Perspective Chapter: Enabling the Ecological University – An Argument for Developing Transdisciplinary Ethical-Maker-Learning in Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter argues for the importance of ethical-maker-learning as a transdisciplinary learning system in Higher Education. A new potentially transformative pedagogical concept of Critical Material Literacy (CML) is also proposed, with the aim that no student should leave university as a passive consumer of new technologies and products. Broad pedagogical opportunities are suggested across Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM), and Humanities learning systems. The foundation of this argument is based on in depth maker-learning research, a critique of mainstream maker learning culture, and a move towards more ecological and humanistic concerns in maker processes. Thus, CML-based learning is proposed to teach an awareness of the importance of material matters in our often-passive consumer-led society. An initial transdisciplinary learning model for ethical-maker-learning is presented to provide ideas within this new HE-learning framework for critically and civically engaged experiential learning opportunities across all disciplines.

1. Introduction

This chapter proposes a new transdisciplinary learning system in Higher Education (HE): ethical-maker-learning. The transformative pedagogical concept of Critical Material Literacy [1] is also proposed as an initial learning path. Twenty-first century ‘literacies’ such as information, digital media and IT are well established [2]. However, it is argued that, without a holistic ethical-systems-based approach which incorporates the material, ecological and social aspects of these emerging ‘literacies’, we will ignore vital concerns for people and planetary welfare [1].

Broad pedagogical opportunities enabled by a ‘pedagogy of daring’ [2] are suggested across Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM), and Humanities learning systems. The foundation of this argument is based on critical-maker-learning research [1, 3]. CML-based ethical-maker-learning is proposed as a way to teach students without advanced scientific knowledge an awareness of the importance of material matters in our surface-level consumer-led society. Thus, helping to resist ‘an ever-widening gap between what science allows us to do and what it is prudent or ethical actually to do’ [4].

The emphasis on CML and ethical-maker-learning on creating ecologically sustainable futures is in line with the philosopher of Higher Education (HE) Ronald Barnett’s (2017) concept of the ecological university [5]. The concept of the ecological university connects knowledge with social institutions, Nature, the economy, culture, people, learning and the polity [5]. Therefore, this argument is part of a movement away from the current conceptual instrumental framing of universities as being primarily knowledge producers for a neoliberal ideology of competition, consumption, and profit to become communities of human flourishing and development [6].

Below is a proposed transdisciplinary pedagogical concept that can be adopted across multiple learning systems. The concept definition is followed by the research journey that underpins the formation of the CML concept as a potentially transformative transdisciplinary move. An initial model for ethical-maker-learning follows this that aims both to democratise access to emerging technologies for HE students from diverse backgrounds and provide an initial ethical/sustainable framing for experiential learning opportunities.

Critical Material Literacy (CML) can be defined as the ability to explore critical thinking concerning the social and environmental impact of materials across all areas of human activity so that material literacy can be expansively developed in society. This exploratory cross-disciplinary concept is relevant to all STEAM and Humanities perspectives as an educational tool. CML can be taught abstractly as a concept either face-to-face or online but can be reinforced as a learning system through embodied/haptic interaction with materials in critical maker processes. These processes are not just undertaken for academic purposes but wherever possible with the practical aim of creating ideas and prototypes for new, more sustainable cultural artefacts, products, and technologies to benefit society locally and globally [1].

2. The potential value of makerspaces in HE

As an academic librarian/information professional, the need to support information and digital literacy is crucial to my praxis. Models of digital literacy and digital capabilities [7] are always relevant to my profession. However, whilst many functional elements are included (e.g., information and data literacy, digital innovation), there needs to be a more critical focus on the materials that make up digital technologies and Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) [1]. Through leading Digital Services and Academic Librarian teams in a Learning Resources Directorate for a UK university, a research interest in maker-learning as a possible antidote to the often surface-level engagement with digital skills and emerging technologies prevalent across HE became of interest. Key to the potential value of maker-learning found in the literature was the claim that it could be a ‘means of regaining mastery over technology – not just because it enables us to be more self-reliant but also because it can boost our sense of agency’ [8]. Makerspaces are a gradually emerging phenomenon in HE, having been established initially as community-built, technologically enabled (e.g., 3D printing, electronics, robotics) learning spaces in local communities, museums, and schools [3].

The potential value of maker learning in HE was observed through a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory [9] based case study of a well-established North American HE academic library makerspace. Qualitative and observational data from academics and students across disciplines, and library staff, was collated [1] showing a course-specific experiential value to maker learning for students of Engineering, Biological Sciences, Textiles, Art and Design and Humanities. For example, making prototypes for solving sustainability issues, 3D printed scientific puzzles to aid awareness of molecular structures, a historic love-poetry remixing project bringing to life historical forms of romantic poetry, a pulse dress using ‘internet of things’ technology exploring new sartorial possibilities with textiles and a syringe filling machine prototype for use in healthcare [1]. However, questions could still be asked from inclusivity, diversity and sustainability perspectives as to the overall value of maker-learning.

