Aaron Redman | Arizona State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Aaron Redman
Sustainability and Climate Change, 2021
The world faces significant challenges that require transformative changes facilitated by Sustain... more The world faces significant challenges that require transformative changes facilitated by Sustainability Change Agents (SCAs). Universities around the world have explicitly taken up the responsibility of developing in students the skills and knowledge (i.e., competencies) necessary to be successful SCAs. While there is clear convergence around planning competencies, intrapersonal and implementation competencies have recently emerged in the literature. These competencies will have to remain effective even in the face of adversity, yet too little is known about sources of motivation for SCAs and how motivation can be maintained despite these inevitable setbacks. Since the needed transformations will be collective processes, motivation to be a SCA needs to be understood in the social and realistic context in which they would be applied. This study sought to gain specific insights into: 1.) What motivates students to be SCAs? 2.) How do these SCAs maintain their motivation in the face of setbacks? 3.) What can higher education institutions (e.g., universities, colleges) do to better support the motivation of SCAs? In order to gain insights into these questions, 83 aspiring SCAs were surveyed and their responses analyzed using qualitative content analysis. For this group of SCAs, the key source of motivation evolved from a focus on nature, learning, and individual behavior to a more social view with a concern for structural change. Moreover, social networks and intrapersonal skills helped to restore students' motivation following setbacks. Despite being university students, the SCAs surveyed had already experienced significant setbacks and, largely without institutional support, learned strategies to overcome them and maintain their motivation. Motivation and the skills, knowledge, and experience of how to maintain the drive for positive change in the face of setbacks is crucial in order for SCAs to be capable of supporting the critically needed transformations, and universities must play their part in fostering the SCAs' capability.
Sustainability Science, 2020
While there is growing agreement on the competencies sustainability professionals should possess ... more While there is growing agreement on the competencies sustainability professionals should possess as well as the pedago-gies to develop them, the practice of assessing students' sustainability competencies is still in its infancy. Despite growing interest among researchers, there has not yet been a systematic review of how students' sustainability competencies are currently assessed. This review article responds to this need by examining what tools are currently used for assessing students' sustainability competencies to inform future practice. A systematic literature review was conducted for publications through the end of 2019, resulting in 75 relevant studies that detail the use of an assessment tool. We analyzed the described tools regarding their main features, strengths and weaknesses, as well as potential improvements. Based on this analysis, we first propose a typology of eight assessment tools, which fall into three meta-types: self-perceiving, observation, and test-based approaches, providing specific examples of practice for all tools. We then articulate strengths and weaknesses as well as potential improvements for each tool (type). This study structures the field of sustainability competency assessment, provides a criteria-based overview of the currently used tools, and highlights promising future developments. For the practice, it provides guidance to sustainability (science) instructors, researchers, and program directors who are interested in using competencies assessment tools in more informed ways.
Business Strategy and Development, 2018
Businesses, as with other sectors in society, are not yet taking sufficient action towards achiev... more Businesses, as with other sectors in society, are not yet taking sufficient action towards achieving sustainability. The United Nations recently agreed upon a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which if properly harnessed, provide a framework (so far lacking) for businesses to meaningfully drive transformations to sustainability. This paper proposes to operationalize the SDGs for businesses through a progressive framework for action with three discrete levels: communication, tactical, and strategic. Within the tactical and strategic levels, several innovative approaches are discussed and illustrated. The challenges of design and measurement as well as opportunities for accountability and the social side of Sustainability, together call for transdisciplinary, collective action. This paper demonstrates feasible pathways and approaches for businesses to take corporate social responsibility to the next level and utilize the SDG framework informed by sustainability science to support transformations towards the achievement of sustainability.
Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 2018
The next generation will be better prepared to cope with the daunting sustainability challenges i... more The next generation will be better prepared to cope with the daunting sustainability challenges if education for sustainable development is being taught and learned across educational sectors. K-12 school education will play a pivotal role in this process, most prominently, the teachers serving at these schools. While pre-service teachers' education will contribute to this transition, success will depend on effective professional development in sustainability education to teachers currently in service. Arizona State University has pioneered the development and delivery of such a programme. We present the design principles, the programme, and insights from its initial applications that involved 246 K-12 in-service teachers from across the USA. The evaluation results indicate that due to participation in the programme, sustainability knowledge, perception of self-efficacy, inclusion of sustainability in the classroom, modelling of sustainable behaviours, and
Educational interventions are a promising way to shift individual behaviors towards Sustainabilit... more Educational interventions are a promising way to shift individual behaviors towards Sustainability. Yet, as this research confirms, the standard fare of education, declarative knowledge, does not work. This study statistically analyzes the impact of an intervention designed and implemented in Mexico using the Educating for Sustainability (EfS) framework which focuses on imparting procedural and subjective knowledge about waste through innovative pedagogy. Using data from three different rounds of surveys we were able to confirm (1) the importance of subjective and procedural knowledge for Sustainable behavior in a new context; (2) the effectiveness of the EfS framework and (3) the importance of changing subjective knowledge for changing behavior. While the impact was significant in the short term, one year later most if not all of those gains had evaporated. Interventions targeted at subjective knowledge will work, but more research is needed on how to make behavior change for Sustainability durable.
