Education research

NSF EMBeRs Grant

In collaboration with the University of Texas at El Paso, MITEI director of education Antje Danielson has been working to understand and enhance the ways in which graduate student teams approach interdisciplinary environmental science problems. Funded by a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship grant in the Innovations in Graduate Education track, the research team developed model-based reasoning techniques to test new methods of training graduate student teams in environmental sciences, helping to overcome knowledge integration and synthesis challenges.

The project, titled Employing Model-Based Reasoning in Environmental Sciences (EMBeRS), has led to numerous research publications, including:

Fair, J. M., and Stokes, M. M. and Pennington, D. and Mendenhall, I. H. (2016). Scientific collaborations: how do we measure the return on relationships. Frontiers in Public Health, 4, 9. https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00009

Gosselin, D. and Vincent, S. and Parnell, R. and Pennington, D. and Danielson, A. (2016). Negotiating boundaries: {Effective} leadership of interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability programs. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 6, 268-274. https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1007/s13412-015-0357-2

Pennington, D. (2016). A conceptual model for knowledge integration in interdisciplinary teams: orchestrating individual learning and group processes. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 6, 300-312. https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1007/s13412-015-0354-5

Pennington, D. and Bammer, G. and Danielson, A. and Gosselin, D. and Gouvea, J. and Habron, G. and Hawthorne, D. and Parnell, R. and Thompson, K. and Vincent, S. and Wei, C. (2016). The {EMBeRS} project: employing model-based reasoning in socio-environmental synthesis. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 6, 278-286. https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1007/s13412-015-0335-8

Thompson, K., Gouvea, J., Habron, G (2016). A design approach to understanding the activity of learners undertaking a model based reasoning course: environment and diversity. Proceedings from The International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Singapore, 2. https://repository.isls.org/handle/1/331