Researching Sustainability

This book is for students and researchers across the social sciences who are planning, conducting and disseminating research on sustainability-related issues. Real-world sustainability problems cross many boundaries, and this is the first book to guide students and practitioners through the practical and theoretical challenges of doing interdisciplinary research in this vital and emerging area. Researching Sustainability contains many in-depth, 'hands on' accounts by expert contributors, providing real-life examples and lessons that can be put to use immediately. Coverage includes: the general challenges that sustainability presents to researchers, including frictions between sustainability and scientific tradition; complexity; research paradigms; interdisciplinarity; social-environmental interactions; and ethical concerns. a host of social science based research methods and approaches. Each chapter presents a different method; its challenges and suitability for different situations; an in-depth example of the method in action; insights and lessons. dissemination of sustainability research findings, including influencing policy, communicating with school children and working with the media. The book concludes with a critical synthesis of issues and methods examined in the book together with a discussion of future research pathways. This book is an essential tool for students, researchers and practitioners in planning, implementing and evaluating their sustainability research.

This multidisciplinary handbook explores concrete case studies which illustrate how sustainability science and research can contribute to the realization of the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It contains contributions from sustainability researchers from across the world.

This book offers a collection of methods and approaches aimed at resolving some of humanity’s most pressing problems on a local and global level. Many of the methods are practical, with straightforward application and demonstrated positive outcomes whilst others are more visionary. Important for transitioning to a more sustainable world, these methods allow for the constructive challenging of existing western development and governance.

This book captures the now burgeoning research field of early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) and comprises insights from an ever-widening and diverse pool of researchers, who are promoting, engaging, and explaining the latest ECEfS research in the light of local, national, and United Nations global policy directives. With the increasing urgency of global climate disruptions, resource depletions, and biodiversity losses alongside greater human dislocation, the international scope of research and theory in this book provides a comprehensive guide to the role of sustainability in early childhood education, at a time when it is needed more than ever. Elliott, Ärlemalm-Hagsér, and Davis have brought together a collection of studies that offer new insights and approaches to ECEfS which challenge dominant narratives surrounding early childhood education and sustainability, including topics such as: how diverse worldviews and cultures challenge perceptions of sustainability; how bold national early education policies and urgent shifts in teacher education are imperative for driving transformative practices; and, how ECEfS curriculum and pedagogy can be incorporated successfully into early years settings. This book will both inspire researchers and more deeply enable early years’ educators to practise sustainability with children, and so will be of great interest to scholars, lecturers, and researchers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students, across the increasingly intersecting fields of sustainability and early childhood education.

This innovative Research Handbook answers crucial questions about how individuals and organisations can make a difference towards sustainability. Offering an integrative perspective on sustainability agency, it reviews individual, active, organisational and relational forms of sustainability agency, demonstrating the capacity of individuals and organisations to act toward sustainable futures.

‘Transdisciplinarity’ is a form of research and practice that synthesises knowledge from a range of academic disciplines and from the community. There is now global interest and a significant body of work on transdisciplinarity and its potential to address the apparently intractable problems of society. This creates the opportunity for a specific focus on its practical application to sustainability issues. Transdisciplinary Research and Practice for Sustainability Outcomes examines the role of transdisciplinarity in the transformations needed for a sustainable world. After an historical overview of transdisciplinarity, Part I focuses on tools and frameworks to achieve sustainability outcomes in practice and Part II consolidates work by a number of scholars on supporting transdisciplinary researchers and practitioners. Part III is a series of case studies including several international examples that demonstrate the challenges and rewards of transdisciplinary work. The concluding chapter proposes a future research pathway for understanding the human factors that underpin successful transdisciplinary research. As Emeritus Professor Valerie Brown AO notes in her Preface, this book moves transdisciplinary inquiry into the academic and social mainstream. It will be of great interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of sustainability, qualitative research methods, environmental impact assessment and development studies.

Sustainability is a key concept used by social scientists interested in interactions between human society and the environment. This text offers a systematic and critical review of established and emerging methodological approaches, as well as tools for the integrated investigation of sustainability questions. Recognising the significance of scale for sustainability efforts and measurement, its scope ranges from the local to the global. Divided into five sections: Part I: examines the key challenges inherent to social scientific sustainability research, focusing in particular on methodological questions that arise from recent efforts towards greater disciplinary integration. Part II: discusses methodologies aimed at the investigation of attitudes and behaviour observable at the local level - from families and households to individual organisations within communities. Part III: focuses on comparative sustainability research across different levels of socio-political organisation - from cities and regions to nation-states. Part IV: covers recent developments which recognise the significance of time for sustainability research and which offer innovative methodological approaches that focus on life events and long-term outcome. Part V: offers a critical assessment of current and future trends in social-scientific sustainability researc. Bringing together contributions from international social scientists, this is the resource for academics and practitioners interested in sustainability research. It will be a core teaching text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in sustainability and sustainable development, geography, environmental sociology and the environmental sciences.

The book identifies the specific ethical aspects of sustainability and develops ethical tools to analyze them. It also provides a methodological framework to integrate ethical and scientific analyses of sustainability issues, and explores the notion of a new type of self-reflective inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research. With this, the book aims to strengthen the overall ability of academics to contribute to the analysis and solution of sustainability issues in an inclusive and integrated way.