Over 80% of rural residents in the developing world utilize biomass as their principal fuel, with... more Over 80% of rural residents in the developing world utilize biomass as their principal fuel, with serious consequences for their health, climate change, household economics and personal well-being. This problem requires a Sustainability approach which this thesis does by bringing together several theories- transition management, socio-technical regimes, diffusion and livelihoods, bridging multi-disciplines, incorporating different forms of knowledge as well as including a future orientation. A deep literature review of biomass cooking was conducted and fieldwork carried out during the summer of 2009 in the village of La Comunidad, El Salvador. Over forty interviews were completed, principally with households utilizing an improved wood-burning cookstove (ICS). Based on the literature and the fieldwork, a Vision for a Sustainable cooking system is developed, which includes criteria for health, climate change, household financial and non-financial costs and the cooking experience.
Strategies for achieving this vision are examined next. For several reasons, modern fuels such as electricity and gas (LPG) are not strategies which will on their own achieve the Sustainable Vision. Another strategy, efficient, biomass-burning stoves appears to have potential, but its viability is still largely unverified. This thesis focuses on an ICS known as the Justa, which was disseminated in La Comunidad in 2007. Using the diffusion framework the adoption of the Justa ICS in this community is examined. The Justa has been successfully adopted and not a single household has become disenchanted and abandoned it. The decision process and other variables which influenced the adoption of the Justa are also scrutinized. This work yields several possibilities for enhancing the transition to a Sustainable cooking system.
It has long been assumed that households will switch completely to modern fuels, once given the means and the opportunity. My fieldwork in El Salvador confirms other research showing that households actually stack fuels and stoves, rather than switching between them. Stacking does not seem to be a transitory phase while studying it reveals important information about household preferences, strategies and constraints. This paper proposes that the Sustainable Vision can best be achieved through stacking of various cooking technologies, rather than by promoting a single type.
Changing from current unsustainable production, consumption, and disposal patterns will clearly r... more Changing from current unsustainable production, consumption, and disposal patterns will clearly require technological, political and other structural changes, but also individual behavior change. Consumer demand and individuals' purchasing power exerts pressure on many parts of the production system, including how crops are produced (e.g., organic), products are packaged and labeled (e.g., rBGH-free labels on milk), and even where products are distributed and how they are disposed of. Individual consumer behaviors have even led to political and structural changes over time, such as the consumer boycott of tuna which led to 1990 US legislation creating the “Dolphin Safe” tuna label.
One of the central ways to foster responsible citizenry and promote sustainable production is to harness the capacity of teachers and schools to create change. Educating for conscious consumerism is a critical part of creating changes in production, consumption and disposal systems, but our current education system and approaches often reinforce unsustainable practices that neglect subjective ways of knowing as well as action and change. Research and experience suggests that traditional, information intensive teaching about sustainability alone does not motivate the behavior change a transition to sustainability will require. Utilizing a previously developed framework that identifies four distinct types of knowledge—declarative, procedural, effectiveness and social—we hypothesize that procedural, effectiveness and social knowledge are important predictors of an individual's participation in sustainable behaviors, while declarative (information) knowledge is not. While the knowledge domain framework has been theoretically detailed by other researchers (19 and 11) and qualitatively assessed through an intensive case study education program (Redman, 2013), to date, this is the first quantitative assessment of the relationship between the four domains of knowledge and sustainability-related behaviors.
We tested our hypothesis through an extensive survey of 346 current and future K-12 teachers about sustainable food and waste knowledge and behaviors. The survey results supported our hypothesis that high levels of declarative knowledge alone did not predict increased participation in sustainable behaviors while procedural and social knowledge were statistically significant predictors of sustainable food behaviors and procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge were all statistically significant predictors of sustainable waste behaviors. Through active incorporation of appropriate forms of procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge into the K-12 classroom, educators can empower the next generation to make individual changes based on their vision of the future and insist on structural and institutional changes that are essential for a successful transition to sustainability.
