The social work profession is committed to addressing issues of social, economic, racial, and environmental injustice, which includes efforts to mitigate poverty and related issues such as homelessness and housing instability. Integral to this goal is graduating undergraduate and graduate social work students with attitudes toward these issues…

While environmental problems are urgent in modern society, they are especially difficult to tackle because of their normative and politically controversial nature. Universities may choose different theoretical paradigms for the teaching of environmental problems. However, limited theoretical and/or practical analysis has been undertaken of the…

STEM education is viewed as being vital for economic prosperity and productivity; and can contribute productively to changing technological, economic, and social demands of the twenty-first Century. However, there is limited consensus on how STEM education is understood and taught, and inadequate discussion around its role in addressing global…

Social problem solving (SPS) represents a social cognitive reasoning process that gives way to behavior when individuals are navigating challenging social situations. Autistic individuals have been shown to struggle with specific aspects of SPS, which, in turn, has been related to social difficulties in children. However, no previous work has…

English medium instruction (EMI) and critical language education are both relatively established areas of education and scholarship. While the booming trends of EMI have generally foregrounded the technical aspects of instruction and the related linguistic challenges, the ongoing development of EMI theory, research, policy, and practice can be…

Activism and engagement with real-world climate crises, within particular contexts, are prerequisites for learning about climate justice. I draw on my experience as an imbedded activist researcher living and learning through two recent 'crises' in Cape Town, to deepen my understandings of 'climate justice'. I followed a case study approach to…

Problems framed as societal challenges have provided fresh impetus for transdisciplinary research. In response, funders have started programmes aimed at increasing transdisciplinary research capacity. However, current programme evaluations do not adequately measure the skills and characteristics of individuals and collectives doing this research.…

Since vulnerability is not recognized, the issue of mental health in Puerto Rico is something that is invisible on the island. The objective of this research is to recognize the negative psychological effects caused by the passage of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The data collection was carried out through nine semi-structured interviews, with…

Even though agent-based modelling is seen as committing to a mechanistic, generative type of causation, the methodology allows for representing many other types of causal explanations. Agent-based models are capable of "integrating" diverse causal relationships into coherent causal mechanisms. They mirror the crucial, multi-level…

Modern democratic societies tend to appeal to the authority of science when dealing with important challenges and solving their problems. Nevertheless, distrust in science remains widespread among the public, and, as a result, scientific voices are often ignored or discarded in favour of other perspectives. Though superficially…

Purpose: In response to concerns about fake news (Allcott et al., 2019) and polarization (Wollebaek et al., 2019), youth media literacy interventions have emerged to teach strategies for assessing credibility of online news (McGrew et al., 2018) and producing media to mobilize others for civic goals (Kahne et al., 2016). However, in light of…

Universities have always played a crucial role in shaping the future of the world. They are centers of knowledge, research, and innovation, producing graduates who go on to lead in their fields and make a positive impact on society. But today, the need for universities to "be the change" has never been more urgent. The world is facing a…

In this article, we explore the uniqueness of argumentation within the field of history, considering whether historians' processes in crafting an interpretive argument from inexact evidence might provide insights into processes vital for informed civic engagement and civil dialogue in democratic societies. We discuss the role of argumentation in…

Laypeople's estimates of carbon footprints have repeatedly shown to be deficient, which may hinder targeted behavior change to reduce CO2 emissions. In an online study (N = 127), a vast underestimation of carbon footprints for 60 food items was observed in an on average highly educated convenience sample, confirming a lack of carbon footprints…

In this essay, we contend that there continues to be a lack of attentiveness in educational leadership and policy to addressing how critical educators "emotionally" navigate social and political issues generally, and racism particularly--both of which are emotional issues. As such, using brief examples of reflections from critical…