The life experiences of Indigenous students are often overlooked in school learning, thereby causing dissonance in learning. To address this issue, this study incorporated local and traditional ecological knowledges of community in this year-long course of ‘place-based Indigenous education for sustainable development’, using place-based design principles, which provided many experiential learning opportunities for the students to develop cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral aspects of sense of place. To ensure self-determination of Indigenous peoples in educational research, this study engaged and empowered knowledgeable Elders, community members, and Indigenous teachers in this community-based participatory design research. From student worksheets, student interviews, classroom observations, and teacher feedback, we found that students began to think about hometown and its sustainability issues in a broader perspective as they enhanced their local knowledge and sense of place. Follow-up research can be conducted to determine the generalizability of this model in cross-cultural contexts or for Indigenous youth, as the notion of sense of place is rather holistic and contextualized.

An increasingly important aim in education is to develop students capable of addressing complex, interdependent problems. This study integrates theories of situated learning, authentic science research, socioscientific issues, and interdisciplinary STEM education to construct a program for high school students. Drawn from Vygotsky and Dewey's philosophy of social constructivism, we developed a framework to incorporate situated learning, authentic science research, and socioscientific issues in fostering sustainable development competencies of systems thinking and problem-solving to provide opportunities for students to transition from newcomers to adaptive experts. Using qualitative methods, we explored the development of a systems thinking approach in problem-solving related to climate change and air pollution in fifty-seven international school students in Taiwan. We found patterns of (1) systems thinking application in innovative solutions, (2) understanding the practices of authentic science research, and (3) interconnections between science and society. The findings suggest the framework has relevance to high-value learning of systems thinking and for discussions of problem-solving in community contexts and future research directions.

Collaborations between the K-12 teachers and higher education or professional scientists have become a widespread approach to science education reform. Educational funding and efforts have been invested to establish these cross-institutional collaborations in many countries. Since 2006, Taiwan initiated the High Scope Program, a high school science curriculum reform to promote scientific innovation and inquiry through an integration of advanced science and technology in high school science curricula through partnership between high school teachers and higher education scientists and science educators. This study, as part of this governmental effort, a scientist–teacher collaborative model (STCM) was constructed by 8 scientists and 4 teachers to drive an 18-week high school science curriculum reform on environmental education in a public high school. Partnerships between scientists and teachers offer opportunities to strengthen the elements of effective science teaching identified by Shulman and ultimately affect students’ learning. Mixed methods research was used for this study. Qualitative methods of interviews were used to understand the impact on the teachers’ and scientists’ science teaching. A quasi-experimental design was used to understand the impact on students’ scientific competency and scientific interest. The findings in this study suggest that the use of the STCM had a medium effect on students’ scientific competency and a large effect on students’ scientific individual and situational interests. In the interviews, the teachers indicated how the STCM allowed them to improve their content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and the scientists indicated an increased knowledge of learners, knowledge of curriculum, and PCK.

Sustainable water use and management has become an important issue globally and in Taiwan during this era of climate change. In search of a paradigm shift, this grounded theory paper investigates the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of a Rukai Indigenous community in Taiwan to unearth its core values and core practices related to sustainability, as its people have been living near the headwaters in the mountain area for generations. Six Elders from the community were interviewed, and the findings show that the Rukai TEK of water is guided by taboos, a social mechanism keeping the human-nature balance, which are ingrained in four core values (prevention of water contamination, group sharing, conservation of the sources of life, and adherence to the laws of nature). These core values are reflected in the five core practices of water use, including calakebe (spring), drakerale (streams), drapulu (ivy fishing), wakaruru (water diversion), and wadrele (water monitoring). These core values and practices contribute to the sustainable environment and livelihood of the Rukai community. This study proposes that positioning Indigenous TEK as the subjectivity of sustainability provides important implications for the sustainable management of natural resources, as well as Indigenous education for sustainable development.