3. A critique of ‘maker learning’

Maker-learning can be seen as [1, 3] a complex intertwined learning process of embodied/haptic, social/dialogic, and rational/critical experiential learning in Zones of Proximal Development (ZPD) [10]. Maker-learning in the ZPD involves support from more capable peers or scaffolded support from library staff and academics. The primary cultural-historical ‘tension’ [9] apparent in the historicity of the case study [1] maker service within the wider maker movement was the attempt to cater for the different sides of maker culture that are both ‘counter-cultural and anti-consumerist and mainstream business opportunities’ ([11], p. 154).

As a business opportunity, maker-learning often attracts entrepreneurial engineering and business students and can have a male bias. Research [12] has closely looked at makerspace literature and discourse, finding technical jargon, the garage-like nature of many makerspaces, and women’s self-identity as potential barriers to more gender-balanced maker learning. Feminist perspectives have also highlighted how culture has traditionally defined makers as male [13] and how maker culture is built on traditional patriarchal values [14]. Research has also observed that academic libraries need to be wary of ‘uncritical approaches to making’ [15] that ignore the intersectional challenges of trying to create an inclusive environment regardless of race, class, and gender.

Barton [16] questioned whether introducing historically feminised crafting practices, as many makerspaces with an inclusive ethos have done, is enough to address the complex ‘points of intersectionality, such as race or class’ [16]. However, the case study [1] makerspace service was working on trying to meet different students’ perspectives through the ‘relational agency’ [17] of the new Experiential Learning Librarian. This new post was focused on addressing inclusivity and diversity issues through meeting course outcome commitments and personal student interests through promoting the maker service’s wide range of activities (e.g., workshops on Technology in the Arts, Communication for Engineering and Technology, Digital Sculpting and Design thinking). In the more in-depth maker help sessions, the makerspace support team started with the empowering question, ‘what is it you want to do?’ [1, 15]. The CML-based ethical model of maker-learning is therefore built on an attempt to transcend the restrictive categories encountered above.

3.1 The sustainability challenge

Sustainability is also a key challenge for makerspaces recognised at the case study site, as evidenced by the Critical Making for Sustainability workshop offered [1, 2]. Such processes as 3D printing that produce large amounts of plastic, present environmental issues. Against this, however, there is potential in the many ways maker technologies, including 3D printing, can be used as part of repair and replacement activities. For example, local hubs ([18], p. 159) are used for printing everything from iPhone cases to masks for local healthcare workers (as with our university library’s 3D printers used during the Covid-19 lockdown when there was an initial government shortage).

Recently within the maker movement, there has been an increasing focus on sustainability issues. Among London’s ‘Maker Mile’ of workshops and fab labs, Opendesk allows customers to match furniture found online with the nearest fabrication lab, where it can be made on-site, thus cutting costs and pollution from supply chains [19]. Precious Plastic [20], also developed in the Maker Mile by Dave Hakkens, is an open-source platform for reengineering plastic rubbish into furniture and household items (e.g., bowls and cups). The maker movement’s increased sustainability focus can also be seen globally. For example, the German-based ‘ecoMaker’ project [21] is aimed at educational institutions and the wider maker community worldwide. ‘Eco Sprints’ are proposed as a maker-learning activity whereby part of maker items or products are reviewed for eco-friendly alternatives to the materials used. For example, a desk lamp was re-designed with a wooden stand and an energy-saving bulb [2, 3, 4, 21]. The ecoMaker design framework methodology has been adopted widely, including the largest Berlin makerspace, the VINN: Lab [5, 21]. However, questions remain about how makerspaces can fit into more ecological learning and development frameworks within HE, which invites a more nuanced understanding of broader techno-consumer culture.

3.2 Questioning techno-science and consumer culture

The social sciences and humanities have a long history of perspectives critiquing the excesses of technoscientific ‘progress’ and the consumer mindset that has led to the exploitation of people and ecosystems. From a phenomenological perspective, Heidegger explored how ‘being’ in the age of technology involves an ‘enframing’ of machines and materials into a ‘standing reserve’ of potential resources ([22], p. 217). This ‘standing reserve’ distorts us from the world as it is and leaves us ‘unfree and chained to technology’ ([22], p. 217).

