Understanding human perception is fundamental to computer graphics. However, computer science and engineering education have a track record of neglecting human concerns in favour of technical and scientific matters. The diverse and rapidly evolving nature of the field also means that educators need to be highly selective in what concepts and skills to include in syllabuses, potentially complicating the inclusion of perceptual topics in computer graphics courses. This study explores the treatment of perception as a topic in introductory computer graphics courses at Swedish universities, through analysis of course syllabuses and the attitudes of educators. Data from 22 syllabuses, three interviews and six responses from a survey were collected across twelve universities. While educators agree on the importance of understanding human perception in graphics creation, the results present a diverse set of approaches and attitudes toward teaching it. Approaches ranged from minimal inclusion to dedicated lectures, across varying perceptual topics, and perception was rarely mentioned in the course objectives. Overall, approaches seemed influenced mainly by student backgrounds, time, educator experiences, and challenges of addressing foundational skills. Based on these findings, some ways to better integrate perceptual aspects in existing curricula are proposed.

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 article provides a critical analysis of the current research terminology used to describe people with cognitive disability, intellectual impairment, neurodiversity, mental disorder, or psychological dysfunction. Medical diagnoses of the brain, nerves, mind, or psyche inform the use of these terms for describing behavior that is not deemed “normal” in humans. Cognitive disability is proposed as a more appropriate one than other similar terminologies after an analysis of diverse policy documents and academic publications.

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.

General description on research questions, objectives and theoretical framework

Education is widely perceived as having great potential for the transformation towards sustainability (eg. Unesco 2014). It is , however, also seen to be complicit in reproducing historic and systemic violence and our unsustainable status quo (Stein et al 2022). Education needs to be fundamentally rethought and reimagined. Contemporary dominant approaches to educational development that are based on standardisation and curricula have been challenged (Holfelder 2019, Osberg and Biesta 2020). Transformative and transgressive learning have been proposed as generative for higher education (Lotz-Sisitka et al 2015, Ojala 2016). 

We, the authors of this paper, have recently been employed to lead educational development and research for sustainability at a technical university. The university is known for their engineering programmes but it also provides education in other fields including science (e.g. physics), architecture, and education. Our activities as educational developers include teaching in different courses on higher education pedagogy, facilitation of workshops, coordination of collegial networks, supporting course and programme development collaborating with teachers, programme directors and university leadership. We also coordinate a new research group on sustainability and education, in which we explore educational development and research for sustainability in a bigger group. 

With the aim to inform and inspire other educational developers and researchers and invite a dialogue on how to promote and support transformation for sustainability at universities, we are in this paper exploring and shaping our new roles as educational developers and researchers, learning and becoming in affective relationship with each other, sharing and learning from the pains and pleasures of working with sustainability education at a technical university.

The pleasures and pain comes from working within an influential social context. Technology, the way it is applied today, is seen to be driving social and environmental exploitation (e.g. Barca 2020). At the same time, science and technology is being highly valued in society today and young people are being attracted to education in those fields, e.g. in recruitment programmes reaching out to students from under-represented groups (e.g. women). Decades of research suggest engineering and technology is socially produced in ways associated with masculinity (Ottemo et al. 2020). Engineering is positioned as technical and mathematical, objective, rational, and reductionist, which implies that aspects central to sustainability are neglected or have low status. The pain comes from working within disciplinary structures in which the ill-defined and complex concept of sustainability can be rejected as “fuzzy”. Both of us have a background in engineering, which may help in understanding teachers and students' situations. However, as has been described by Machado de Oliveira (2021), our expertise within social science such as our knowledge in education can be met with arrogance, silencing us and limiting our possibilities of working for change. 

In this paper we explore our roles and work as educational developers and researchers supporting and promoting change of university education for sustainability in collaboration with various actors at university. We engage with the following research questions:

What emerges in shared learning and affective relationships, among us educational developers and researchers and those we engage with for transformative change in education? What strategies for the work as educational developers for transformative change can be drawn from that which emerges (see 1.)?How can our research approach be used and further evolved for educational development?Methods / methodology

The approach we are using in this study is inspired by bricolage (Rogers 2012), as well as diffraction and reflection (Bozalek and Zembylas 2017, Serra Undurraga 2021). Bricolage allows to engage with research as an emergent and creative process, drawing on a plurality of methodologies, and theoretical perspectives. Bricolage was developed as an alternative to dominant research aiming for universal, abstract or objective knowledge. Diffraction has been proposed as a complement to reflection, to recognise entanglements and relationships through which subjects and objects are continuously interacting and in the making. Further, diffraction provides a theoretical basis for learning from difference, bringing together our different experiences and positions. Bricolage and diffraction together enables engagement with affective relationship and differences as a source of learning and insight rather than as a threat to be eliminated in research and education. 

