Skatescape in the Making: Developing Sustainable Urban Pedagogies through Transdisciplinary Education

Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Salla Jokela, Mikko Kyrönviita, Markus Laine and Jonathon Taylor
Additional contact information
Kirsi Pauliina Kallio: Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, 33014 Tampere, Finland
Salla Jokela: Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, 33014 Tampere, Finland
Mikko Kyrönviita: Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, 33014 Tampere, Finland
Markus Laine: Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, 33014 Tampere, Finland
Jonathon Taylor: Faculty of Built Environment, Tampere University, 33720 Tampere, Finland

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-16

Abstract: The current trend of higher education for sustainable urban development links with parallel developments in urban governance and environmental pedagogy. Many programs and policies identify cities and citizens as key drivers of change for sustainable futures, however scholarly work on the related pedagogies is lacking. These endeavors are clearly present in the Tampere city-region, Finland. Supported by national educational and city-regional strategies, the city is promoting sustainable lifestyles and infrastructures by means of multistakeholder governance including citizen participation and sustainability education. This paper analyzes, as a case study of transdisciplinary sustainability education, a collaboration between Tampere University, a skateboarding high school, and the Hiedanranta urban district developed as a real-life laboratory of sustainable urban development. We explore the pedagogical dimensions of the collaboration by drawing from the theoretical perspective of ‘positive recognition’ and conceiving the Hiedanranta skatescape —a socio-physical entity formed around skateboarding—as a ‘boundary object’. The paper suggests urban environments act as boundary objects that enable productive collaboration between various actors when informed by pedagogies of positive recognition. In conclusion, we propose that the value of this approach, binding together multistakeholder governance and transdisciplinary learning, lies in its capacity to encourage novel forms of sustainable agency.

Keywords: sustainable urban development; sustainable higher education; sustainable high school; sustainable pedagogy; education for sustainable development; multistakeholder governance; skateboarding; citizen participation; positive recognition; boundary object (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9561/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9561/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:17:p:9561-:d:621621

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().