Post-Marxist theorists have observed how consumer capitalism alienates human experience from material reality. For the Frankfurt School critical theorist Theodor Adorno all more meaningful culture had been reduced to a ‘culture industry’ producing a banal cornucopia of unchallenging ‘artistic’ products that supposed people ‘as incapable of looking suffering in the eye as… of exercising thought’ [23, 24]. In ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ (1967), Guy Debord identified the emerging dominant cultural milieu of post-modernity whereby consumer society enforces an ongoing essentially meaningless passivity through commodities colonising social life. With the ‘having’ of new products through advertising that fetishises appearance being pervasive, the possibility of an authentic community is eroded [25].

Later post-modernist theorists, such as Baudrillard, observed a further retreat from material reality in the quagmire of meaningless media signifiers of entertainment and advertising media. For Baudrillard, images can draw us into a hyperreality that ‘has no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is its own pure simulacrum’ [6, 26]. However, the possibility of ethical-maker-learning offers a human-agency-based challenge to this level of pessimism (sometimes inherent in the post-modern idiom). More recently, feminist philosopher Barad’s ‘agential realist’ ontology positions technoscientific practices as a drawn out ‘expression of the objective existence of particular material phenomena…It matters which cuts are enacted: different cuts enact different materialised becomings’ ([27], p. 361). This viewpoint marks a welcome acknowledgement of our immediate ethical responsibility for our practical activities whilst also recognising the ‘vibrancy’ of material phenomena [28]. As one of the textile students spoken to during the maker-learning case study observed: ‘I am interested in what the materials can do’ [1, 21]. Here again, we see an opportunity to transcend technoscientific pessimism with an exploration of new possibilities in ethical and aesthetic maker processes.

Maker-learning has become increasingly commercialised [1] as part of our fast-moving STEM-driven techno-culture, seemingly mirrored across the humanities, arts, and social sciences as theories and concepts often slip by fast as part of the same restless zeitgeist. This constant theoretical flow is often at the expense of any depth in understanding in terms of linking up with cross-disciplinary thought or reaching out proactively to society-wide movements for progressive change (such as Black Lives Matter or the environmental movement influenced by Greta Thunberg); Progressive movements concerning which, if we are adopting a critical or ethical pedagogy, ‘we should be anything but cynical’ [29, 30].

This potential move towards seeing a progressive value in ethical-maker-learning is in keeping with the anti-colonial Critical Pedagogy that originated with Paolo Freire [31]. Freire’s education model encourages human agency and resists the ‘banking’ model whereby students are seen as empty vessels to be filled unquestioningly with the dominant ideology. Looking closely at the current discourse of ‘skills for jobs’ [32] that dominates contemporary HE, it can be seen how, with the absence of critical and ethical conversations, passive student outcomes are often encouraged:

Knowing becomes mere memory-within-silos, acting in the world is reduced to mere performance of skills-for-employability, and being is placed in jeopardy, locked into the frozen stances of the world ([33], p. 129).

Students may leave university ‘unable to perceive critically the themes of their time’ [6, 31]. Thus, graduates may start ‘careers’ with potentially little sense of moral purpose or passion in work started. Worse, the myriad legitimate worries for the modern student that can manifest in general anxiety states that threaten their ‘wellbeing’ are pushed to the side in the education process (e.g., climate change, anti-democratic politics, the persecution of minorities). This enforced passivity may embed a lifetime of learned helplessness without the realisation that change is always possible through individual courage and collective action. Therefore, potentially the critical key student ‘outcome’ for the twenty-first century HE student is that they ‘could be helped to learn democracy through the exercise of democracy’, which can only be ‘assimilated experientially’ rather than just verbally [31, 34].

4. Critical making

In the context of the maker movement, we can see the potential for Freirian empowerment in the counter-maker-culture moves of ‘Critical Making’. The ‘Critical Making Lab’ developed by Ratto [34] at the University of Toronto encourages a holistic creative mix of critical thinking and physical making. The purpose of Critical Making is learning through the making process rather than aiming for quality in final products. Thus, critical-making projects combine materiality with moral concerns. For example, in a 2016 blog post on ‘evocative objects’, a Critical Making class is described where students were encouraged to ‘imagine a world where voting was openly biased’ [35]. One of the results was a voting machine with red and green buttons, thus not accessible to those with red and green colour blindness. The object in Critical Making is then used to prompt sociocritical discussion (in this case, on societal biases and privilege).

We can see from this example how maker-learning can bring together sociocritical theory and experiential-making activities, resisting a purely skills-based agenda with new technologies. However, whilst Critical Making can lead to interesting discussions that start to develop a kind of ‘critical technological consciousness’ [29, 30]. However, Gollihue (2019) cautions that its conceptual focus on problematising particular things could also usefully expand its horizons: ‘it is not enough to only concern ourselves with things. Instead, things must be in relation to the people that made them, the history that surrounds them, and the cultures and practices they represent’ [3, 36].