We use the similarities in our current positions, mandates, activities, and shared devotion to work for sustainability transformations in and through education, and our differences in backgrounds and ideas as research subjects and objects. We set up a safe and open space for us to learn with and through each other. In three hours of weekly meetings starting in the beginning of February 2023, we share, reflect and diffract on our experiences, observations, and ideas. Those meetings will include sharing how the previous week’s conversations have shaped our thinking and feelings and artefacts we found useful or inspiring during the weeks (images, papers, etc.). 

We capture our reflections and diffractions on a large paper roll, which will be the main source of data that will be analysed in this study. We also use a digital slack-channel to communicate and each of us takes notes individually between the meetings. The data analysis will be specified as the learning unfolds but we start with identifying themes and creating a web of meaning.

To start with, we focus on learning among the two of us. This will make it easier for us to explore our roles in a trustful relationship and build on a shared concern for the state of the world and the need for transformation of education and society. At a later stage we consider inviting further persons into this learning process.

Expected outcomes / results

We have already started a joint learning process, though less structured, and in this process we have seen that we have joint and also different views on how to promote change, which are provoking and fruitful for this work. We have identified tensions and synergies that we will explore further.

One such tension lies in different focuses on sustainability and equality. Previous work suggests that issues of climate justice, racial justice and gender equality have until recently too rarely been considered together, at times even been seen as competing (Stoddard et al 2021). Also at our university, these are two separate areas of work. There are attempts to integrate efforts and there are also forces to separate initiatives and learning for change.

Another tension we are exploring together is between instrumental vs emancipatory or emergentist approaches to change (Barrineau, Mendy, Peters 2022). We are asking whether or not, and if so how, instrumental approaches in education can be combined with emergentist approaches to changes. We have felt frustration in how educational development is being approached from university leadership and have been struggling to navigate more strategic and relational engagement as opposed to more confronting approaches to change. We have also been asking about the role of activism at universities. One question is what place emotional and affective ties have in academia, education, among professionals, i.e. educators, and those engaged with educational development.

We learn to recognise and work through tensions and hierarchies, and develop strategies to do so together. This might contribute to bringing peace in culture wars, mitigate polarisation and promote transformations at our university and beyond. Developing the research method to conceptually guide and support this process further, we hope to inspire future learning and collaboration for transformation in and through education among other teachers and researchers.

Intent of publication

This paper is intended to be published in a journal in engineering education.

References

Barca, S. (2020). Forces of Reproduction: Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Barrineau, S., Mendy, L., & Peters, A.-K. (2022). Emergentist education and the opportunities of radical futurity. Futures, 144

Bozalek, V., & Zembylas, M. (2018). Practicing Reflection or Diffraction? Implications for Research Methodologies in Education. In R. Braidotti, V. Bozalek, T. Shefer, & M. Zembylas (Eds.), Socially Just Pedagogies: Posthumanist, Feminist and Materialist Perspectives in Higher Education. Bloomsbury Academic. 

Holfelder, A. K. (2019). Towards a sustainable future with education? Sustainability Science, 14(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00682-z

Lotz-Sisitka, H., Wals, A. E., Kronlid, D., & McGarry, D. (2015). Transformative, transgressive social learning: Rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of systemic global dysfunction. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 16, 73–80. 

Machado de Oliveira, V. (2021). Hospicing Modernity. Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. North Atlantic Books.

Ojala, M. (2016). Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education: From Therapeutic Practice to Hopeful Transgressive Learning. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education (CJEE), 21(0), Article 0.

Osberg, D., & Biesta, G. (2020). Beyond curriculum: Groundwork for a non-instrumental theory of education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53(1), 57–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1750362

Sharon Stein, Vanessa Andreotti, Rene Suša, Cash Ahenakew & Tereza Čajková (2022) From “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it”, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54:3, 274-287

Stoddard, I., Anderson, K., Capstick, S., Carton, W., Depledge, J., Facer, K., Gough, C., Hache, F., Hoolohan, C., Hultman, M., Hällström, N., Kartha, S., Klinsky, S., Kuchler, M., Lövbrand, E., Nasiritousi, N., Newell, P., Peters, G. P., Sokona, Y., … Williams, M. (2021). Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve? 37.

