Abstract
The scientific issues that face society today are increasingly complex, open-ended and tentative (Sadler, 2004). Finding solutions to these issues, not only requires an understanding of the science, but also, concurrently dealing with political, social, and economic dimensions that exist (Hodson, 2003). For example, 40 years after the first congressional hearing on climate change held by Al Gore in 1976, the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that climate change is still getting worse, despite efforts by governments, businesses, social actors such as Non-Government Organizations, and scientists. With the top minds in the world, across all disciplines, backed with government and corporate funding pursuing the same goal of resolving human impact on climate change, why haven’t we resolved the situation? What strategies might be employed to increase effective action?
DOI
10.5642/steam.201301.10
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Kawasaki, Jarod and Toyofuku, Dai
(2013)
"A Distributed Intelligence Approach to Multidisciplinarity: Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Complex Science Issues in Society.,"
The STEAM Journal:
Vol. 1:
Iss.
1, Article 10.
DOI: 10.5642/steam.201301.10
Available at:
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/steam/vol1/iss1/10
Included in
Animal Sciences Commons, Education Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons
Author/Artist Bio
Jarod Kawasaki is currently a doctoral student at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, his dissertation focuses on teachers' beliefs about the purpose of science education and their relationship to teachers' instructional practice. Kawasaki's research interests focus on ways that K-12 education builds the capacity of students to engage with science in their everyday lives. Kawasaki is interested in the design of learning environments that encourage students to creativity to address controversial and public science issues. Before graduate school, Kawasaki was a science teacher at an urban high school in Los Angeles and completed a MA in Educational Technology from Cal State Northridge. Currently, Kawasaki is working for the Teacher Education Program at UCLA, conducting research with a 5-year US Department of Education grant investigating the effectiveness of an urban teacher residency program in preparing pre-service teachers and evaluating teaching quality. Previously, Kawasaki worked on a Spencer Foundation grant that examined the use of student data by teachers to inform instructional decisions in small pilot school in Los Angeles and at the UCLA National Center for Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) developing assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards. Kawasaki currently lives in Culver City, CA with his wife and two daughters (5 years old & 6 months old). Dai Toyofuku was born and raised in Los Angeles, where he also lives and works. He has a profound interest in the cultures of animal and plant communities that share the Los Angeles urban landscape. The artist received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from the Claremont Graduate University. Dai has collaborated with biologists and other artists in order to explore the relationship between art and science. In 2011, he had his first solo show at Steve Turner Contemporary. In 2012, He and seven other artists collaborated with a biologist to create an exhibition supporting endangered species at the College Art Association's 100th annual Convention. He is currently working on a body of work combining the four seasons and the Japanese tea ceremony, growing an indoor California-native Bonsai garden, and cultivating plants to feed caterpillars endemic to Los Angeles. In the near future, he hopes to breed Neurergus kaiseri, a newt that is now extinct in the wild