4.1 Critical material literacy

An interest in enabling educational maker processes that could engage with broader ecological concerns for people and the planet led me to theorise a new transdisciplinary concept that could be employed in multiple learning systems. This project initially seemed too daunting a task, as it required more ambitious theorising than our post-modern milieu encourages. Rooted in Vygotsky’s (10) project that includes the activity theories engaged with for my case study research, Anna Stetsenko’s (2017) idea of encouraging a ‘pedagogy of daring’ became central to the aims of my maker-learning proposals. For Stetsenko, the human mind ‘can be understood to be part of the larger practices aimed at making and remaking the world’ [2, 32].

Stetsenko argues for an ontologically based debunking of the myth that the Academy can somehow be above ethical/instrumental concerns regarding its part in transforming culture and society. With transformation as ontologically primary to our being in the world, our goals and commitments supersede any givenness of reality ([2], p. 198). The onus is therefore on us as individuals and collectively to ‘invent the future, rather than merely expecting or anticipating its “automatic” arrival’ ([2], p. 233): ‘This requires both a thorough foregrounding of the historically formed locations from which being, knowing and doing are launched and a consideration of how the sought-after future is playing out within these processes’ ([2], p. 236).

To ignore this central transformational ethical ontology as part of our understanding of being is to succumb to the neo-liberal delusion of the sovereign individual [37]. This uber-individualist mentality, so prevalent in current reactionary politics, is often driven by high-net-worth individuals who protect their power through highjacking traditional conservatism, thus, superseding ethical, democratic debate with a game of who can lie largest for personal gain. To counter the global currents of market fundamentalism, populism and extreme individualism, there is a need for progressive interests to step beyond comfortable abstract intellectual spaces towards more practical counter-hegemonic ‘instrumental’ aims. The possibility of actively changing society, speaking truth to power, from an ethical-ontological base of ecological awareness in an instrumental manner, is simply to attempt to have adequate ideas and practical plans for the future of life on earth.

Through in-depth maker-learning research [1]. I thus expanded from Ratto’s Critical Making concept [34, 38] to develop the idea of Critical Material Literacy (CML) as defined at the start of this chapter. CML is a transdisciplinary pedagogical concept that could be used for learning about sustainability issues and human exploitation in large and small-scale ‘maker’ processes. For example, activities such as deconstructing an out-of-use iPhone to investigate the impact of the materials used, in terms of the use of rare earth metals or the possible exploitation of child workers in its construction [1, 21]. Ethical-maker-learning activities involving CML could be taught dialogically but can benefit from the haptic exploration of the material components of new technologies and products. Aims could be designed for ‘learning outcomes’ of a critical nature or actual (ethical) prototypes, projects and products meeting local and global ecological and humanitarian challenges.

4.2 The embodied, experiential, social and purposeful nature of ethical-maker-learning

Ethical-maker-learning could be taught without any practical haptic and embodied activities. However, this could be an impoverished version of the potential for this kind of learning. The current cognitive science of the mind is finding consciousness to be an embodied phenomenon:

Minds like ours are not in the business of representing the world in some passive, descriptive manner. Instead, they engage in complex rolling cycles in which actions determine percepts that select actions ([39], p. 268).

The embodied nature of consciousness is an emerging theme in cognitive science, as seen in the ‘extended cognition’ hypothesis (e.g., ‘We can perform operations with our hands that are akin to those we perform in our heads’ ([40], p. xii)). However, it has a long philosophical history, originally foreshadowed by phenomenological perspectives. Heidegger’s concept of handiness was his ontological categorical definition of beings as they are in themselves [41, 42]. Later, Merleau-Ponty observed how all our existential modalities, including motricity and speech, are predicated on the body’s natural power of expression: ‘Consciousness holds itself responsible for everything, it takes on everything, but it has nothing of its own and makes its life in the world’ ([43], p. 479). More recently, biology and neuroscience have expanded the picture beyond the reductionism of previous ‘brain’ science to acknowledge the importance of embodied social experience (‘that’s how we learn- context, context, context’ ([44], p. 672). Embodied social engagement can thus be seen as essential to forming the human mind: ‘The brain is a dynamic, plastic, experience dependent, social, and affective organ’ ([45], p. 85). Consciousness, as these perspectives suggest, can now be seen as an entirely embodied and experientially formed phenomenon. Following this emerging science, education for forming a ‘critical consciousness’ [31] regarding making processes’ material, ecological and human impact needs to be, in part, an embodied and social/dialogic process.