Unesco (2014). UNESCO roadmap for implementing the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development, Paris: UNESCO Paris.

ICT4S as an umbrella concept encompasses several disciplines and areas related to sustainability and ICT, and it can be difficult for an educator to have an overview of all areas and research fronts where interesting, engaging and transformative research is taking place. We provide such a space.

General description on research questions, objectives and theoretical framework

Gender in education has received considerable attention in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the past decades. A concern is the lack of diversity in the student population, e.g. the under-representation of women in western STEM education. Research in technology and engineering education suggests that what it means to know and engage in technology is “co-produced” together with hegemonic masculinity (Ottemo 2015). This “masculine orientation” in engineering has been addressed in research for at least four decades (Ottemo, Berge and Silfver 2020). The culture of science is repeatedly found to be aligned with social norms of white, middle-class, heterosexual men (Avraamidou and Schwartz 2021). STEM education seems to reproduce social identities, e.g. gender, and power relations. 

Participation and representation in STEM education has increasingly been approached through theories of identity, which bring into attention the interplay between social structures and agency (Danielsson et al 2023). Until today, identity research draws predominantly on theories from psychology and socio-cultural theories of learning and becoming (Danielsson et al 2023). Intersectionality is seen as important and approached by considering several social identity categories, through so called “additive identities” (e.g. students being a women + black + low income) (Avraamidou 2020). The political dimension of identity constructions is under-studied, as has been argued by Chronaki and Kollosche (2019). 

In this paper,  we explore the construction of identity in and through education as political (contested) and queer addressing critiques of existing work that explores gender and technology as stable. A prominent finding is that science and technology is positioned around gendered dichotomies, as rational, objective, reductionist or technical rather than empathetic, embracing subjective experience, as well as complex societal questions (eg. Ottemo, Berge, Silfver 2020). These positions are mapped on to the gender binaries (male / female) as stable categories thereby contributing to reproducing traditional understandings of gender and separation (Landström 2007). By conceiving identity construction as queer and political, we seek to contribute with alternative understandings of identity, which we, by empircal examples show to also exist in the classroom.

We draw on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985/2001) discourse framework to study identity as political and queer. Laclau and Mouffe argue that the subject emerges only once it cannot constitute its social position in or through existing social positions or discourses. In those “political moments”, the individual is in a position to alter existing configurations of meaning and power.

We illustrate identity construction as political analysing data collected in an ethnographic study in two subsequent courses in technology education, more specifically computing education, i.e. education about digital technologies and their development. We ask the following research questions:

What gender and technology identity discourses are being produced?What discourses gain status, i.e. what power relations are being produced through social interaction?How are identities and power structures being challenged in political acts of identification?The research has been conducted as a follow-up study to a longitudinal interview study (anonymous) that suggests that students give up their broader interests in society, art or politics and instead adapt to becoming a seemingly narrow-minded programmer who identifies with solving well-defined technical problems through program code. Some students struggle to adapt to this presumably masculine way of engaging in IT. The aim with this follow-up ethnographic study was to get a deeper understanding of social constructions of computing and gender in the classroom. 

Methods / methodology

The ethnographic study (Gobo and Molle 2017) was conducted in two courses at a swedish university, over a period of one and a half semesters. The students are in their second year of study of computer science or IT engineering. The first course is a large programming course running over a whole semester, the amount of credits corresponding to two thirds of full time studies. The second course on user-dentred system design follows the programming course. It introduces the students to human, societal, or ethical aspects of technology development. 

The first programming course has a reputation of being the best course with one of the best teachers. A longitudinal study (anonymous) suggests that this course has a great impact on the students, who align to ways of being and doing that are produced in the course. The second course has been questioned by students. Several teachers have developed the course to increase the students interest. The courses seem to differ in that they embrace the technical and social, human, in different ways and as such incorporate tensions that the teachers and students may meet with political acts of identification.

The first author collected field notes. In the first course, she participated in 10 hours of lectures, 15 hours of labs and 1 hour outside the exam hall, talking to the students after the exam. In the second course, she participated in 7 hours of lectures, 1 hour of seminar, 1 hour of labs, 1,5 hours of project meetings, as well as 1 hour of final project presentation. 

The field notes and data such as lecture slides, assignments, course evaluations were transferred to Atlas.Ti. The analysis was done in three steps:

Step 1: Open Coding on identity in relationship to the content of computing education. We looked for ways of being, knowing, and practicing (identity construction) that were offered through the teacher and social interaction.

