Applying a “theory of change” process to facilitate transdisciplinary sustainability education

Abstract

Transdisciplinary sustainability training is a recognized need in many graduate programs. However, there is limited analysis of specific pedagogical tools to support this effort, particularly from the perspective of graduate students. Here, we reflect on the application of a "theory of change" process to support transdisciplinary thinking among early career researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds. For class participants, the theory of change process helped to clarify the diversity of actors associated with their research, to unpack their assumptions about complex problems, to clarify important causal linkages, and to support the development of a systems perspective. Challenges in using the theory of change in the classroom context included the difficulty of putting boundaries around student projects, and the additional time requirements involved in completing a detailed theory of change. The process helped class participants situate their specific and more disciplinary research projects in a broader sustainability context.

Toward Learning from Change Pathways: Reviewing Theory of Change and Its Discontents

“…Based on a systematic review of the published literature on ToCs for public health interven tions, Breuer et al (2016 ) offered a checklist for reporting ToCs that capture con text, stakeholder engagement, and assumptions. And in Armitage et al (2019 ), standards are offered (e.g., equity, governance) to support the assessment of a successful ToC. Based on this review, quality in ToCs also depends on its ability to capture complexity and contribute to broader theories.…”

“…Despite its emphasis on complexity, the presentation of ToCs tends to oversimplify real-world challenges (Armitage et al, 2019;Dhillon & Vaca, 2018;Ghate, 2018) or inadequately consider systems in which an initiative is introduced (Maini et al, 2018). Furthermore, while many ToCs aim to examine the causal relationships among activities, outputs, and outcomes, they often proceed in a linear fashion, leading to some practitioners coming to view ToC as a "glorified logframe" (James, 2011, p. 10).…”

“…While the process of developing a ToC may be seen as overly linear, linearity has the advantage of relative simplicity. And com pared to other evaluation approaches, ToCs encourage practitioners to think more systematically by emphasizing the unpacking and testing of core assumptions (Armitage et al, 2019). Nevertheless, authors argue ToCs evaluating complex in terventions could do more in "understanding how the intervention relates to and interacts with components of the system to produce an effect" ( Maini et al, 2018, p. 1).…”

Using Theory of Change to improve post‐2020 conservation: A proposed framework and recommendations for use

“…ToC use in conservation lags significantly behind many other sectors. In particular, the health, education and agriculture sectors possess rich empirical work evaluating the design and application of ToC, which offers several lessons for developing robust conservation ToC pathways (e.g., Armitage et al, 2019;Maini, Mounier-Jack, & Borghi, 2018;Mayne & Johnson, 2015;Valters, 2015;van Es et al, 2015). We now discuss common challenges emerging from multisector ToC literature within the conservation context.…”

Threshold concepts and sustainability: features of a contested paradigm

“…Scholars working in such fields as environmental and sustainability education (ESE), education for sustainable development (ESD), and transformative learning, have done much to explore the paradigmatic nature of sustainability and how sustainability education can facilitate an ethical and epistemological transformation of our world views (Vare and Scott 2007;Lundholm and Plummer 2010;Sterling 2011Sterling , 2004Barrett et al 2017;Burns 2018). In part, this involves looking at the experiences, tasks, and resources that students need to envision and enact sustainable change in society; researchers in such areas as complexity science and resilience, for example, are exploring ways to introduce students to new and novel ideas related to sustainability (e.g., Ban et al 2015;Armitage et al 2019), but this work could benefit from further engagement with the lessons and theories from the robust fields of education research noted above (e.g., Lundholm and Plummer 2010). What that literature tells us is that teaching sustainability in theory and practice also requires a meta-level exploration of education as a transformative and relational process (Lange 2018), one that begins with both teachers and students learning to recognize, and then unlearn and replace, the dominant ways of seeing, learned in the classroom as well as through our day-to-day experiences, that contribute to sustainability problems in the first place (Barrett et al 2017;Burns 2018Burns , 2015.…”