In addition to the embodied, experiential, and social elements in effective maker-learning, a fourth element can be added: allowing a ‘pedagogy of purpose’ [46] in all forms of education, including ‘higher’. It is important that ethical-maker-learning and CML do not become part of a tick-box culture where academics and students are not allowed to shape conversations around what sustainability means from their perspective and what contributions to ecological thinking and acting they can realistically contribute to. An ecological awareness as a pedagogy of purpose is not easily a mechanistically measurable outcome but rather a virtue to be encouraged that can lead to more meaningful and fulfilling careers. Thus, careers should not be wholly focused on pay scales or quickly succumbing to ‘the allure of prestige’, resulting in well-paid but potentially ‘profoundly unfulfilling’ jobs [10, 46]. As Keogh argues: ‘a pedagogy of purpose will not view this person’s education as a success, despite every measure indicating the contrary’ [10, 46].

In addition to Keogh’s philosophical argument for a pedagogy of purpose, scientific findings from Affective Neuroscience can be drawn on to support more purposeful educational practices. The neuroscientist and human development psychologist Immordino-Yang has recently found how emotions play a crucial role in our learning processes, even to the extent that it can be argued that: ‘Creativity… is basically what happens when learners bring relational, emotional knowledge to bear as they make meaning of technical, academic information’ ([47], p. 107). Low-level, non-conscious, physiological processes related to survival are potentially critical contributors to motivation ([48], p. 166), with rational intelligence inseparable from ‘emotion, and from subjective, self-relevant goals’ ([49], p. 185). These findings could account for the playful spirit of enquiry and enjoyment in learning I have observed in the makerspace ZPD between students across disciplines, academics, librarians and learning technologists when framed by personal passion projects and ethical, environmental and social justice concerns.

Non-conscious (and conscious) anxieties concerning powerlessness against eco-catastrophy are, therefore, a good argument for a pedagogy of purpose concerning sustainability and ecological thinking. Enabling a meaningful ecological and socially aware pedagogy relevant to the existential threats of our time is potentially essential for all disciplines: ‘We are learning by bitter experience that the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself’ ([50], p. 491). Thus, ethical-maker-learning can provide a meaningful, values-focused and inspiring pedagogy of purpose that engages with important contemporary philosophical debates on ethics and morality. These difficult conversations seem to be avoided in much of the ‘skills’ focused modern Academy, yet without them coming to understand our ethical position on important matters effectively is very difficult. This absence of rigorous debate on pressing climate and social justice issues, dismissed in the eco-ostrich discourse of mainstream media, potentially leads to a soulless sense of fragmentation for the individual. It is only through an authentic dialogic understanding of the existential threats all humans face and what realistically can collectively be acted on that a unified sense of being-knowing-doing [2] is possible: ‘it is the person who acts in accordance with the best constitution, the most unified constitution, who is most truly the author of her actions’ ([51], p. 125).

As I have theorised, in addition to the philosophical/ethical argument for more experientially based ethical-maker-learning, there are critical pedagogical concerns rooted in the recent claims from Affective Neuroscience regarding positive social emotions (such as embracing virtues) being directly related to neural activation beneficial for our physiology in the learning process:

The most notable implication for education is that meaningful, socially relevant thinking moves us - inspiration changes our physiology, heightens our conscious awareness, and impels us to act purposefully towards our goals ([49], p. 165).

5. Ethical-maker-learning: towards an HE framework

The Table 1 looks at how ethical-maker-learning, including CML teaching, can be delivered in HE learning environments through Stesenko’s pedagogy of daring [2]. Although Stetsenko argues for the value of a Transformative Activist Stance (TAS), it is important within HE to listen to opposing views, which an initial emphasis on activism may discourage. An open, dialogical perspective is in keeping with the Activity Theory maxim ‘thinking occurs as much among as within individuals’ [46, 54]. ‘Activism’ is often necessary for progressive causes (e.g., Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Greta Thunberg would not have got very far without their well-thought-out and peaceful activism), but it is not always a good initial paradigm for research. However, in critiquing TAS, I do not wish to question the importance of Stetsenko’s idea of a ‘pedagogy of daring’. If we wish to involve students in the existential problems facing humanity in a realist manner, challenging conversions are necessary. In addition, a TAS-based methodology would make sense if a student has developed a more radical position through a deep understanding of a topic and an accompanying sense of responsibility to act, such as towards any practical and effective move that resists the uber-capitalist fantasy of infinite growth on a finite planet. Although most post-Marxist progressives may not be looking for potentially violent immediate class-based changes, there is still a responsibility to act from moral convictions against clearly evidenced social and environmental injustice. There is, therefore, still value in the spirit of change through organisation and solidarity Marx advocated: ‘To break with the “party form” or with some form of the State… does not mean to give up every form of practical or effective organisation’ ([55], p. 112).