Sustainability and Climate Change, 2021
The world faces significant challenges that require transformative changes facilitated by Sustain... more The world faces significant challenges that require transformative changes facilitated by Sustainability Change Agents (SCAs). Universities around the world have explicitly taken up the responsibility of developing in students the skills and knowledge (i.e., competencies) necessary to be successful SCAs. While there is clear convergence around planning competencies, intrapersonal and implementation competencies have recently emerged in the literature. These competencies will have to remain effective even in the face of adversity, yet too little is known about sources of motivation for SCAs and how motivation can be maintained despite these inevitable setbacks. Since the needed transformations will be collective processes, motivation to be a SCA needs to be understood in the social and realistic context in which they would be applied. This study sought to gain specific insights into: 1.) What motivates students to be SCAs? 2.) How do these SCAs maintain their motivation in the face of setbacks? 3.) What can higher education institutions (e.g., universities, colleges) do to better support the motivation of SCAs? In order to gain insights into these questions, 83 aspiring SCAs were surveyed and their responses analyzed using qualitative content analysis. For this group of SCAs, the key source of motivation evolved from a focus on nature, learning, and individual behavior to a more social view with a concern for structural change. Moreover, social networks and intrapersonal skills helped to restore students' motivation following setbacks. Despite being university students, the SCAs surveyed had already experienced significant setbacks and, largely without institutional support, learned strategies to overcome them and maintain their motivation. Motivation and the skills, knowledge, and experience of how to maintain the drive for positive change in the face of setbacks is crucial in order for SCAs to be capable of supporting the critically needed transformations, and universities must play their part in fostering the SCAs' capability.
Sustainability Science, 2020
While there is growing agreement on the competencies sustainability professionals should possess ... more While there is growing agreement on the competencies sustainability professionals should possess as well as the pedago-gies to develop them, the practice of assessing students' sustainability competencies is still in its infancy. Despite growing interest among researchers, there has not yet been a systematic review of how students' sustainability competencies are currently assessed. This review article responds to this need by examining what tools are currently used for assessing students' sustainability competencies to inform future practice. A systematic literature review was conducted for publications through the end of 2019, resulting in 75 relevant studies that detail the use of an assessment tool. We analyzed the described tools regarding their main features, strengths and weaknesses, as well as potential improvements. Based on this analysis, we first propose a typology of eight assessment tools, which fall into three meta-types: self-perceiving, observation, and test-based approaches, providing specific examples of practice for all tools. We then articulate strengths and weaknesses as well as potential improvements for each tool (type). This study structures the field of sustainability competency assessment, provides a criteria-based overview of the currently used tools, and highlights promising future developments. For the practice, it provides guidance to sustainability (science) instructors, researchers, and program directors who are interested in using competencies assessment tools in more informed ways.
Business Strategy and Development, 2018
Businesses, as with other sectors in society, are not yet taking sufficient action towards achiev... more Businesses, as with other sectors in society, are not yet taking sufficient action towards achieving sustainability. The United Nations recently agreed upon a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which if properly harnessed, provide a framework (so far lacking) for businesses to meaningfully drive transformations to sustainability. This paper proposes to operationalize the SDGs for businesses through a progressive framework for action with three discrete levels: communication, tactical, and strategic. Within the tactical and strategic levels, several innovative approaches are discussed and illustrated. The challenges of design and measurement as well as opportunities for accountability and the social side of Sustainability, together call for transdisciplinary, collective action. This paper demonstrates feasible pathways and approaches for businesses to take corporate social responsibility to the next level and utilize the SDG framework informed by sustainability science to support transformations towards the achievement of sustainability.
Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 2018
The next generation will be better prepared to cope with the daunting sustainability challenges i... more The next generation will be better prepared to cope with the daunting sustainability challenges if education for sustainable development is being taught and learned across educational sectors. K-12 school education will play a pivotal role in this process, most prominently, the teachers serving at these schools. While pre-service teachers' education will contribute to this transition, success will depend on effective professional development in sustainability education to teachers currently in service. Arizona State University has pioneered the development and delivery of such a programme. We present the design principles, the programme, and insights from its initial applications that involved 246 K-12 in-service teachers from across the USA. The evaluation results indicate that due to participation in the programme, sustainability knowledge, perception of self-efficacy, inclusion of sustainability in the classroom, modelling of sustainable behaviours, and
Educational interventions are a promising way to shift individual behaviors towards Sustainabilit... more Educational interventions are a promising way to shift individual behaviors towards Sustainability. Yet, as this research confirms, the standard fare of education, declarative knowledge, does not work. This study statistically analyzes the impact of an intervention designed and implemented in Mexico using the Educating for Sustainability (EfS) framework which focuses on imparting procedural and subjective knowledge about waste through innovative pedagogy. Using data from three different rounds of surveys we were able to confirm (1) the importance of subjective and procedural knowledge for Sustainable behavior in a new context; (2) the effectiveness of the EfS framework and (3) the importance of changing subjective knowledge for changing behavior. While the impact was significant in the short term, one year later most if not all of those gains had evaporated. Interventions targeted at subjective knowledge will work, but more research is needed on how to make behavior change for Sustainability durable.
