of higher education, enhancing and cross-fertilizing engineering education with other disciplines, and empowering students both as professionals and humans. It also indicates potential barriers and in-built tensions that are crucial to handle for successful implementation. The study further shows on great opportunities for mutual learning and collaboration between teachers from diverse contexts and backgrounds. The findings are discussed in relation to research within domains such as sustainability education, transformative learning, and futures studies, and opportunities for further research and development are outlined.

Public knowledge about the differences in greenhouse gas emissions caused by the production and transportation of different kinds of food are generally low. People with an interest in choosing food with low greenhouse gas emissions must therefore either increase this “food carbon literacy” or be provided with such information when they decide what food to buy. Research about this specific kind of food literacy is, however, scarce, lacking both well-defined terminology and interventions attempting to increase food carbon literacy. In this paper we provide a framework for future research in the area by defining “food carbon literacy”, serving as a starting point for categorizing, comparing, and generalizing future research findings. Drawing on previous work on other kinds of literacies, we distinguish between (1) food carbon literacy, (2) food product carbon literacy, (3) food handling carbon literacy, and (4) financial food carbon literacy. We have furthermore developed and tested a digital behavior change intervention in the form of a digital grocery list used on mobile phones. The list works as other digital grocery shopping lists, but also displays the CO2e footprint of the food added to the list, thereby enabling the user to change products at the planning stage and increase their food carbon literacy. It was tested on a group of 38 people for a duration of 2 weeks. The goals of the pilot study were to investigate quantitatively whether such a tool would increase food carbon literacy, and to investigate qualitatively how such a tool could be used and designed. The results show a strong increase in food carbon literacy for food the respondents had added to their grocery lists, but also for food that had not been added to their lists, indicating a generalization of the knowledge. Finally, we provide implications for the design of such systems, based on the qualitative evaluation.

Data about food, and data about individuals’ purchases and consumption of food are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Through bonus cards, supermarkets can track exactly which products we buy, through diet apps we can track what we eat, and through blockchains and other technologies producers can track the origin and history of individual products. From a technical point of view, we are not far away from a world where all this information could be combined to one omniscient system - OmniFood. In this paper we explore current possibilities to collect data on what products we buy, how environmental and nutritional data can be mapped to these products and possibilities to track what we actually eat. Next, we present a number of prototype systems where the possibilities to use this data has been explored, and what limitations we have encountered with current implementations and available data. We end with a discussion of some services that could be possible if current technologies would be fully implemented and made available to consumers and system developers. What possibilities could such systems offer for consumers who want to eat both sustainable and healthy food? What limitations would still exist? What ethical aspects would need to be considered? The focus is on using such a system as a decision support system to support consumers in making food purchase choices that are sustainable from both environmental and health perspectives, thereby supporting the global food system to stay within sustainable limits.

The widespread awareness and the sense of urgency and helplessness regarding the ongoing sustainability crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss etc.) can evoke feelings of grief, sorrow, despair and anxiety. Those emotions are seldom discussed in computing or in computing education. They can have detrimental effects on the well-being of students and others, and also lead to inaction. But concern can on the other hand also be a catalyst for learning. In this paper, we present results and reflections from a research and development project in our introductory course to sustainability and ICT focusing on emotions in sustainability education. We focus on “eco-anxiety” and ask: 1) How is eco-anxiety communicated by students and teachers?, 2) In what ways do students receive support to deal with eco-anxiety? and 3) What could be done to better address eco-anxiety in computing education? We here present an analysis of how we have responded to the phenomenon of eco-anxiety, what activities have been added to the course and an evaluation of these interventions. The results are based on joint reflections that have been guided by literature, a small-scale ethnographic study as well as a course evaluation. The paper will end with recommendations for other ICT4S educators on how they can start addressing eco-anxiety in their education.