STEAM category	Ethical-maker-learning activity	Acquisition	Participation	Contribution/daring
Sciences	Create pedagogical models and puzzles to help with material awareness	Obtain knowledge of the ‘value’ of different materials [18]	Share design ideas and discussions on HE teacher-share platforms	Use best designs for challenging conversations and raising Critical Material Literacy (CML) awareness
Technology	Curricula and co-curricular Technology Enabled Learning (TEL) projects for all in a cross-disciplinary maker space	Learn skills with emerging technologies through the university, providing access to all students	Local councils and universities organised ‘healthcare champions’ competition	Create bespoke technologies and equipment for local disability needs with sustainable materials
Engineering	Making technological prototypes to solve local sustainability problems	Learning an ethical design process for new technologies and products	Local councils and universities organised sustainability competition	Produce open-source university-endorsed sustainability products for local use
Arts	Exploring eco-friendly, junk and recycled materials to see how they can be used for art and design projects	Learning to manipulate eco-friendly materials for artistic purposes (e.g., bamboo sculptures)	Demonstrate student art using innovative eco-friendly materials at exhibitions	Enable eco-‘Craftervism’ [52] based activities targeting un-ethical eco practices
Mathematics	Exploring the possibilities for creating new quantitative data analysis programmes to help with ecological challenges	Learning how to address ethics in a progressive manner in the software design process	Sharing emancipatory ideas on online platforms	Connect students with ecologically ambitious projects (e.g., ICARUS animal monitoring [53])

Table 1.

Pedagogy of daring activities supporting STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) based ethical-maker-learning.

5.1 Table 1 explanation

Philosopher of Higher Education Ronald Barnett recently [33] (building on Felix Guattari’s thought linking the psyche, society and Nature [56]) made a bold case to challenge universities to go beyond merely increasing their understanding of how Western technoscientific instrumentalism is damaging earth systems. Barnett argues that universities must orchestrate disciplines and research to prioritise a new ‘Constitution’ of ‘critical stewardship’ of whole earth systems through nomadic cross-disciplinary inquiry ([33], p. 243). There is much to commend this call to action, and ethical-maker-learning and CML could be among the essential concepts in this transdisciplinary space. Thus, universities could start to individually and collectively help to put humanity on a more harmonious course towards ‘ecological justice’, with academics and students called to: ‘imaginatively and fearlessly… envisage new concepts, new ideas and new frames of thinking’ ([33], p. 246).

The Table 1 begins to broadly map out some possibilities for the contribution of ethical-maker-learning to STEAM pedagogies in the Academy. Regarding learning in the physical, chemical, and biological sciences, pedagogical models and puzzles are suggested to focus on material awareness. In her monograph ‘Material value: More sustainable, less wasteful manufacturing of everything from cell phones to cleaning products’ (2019), Goldstein breaks down the materials that go into the products we use daily. Just teaching insights from experts such as Goldstein would be informative in terms of transferring knowledge. For example, the extent of greenwashing often occurring in products mislabelled ‘natural’ can be exposed, with a call for more responsible manufacturing from NGOs and companies: ‘It should be possible for a company to make money without endangering its employees or customers’ [18, 39]. Ethical-maker-learning could expand on this knowledge acquisition in the sciences by creating models and puzzles of materials that could be combined in more eco-friendly ways. Critical educational maker models can help ensure science education is not devoid of the challenging conversations and debates often associated with the humanities, for example, discussing issues around the politics of technoscientific progress.

Through critical maker-learning models, Technology-Enabled-Learning (TEL) could move beyond focusing on digital capabilities with computers, laptops and smartphones to expand into a deeper understanding of the possibilities and dangers of emerging technologies. Digital capabilities often only focus on skills for software or programme use without looking further at the material interactions enabled by much digital interface technology such as 3-D printing, laser cutting and robotics. To enable ethical-maker-learning with these technologies, a cross-disciplinary makerspace is helpful (Academic libraries are often well placed to support these services; [1, 3]). Once established, the maker-space service can organise events and competitions such as the ‘healthcare champions’ one suggested above, which would aim to contribute to wider society by providing post-competition support for creating usable products and technologies with ethical purposes [57].

Connections can also be made to industry, where progressive maker-learning projects can connect with circular economic models and more ambitious aims to work towards material alignment with biological and technical food chains: ‘We do not have an energy problem. We have a materials-in-the-wrong-place problem’ ([58], p. 211). Maker-learning is already well established in many university engineering departments as a way to think about larger manufacturing processes and projects. In the case study makerspace service [1], an interesting yearly competition for students from all courses was set up to develop a new technology or product to help with local sustainability issues; good ideas from competitions such as this would then be shared. The university competition had yet to generate a practically usable device; this is where Engineering and Business departments could be more proactive and contribute more practical expertise in similar schemes.

