Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to share the content and early results from an interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum that integrates theory and practice (praxis). The curriculum links new topical courses concerning renewable energy, food, water, engineering and social change with specialized labs that enhance technological and social-institutional sustainability literacy and build team-based project collaboration skills. Design/methodology/approach-In responses to dynamic interest emerging from university students and society, scholars from Environmental Studies, Engineering, Sociology, Education and Politics Departments united to create this curriculum. New courses and labs were designed and pre-existing courses were "radically retrofitted" and more tightly integrated through co-instruction and content. The co-authors discuss the background and collaborative processes that led to the emergence of this curriculum and describe the pedagogy and results associated with the student projects. Findings-Interdisciplinary student teams developed innovative projects with both campus and community-based partners. However, the incentives for an integrated sustainability curriculum faced persistent obstacles including the balkanization of academic knowledge, university organizational structure, and the need for additional human and financial investments. The team is currently designing the second phase of this integration and expanding a social learning network through collaborations with five universities in the Americas and Europe. Originality/value-This paper shows the development process, design and content of an interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum that integrates engineering with the social and ecological sciences while enlivening campus-community relationships through student projects. Several replicable practices include the contents and integration of topical classes, the strategies to overcome the obstacles for developing interdisciplinary student teams engaged in problem-based learning and approaches to negotiate institutional hurdles.

This article is intended to spark a discussion between two research communities—scholars who study learning and scholars who study educational organizations. A secondary purpose is to encourage researchers to look beyond schools to examine learning in other types of educational organizations. The authors outline a framework to guide research on the relationship between learning and the social contexts afforded by formal organizations. The framework combines elements of cultural historical activity theory, a sociocultural theory of learning, and institutional theory, which is a constructivist theory of organization. The authors employ preliminary findings from research and secondary historical accounts to illustrate the potential of the framework for guiding research that ties learning to contexts in formal organizations.

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Tela Favaloro received a B.S. degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently working to further the development and dissemination of alternative energy technology; as project manager of a green building design initiative and researcher with the Center for Sustainable Engineering and Power Systems. Her background is in the development of characterization techniques and laboratory apparatus for advancement of novel electronic devices, in addition to curriculum development for inquiry-based learning and facilitation of interdisciplinary, student-led project design. She emphasizes engineering sustainable solutions from a holistic perspective, incorporating analysis of the full technological life cycle and socioeconomic impact.Dr. Tamara Ball, University of California, Santa Cruz Dr. Tamara Ball is a project-scientist working with the the Sustainable Engineering and Ecological Design (SEED) collaborative at UCSC. She is the program director for Impact Designs -Engineering and Sustainability through Student Service (IDEASS) and Apprenticeships in Sustainability Science and Engineering Design (ASCEND). She is interested in understanding how extracurricular and co-curricular innovations can support meaningful campus-community connections in higher education and improve learning outcomes. Her research to date has focused on educational designs that emphasize learner initiative and agency through inquiry or problem-based learning in formal and informal learning contexts. She has published several papers on the characteristics of learning environments that support or constrain opportunities for any students (including those from non-dominant backgrounds) to participate in key science and engineering process skills such as scientific argumentation. Her work is largely informed by the principles and perspectives on human development and cognition articulated by Cultural Historical Activity Theory. Putting theory into practice, she teaches a service-learning course at UCSC wherein interdisciplinary teams of students work in an layered apprenticeship model with community mentors to design and implement sustainable solutions to water, energy, waste, transportation and social challenges using "green technology". Dr. Ball has worked as a research fellow with two NSF Centers for Learning and Teaching and most recently on several NSF projects that focus the integration of engineering and social science to support the advancement of experiential learning for sustainability in higher education. Facilitating Learner Self-Efficacy through Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Sustainable Systems Design AbstractAn educational partnership between a minority-serving community college and a research university has been offering STEM students an eight-week summer internship in sustainable energy systems with the goal of providing applied research experiences while strengthening community and institutional bonds. In 2015, the interns' involvement in the successful design,...

Any episode of learning and teaching is necessarily situated in both space and time. But, whereas the spatial arrangement of the classroom remains relatively constant, change is the very essence of the learning that takes place within it. Such is the nature of the data to be examined in this paper. The same curriculum unit was taught by the same teacher to a fourth-grade class in four successive years and every lesson in each year was videorecorded. Our purpose was to document change over time at three levels: from year to year, within each year, and over the course of activities within particular lessons. Within the limits of this paper, we focus on one particular issue as it recurred over time.

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We are exploring whether and how "DigitalStorytelling" can be used to a) attract and engage student apprentices otherwise estranged from STEM-linked career or education pathways b) help student apprentices address the complexities of ill-formed or "wicked" design problems typical of sustainable engineering. Building on preliminary evidence from a pilot 2014 study we hypothesize that apprentices who engage in digital storytelling can gain proficiency in key reasoning skills related to scientific argumentation including: 1. formulating and articulating problem statements 2. anticipating and understanding tradeoffs, limitations and contingencies of proposed solutions and 3. justifying solutions relative to requirements/specifications articulated in the problem statement. Our continuing work is in the development and validation of evaluation and assessment instruments appropriate for evaluating these skills among apprentices focused on digital storytelling and for drawing comparisons against apprentices engaged in "hands-on" sustainable design projects. Our overarching objective is to offer evidence validating digital storytelling as an alternative pedagogy for introducing and teaching STEM reasoning skills to newcomers or "outsiders".

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