Metamorphose© game
Making decisions related to the notion of sustainability
As an interdisciplinary team, we are using the multiple disciplines mobilized through the SSHRC Insight research project named: “Sustainability and neuroscience: gaming weak and strong sustainability in dyads”. Those disciplines are listed below:
Corporate management and weak/strong sustainability
Following Roome (2012), most of sustainability practices are mainly weak sustainability approaches. Roome (2012: P.620) defines weak sustainability: «Weak sustainability sets out to bring environmental concerns into the framework provided by the structures and systems of business». Weak sustainability characterized more the period of ‘corporate environmental management’ which is for Bansal and Hoffman (2012) the first wave of environmental issues in business management; the two others being ‘corporate environmentalism as strategic management’ and the third, ‘corporate environmentalism as sustainability’. Within the last wave some enterprises or organizations embrace strong sustainability: «Strong sustainability seeks to integrate the company into environmental or socio-ecological systems, so that the patterns of production and consumption to which the company contributes are within the capacity of the Planet to sustain» (Roome, 2012: P. 621).
Socio-ecological systems and sustainability
Per Haider et al. (2018) progressing in sustainability science is an undisciplinary journey like the systemic approaches examining the relations between human population and physical environment since Meadows et al. (1972). Those authors make the distinction between multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdiciplinarity in the following way:
« Multidisciplinarity is thematically organized rather than problem-oriented. Disciplinary boundaries are generally not crossed /…/
Interdisciplinarity integrates perspectives, information, data, techniques, tools, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines /…/
Transdisciplinarity is a process of collaboration between scholars and non-scholars on a specific real-world problem.
Our research is more interdisciplinary than transdisciplinary.
Teaching and learning sustainability
Per Marinova and McGrath (2004): “An education in sustainability increases awareness of the complexity and interrelationships of environmental, economic, social, political and technical systems /…/ Teaching and learning to do thus require the ability to relinquish power, a desire to realise the empowerment of others. It also involves being able to dream and to envision not only on a personal level but also in a collective level.”
Education’s challenges and neurological measures
Per Wamsler (2019) “current approaches to sustainability science and education focus on the external world of ecosystems, wider socio-economic structures, technology and governance dynamics. A major shortcoming of such approaches is the neglect of inner dimensions and capacities. /…/ More integral approaches and pedagogies are urgently needed”. Recent literature is opening new bridges between neuroscience and sustainability by measuring children and adults’ connectedness with Nature (Richardson, 2019) and trying to examine the “inner worlds” like Ives et al. (2019) in their article: “Inside-out sustainability: The neglect of inner worlds ».
Board game and gamestorming
In this research, we will continue to develop Logim@s© designed by the main applicant. Applying Moore (2007), conceptually we based the game on research about sustainability introduction in the policies of big cities: Curitiba (Brazil), Austin (United States), and Frankfurt (Germany). Practical speaking, Logim@s© consists of 52 playing cards with printed material specific to four cities (we added a Canadian city).
Neuroworks 