Step 2: Analysis of identity discourses and relationships among them. The identification of discourses is analytically made by focusing on paradoxes, contradictions, or tensions in the ways (patterns) of being and knowing as they are performed, performed and recognised. 

Step 3: Exploring alternative constitutions of identity once discourses of identity and relations of dominance are identified. As a part of this, we interrogate binary constructions of identity in these discourses. 

Expected outcomes/results

We see and interrogate the positioning of computing as technical, rational, centring around gaining control over machines (cf Faukner 2001, Ottemo et al 2020). Being a programmer is associated to being a nerd by the celebrated teacher in the first course who introduces himself as a nerd and programming as a nerdy thing. The nerd image of computing is seen as one reason for the absence of women (Faukner 2001). Also, the benefit of programming for humanity is questioned by the programming teacher. However, the ways the teacher performs being a nerd and doing programming also challenges existing understandings of identity.

The teacher performs the identity of being a nerd as being in close, bodily, affective relationship with the computer, in which he (a question is if he is identifying as male in this instance) is both subject and object in relation to the computer. The human is involved with both body and mind. This queers our understanding of the distinction of human and computer and also our understanding of gender being co-produced with technology in education. 

The teacher advocates low-level programming that involves manipulating and knowing the machine (human as subject) and also being shaped in thoughts and feelings by the machine (human as object). In many lectures, the teacher is programming in class. At one time, he writes a code snippet that he admits not even programmers can understand. He explains this is “not to make macho points”. It is his way of thinking and expressing himself that evolved in the relationship with the computer.

Focusing on the queer and political can give new understandings of gender in education, and new possibilities for developing equitable education. One could ask how to make the user and society more experiential, possibly building on the relationship to the computer. 

Intent of publication

This paper is intended to be published in a journal relative to the field of STEM education.

References

Avraamidou, L. (2020) Science identity as a landscape of becoming: rethinking recognition and emotions through an intersectionality lens. Cultural Studies Science Education 15, 323–345

Avraamidou, L., & Schwartz, R. (2021). Who aspires to be a scientist/who is allowed in science? Science identity as a lens to exploring the political dimension of the nature of science. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 16(2), 337–344. 

Chronaki, A., & Kollosche, D. (2019). Refusing mathematics: A discourse theory approach on the politics of identity work. ZDM, 51(3), 457–468, Springer

Danielsson, A.T., King, H., Godec, S. et al. (2023) The identity turn in science education research: a critical review of methodologies in a consolidating field. Cult Stud of Sci Educ.

Faulkner, W. (2001). The technology question in feminism: A view from feminist technology studies. Women’s Studies Int. Forum 24(1), 79–95.

Gobo, G. & Molle, A. (2017). Doing Ethnography. 2nd Edition. Sage

Laclau, E., and Mouffe, C. (1985/2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Political Politics. 2nd Ed. London and New York: Verso. 

Landström, C. (2007). Queering feminist technology studies. Feminist Theory, 8(1), 7–26.

Ottemo, A. (2015). Kön, kropp, begär och teknik. Passion och instrumentalitet på a två tekniska högskoleprogram [Gender, body, desire, and technology: passion and instrumentality in two technical university programs]. PhD Thesis. University of Gothenburg

Ottemo, A., Berge, M., & Silfver, E. (2020). Contextualizing technology: Between gender pluralization and class reproduction. Science Education, 104(4), 693–713.

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.

Climate change is the "biggest threat modern humans have ever faced". The implications of the crisis are imminent and grave. As part of COP26, leaders from all over the world agreed to the Glasgow Climate Pact with the goal of limiting the increased rise of global temperature by 1.5 degrees. With less than 8 years left until the 2030 UN deadline in which the climate effects become irreversible, how do we prepare learners for what might be an inevitable reality? How do we equip computing students with crucial technical, ethical, and leadership skills to mitigate its effect? More importantly, how do people in positions of power, departmental and institutional, be involved? In 2019, we formed an internal working group as part of ITiCSE conference to examine how computing institutions, departments, and faculty members dealt with, if at all, the climate emergency within CS education. Our efforts included conducting a literature review, interviewing CSEd climate experts, leading a world cafe session, and collating and publishing resources from various sources for the benefit of educators interested in incorporating climate change in the curriculum. And yet, there are still struggles reported with adopting these solutions, particularly in light of the global pandemic. This panel will serve as a public forum to express institutional, departmental, and individual challenges associated with tackling the climate crisis and share successful strategies, ideas, and experiences to support the CS community. The discussions will centre over five themes previously identified in the world cafe.