Within the arts, maker-learning has already connected with Digital Humanities in interesting ways, such as developing a poesy (romantic poetry) remixer (‘Intimate Fields’; [1, 16]). Arts and humanities projects such as ‘Intimate Fields’ show how creative activities can engage students beyond just educating for the supposedly ‘rational’ primary aim of economic profit. Digital Humanities/STEAM-based hybrid activities can help challenge value systems in HE pedagogies to celebrate aspects of lived experience the Academy may curtail: ‘The joy of living, solidarity and compassion… must be protected’ ([59], p. 266). Arts-based ethical-maker-learning can also engage with eco-friendly materials, where successful results can be shared. More ambitiously, more critical learning models could be introduced. For example, ‘Craftervism’ [52] is a gentle but surprisingly effective form of protest where business leaders and others in authority are challenged with meaningful questions about ethical concerns, such as low pay among workers. This form of non-violent persuasive activism could be encouraged for those students with a particular local or national cause supporting CML and ethical-maker-learning aims they wish to promote.

Lastly, in this initial STEAM-based ethical-maker-learning ideas table, maths, in conjunction with computing, offers many opportunities to explore ways of making new software and programmes with a sustainability focus. As shown above, another more daring model would be to get students to work with ambitious ecological projects and placements such as the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS; [53]). ICARUS looks at how the migratory patterns of animals are being affected by climate change to better protect them in future through mini transmitters attached to animals being monitored by receivers in space. The ICARUS project is thus an internet of animals. As Bridle points out in ‘Ways of being’, ICARUS is part of a potentially beneficial ‘ecology of technology’ (that might also possibly include ‘fungi, plants, bacteria and stones’ in our stewardship to join the ‘demos’ of our ‘more-than-human commonwealth’; ([60], p. 300, 301). Thus:

Technologies of control and domination become instead technologies of cooperation, mutual empowerment and liberation ([60], p. 213).

5.2 Developing ethical-maker-learning for empowerment and ecological justice

Below are some initial suggestions for developing paths of possibility (Barnett, 2022) for ethical-maker-learning and CML in new TEL-enabled transdisciplinary models within and beyond the makerspace concept for HE, accepting there are many possible lines of flight [61] towards more democratic, ecologically aware participatory ways of being. We need not have a fixed destination or insist puritanically on only our path but must take care to understand others’ contexts and environments. As the influential early Enlightenment philosopher Spinoza realised, an ethical conatus of mind, body, and matter is essential for humanity to live in harmony as a part of Nature. A mind that forms adequate ideas through reasoning, understanding, and courage can work to avoid destructive emotions and enable better ideas that lead to positive action: ‘the mind is passive only to the extent that it has inadequate or confused ideas’ ([62], p. 101). With our contemporary knowledge of the interdependence of ecological systems, there is a need for all disciplines to start ‘thinking in terms of relationships, patterns and context’ [63, 64]. Thus, there is a clear educational need to strive towards an ethos of caring for each other and the beyond-human world, inviting diverse symbiotic systems to help avoid ecocatastrophe.

The solidarity I am asking for is essential for realising the ‘perhaps’ of Barnett’s vision of the ecological university [5]. Whatever our philosophical musings and viewpoints on ontology and epistemology, we all live in the same reality. We (humans, in particular as part of ‘advanced’ industrial nations) have to take responsibility for our historic and continuing damage to the earth by promoting new forms of ethical stewardship, resisting the siren call of a techno-determinist post-humanism. As Stiegler warned regarding the danger of diversion from ecological responsibility, post-humanism combines well with ‘economico-political interests that want at all costs to avoid the question… [of transformational technologies, critiquing consumer capitalism and avoiding eco-catastrophy]. Post-humanism is… a smokescreen’ ([65], p. 117, 118). Therefore ethical-maker-learning would intend to include science-based material literacy as part of a cross-disciplinary curriculum. Ethical-making projects could be introduced relevant to course foci, with the broad frame of supporting sustainability. As argued, projects need to involve haptic/embodied elements and dialogic discussion involving challenging conversations around social and ecological justice.

As a pedagogical move based on increased scientific awareness and cross-cultural humanist interests, CML and ethical-maker-learning resist simplistic anti-Enlightenment rhetoric, which is counterproductive to ‘de-colonising the curriculum’. Whilst critiquing the Enlightenment is necessary, the complex dialectical history within the ‘Enlightenment’ must be addressed, including the first wave of de-colonising efforts in the nineteenth century from Enlightenment-influenced Peruvians and Colombians [66]. Reasoning, logic and science are not wholly Western cultural constructs to be deconstructed and ‘de-colonised’. For example (from [67]), the formal logic developed in India, such as the Vaisheshika school’s analysis of atomism, Mohists in China with their attempt to combine logic and language with a comprehensive ethical theory on governance for the state and individuals’ role within it, the strength of mathematics and science in early Islamic culture with figures such as Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi who introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concept of algebra into European mathematics, or the compassionate and rational African philosophy of Ubuntu which strengthened community equality (and survival) in agrarian communities.