Over 80% of rural residents in the developing world utilize biomass as their principal fuel, with... more Over 80% of rural residents in the developing world utilize biomass as their principal fuel, with serious consequences for their health, climate change, household economics and personal well-being. This problem requires a Sustainability approach which this thesis does by bringing together several theories- transition management, socio-technical regimes, diffusion and livelihoods, bridging multi-disciplines, incorporating different forms of knowledge as well as including a future orientation. A deep literature review of biomass cooking was conducted and fieldwork carried out during the summer of 2009 in the village of La Comunidad, El Salvador. Over forty interviews were completed, principally with households utilizing an improved wood-burning cookstove (ICS). Based on the literature and the fieldwork, a Vision for a Sustainable cooking system is developed, which includes criteria for health, climate change, household financial and non-financial costs and the cooking experience.
Strategies for achieving this vision are examined next. For several reasons, modern fuels such as electricity and gas (LPG) are not strategies which will on their own achieve the Sustainable Vision. Another strategy, efficient, biomass-burning stoves appears to have potential, but its viability is still largely unverified. This thesis focuses on an ICS known as the Justa, which was disseminated in La Comunidad in 2007. Using the diffusion framework the adoption of the Justa ICS in this community is examined. The Justa has been successfully adopted and not a single household has become disenchanted and abandoned it. The decision process and other variables which influenced the adoption of the Justa are also scrutinized. This work yields several possibilities for enhancing the transition to a Sustainable cooking system.
It has long been assumed that households will switch completely to modern fuels, once given the means and the opportunity. My fieldwork in El Salvador confirms other research showing that households actually stack fuels and stoves, rather than switching between them. Stacking does not seem to be a transitory phase while studying it reveals important information about household preferences, strategies and constraints. This paper proposes that the Sustainable Vision can best be achieved through stacking of various cooking technologies, rather than by promoting a single type.
Changing from current unsustainable production, consumption, and disposal patterns will clearly r... more Changing from current unsustainable production, consumption, and disposal patterns will clearly require technological, political and other structural changes, but also individual behavior change. Consumer demand and individuals' purchasing power exerts pressure on many parts of the production system, including how crops are produced (e.g., organic), products are packaged and labeled (e.g., rBGH-free labels on milk), and even where products are distributed and how they are disposed of. Individual consumer behaviors have even led to political and structural changes over time, such as the consumer boycott of tuna which led to 1990 US legislation creating the “Dolphin Safe” tuna label.
One of the central ways to foster responsible citizenry and promote sustainable production is to harness the capacity of teachers and schools to create change. Educating for conscious consumerism is a critical part of creating changes in production, consumption and disposal systems, but our current education system and approaches often reinforce unsustainable practices that neglect subjective ways of knowing as well as action and change. Research and experience suggests that traditional, information intensive teaching about sustainability alone does not motivate the behavior change a transition to sustainability will require. Utilizing a previously developed framework that identifies four distinct types of knowledge—declarative, procedural, effectiveness and social—we hypothesize that procedural, effectiveness and social knowledge are important predictors of an individual's participation in sustainable behaviors, while declarative (information) knowledge is not. While the knowledge domain framework has been theoretically detailed by other researchers (19 and 11) and qualitatively assessed through an intensive case study education program (Redman, 2013), to date, this is the first quantitative assessment of the relationship between the four domains of knowledge and sustainability-related behaviors.
We tested our hypothesis through an extensive survey of 346 current and future K-12 teachers about sustainable food and waste knowledge and behaviors. The survey results supported our hypothesis that high levels of declarative knowledge alone did not predict increased participation in sustainable behaviors while procedural and social knowledge were statistically significant predictors of sustainable food behaviors and procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge were all statistically significant predictors of sustainable waste behaviors. Through active incorporation of appropriate forms of procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge into the K-12 classroom, educators can empower the next generation to make individual changes based on their vision of the future and insist on structural and institutional changes that are essential for a successful transition to sustainability.