Ethical-maker-learning project outcome examples could provoke challenging transdisciplinary conversations involving students trying to make explicit the values and reasoning of their political, philosophical and ethical positions concerning CML-provoked arguments in a spirit of trust (Brandom, [64, 68], respectively). This means resisting a supposedly neutral ‘economic’ framing for climate education that will dampen any hope of positive action: ‘The result of the economic framing and the turn to depoliticisation emphasises knowledge without action and downplays the role of responsibility, ethics and values in sustainability and climate change education’ [11, 49]. Discussions could be enhanced by connecting academics across disciplines and professional staff involved in promoting ethical-maker-learning to local ecological fora to stimulate new ideas for learning, resisting the ‘rigid parameters around many of the disciplines’ ([69], p. 90), such as connecting to Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) focused on Education for Sustainability Development (ESD).

Universities can build from these debates new understandings regarding potential new progressive ecological concepts and ideas, resulting in an evolving culture of constructive argument (CCA [33], p. 83). As a balance to more potentially passionate debates, ethical-maker-pedagogies could allow for more mindful, slower, reflective activities involving handling new eco-friendly materials, technologies and products as part of an open, dialogic post-Enlightenment but scientifically aware critical humanist focus on narratives of worldly care ([70], p. 190). As part of the university’s focus on employment opportunities, students could be encouraged to work with companies and NGOs on placements that have aligned their interests to ecological and progressive concerns and encourage a participatory culture, such as Alexander’s New Citizen Project [24]. The lived experience gained from these placements could then be used to discuss potential new meanings from contextually established knowledge and its practical possibilities: ‘Whereas creativity is the use of imagination to transcend traditional ideas…, innovation is about giving these things new meanings that lead to changes in the system’ ([71], p. 116).

Post-placement discussions would need to be carried out across faculties, and the urge must be resisted to act holier than thou in particular disciplines on ecological matters, letting all into the central dialogic becoming of the ecological university. Although we may be reaching the apotheosis of neoliberal market fundamentalism, it is difficult to imagine a democratic future for humanity without some element of business practice or markets. Ethical business is surely not a misnomer, as the liberal educator John Dewey opined: ‘How unreasonable to expect the pursuit of business should itself be a culture of imagination, in breadth and refinement; that it should directly, and not through the money it which it supplies, have social service for its animating principle’ ([72], p. 136). Thus, ecological virtues could become part of guiding principles for all businesses as part of their vision for the ‘infinite game’ [42]. More ambitiously economist Mariana Mazzucato argues for the value of ‘mission orientated’ projects across an entrepreneurial public sector and a private sector focused on ‘stakeholders’ rather than purely profit-obsessed rentier extraction from the market, including addressing environmental concerns: ‘Making sure our earth remains habitable demands the same ambition…, public-private risk-sharing and sense of purpose and urgency as the Apollo project’ ([73], p. 226).

6. Conclusion

There is always a potential reaction to ambitious pedagogical ideas such as those proposed here, which are overtly ethical and progressive. Some in the Academy might challenge ethical-maker-learning’s supposed ‘utopian’ nature. Given our current climate emergency predicament, this viewpoint seems defeatist. Others might see Critical Material Literacy (CML) as elitist, condescending, or too controlling. However, it is a peculiar feature of late neoliberal consumer culture that: ‘To tell people how to lose weight, or how to decorate their house, is acceptable; but to call for any kind of cultural improvement is to be oppressive or elitist’ [73, 74]. Better ways of being with new technologies and engaging with their possibilities in an ecologically aware manner are already becoming possible. For example, Fairphones [75] make phones with a concern for the planet and avoid exploiting people. Framework laptops [76] allow ‘consumers’ to repair and upgrade their products. This suggests an untapped potential in coming generations, requiring educators of all kinds to work with imagination and courage to bring about new educational paths of possibility ([33], p. 215).

The call here is to explore ways for the Academy to take the lead on exploring ways for us all to find more responsible, ecologically aware ways of acting as global citizens: ‘knowledge is no guarantee of good behaviour, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behaviour’ ([77], p. 81). Therefore, I propose ethical-maker-learning and the related concept of CML to help frame new transdisciplinary pedagogic systems in HE. The request implicit in this chapter is for other voices in the Academy to act as critical friends and contribute different ideas and concepts in this new eco-pedagogical movement of purpose and action, with the aim of sustainability issues becoming the primary focus for universities’ ethos, working towards a new ecological Constitution for Universities-on-Earth ([33], p. 245). Contributions could come from willing academics, educational developers, librarians, learning technologists, careers, IT, facilities and all staff and students who work and study at universities.