Search Results (45)

This study explores the role of Applied Theatre as a form of cultural mediation in addressing issues of environmental justice within higher education. Eight university professors participated in the study, providing qualitative data through semi-structured interviews that focused on their perceptions of environmental inequalities, their teaching practices, and the potential of theatrical approaches to foster critical engagement with sustainability issues, drawing on their prior use of drama-based methods in university teaching. Using a directed content analysis framework, the study highlights that environmental inequalities are not only material or ecological but are closely intertwined with social relations, access to resources, and collective experiences. The findings indicate that Applied Theatre can create an intermediate learning space where knowledge, emotion, and action intersect, enabling students to engage critically and experientially with social and environmental injustices. Essential conditions for successful integration include targeted professional development of faculty, institutional support, and interdisciplinary collaborations, while challenges such as limited resources, time constraints, and lack of curricular recognition remain significant. The study contributes to the development of a theoretical framework that positions Applied Theatre as cultural mediation in higher education, framing it not only as an artistic methodology but also as a social and educational practice. This framework provides directions for future research and policy, particularly in the design of sustainable teaching practices that connect higher education with social justice and ecological responsibility. Full article

This study develops a theory-integrated Virtual Reality (VR) information platform for designing age-friendly residential units, addressing the intersection of population aging and digital transformation. Unlike studies emphasizing post-implementation outcomes, it focuses on the input-stage logic of design by embedding human cognition, emotion, and behavior into spatial reasoning. Grounded in environmental behavior theory, the research constructs a housing model that reflects older adults’ perceptual and behavioral responses to spatial configurations such as layouts, circulation, lighting, and visual coordination. Space is redefined as an experiential medium that evokes emotional resonance, fosters empathy, and bridges theoretical reasoning with practical design outcomes. The proposed VR platform integrates aging, behavioral, and design sciences into an intelligent guide functioning as both an educational and evaluative system, enabling interactive and scenario-based exploration of spatial experiences. Following design-based and developmental research principles, this study represents a preliminary phase within an ongoing framework, establishing a robust conceptual foundation for future empirical validation. It highlights that the robustness of the developmental process is as crucial as learning outcomes, reinforcing the importance of theoretical integration in sustainable, human-centered housing design for super-aged societies. Full article

Cultural ecosystem services (CESs) play a critical role in urban residents’ well-being, yet conventional evaluations rely heavily on green-space area and overlook how facility quality and basic services influence the delivery of actual cultural benefits. To address this methodological gap, this study develops a three-tier evaluation framework—service potential, actual supply capacity, and actual service utility—to quantify multistage attenuation in CES provision across 95 parks in seven central districts of Shenyang, China. The framework integrates 114 quantitative and qualitative indicators from field surveys, national facility standards, and perception-based assessments, enabling a scientifically robust and replicable assessment of how cultural benefits are transformed from ecological structure to human experience. Results reveal that single-index, area-based assessments substantially overestimate CES supply: district-level supply–demand ratios drop from 66 to 195% to only 11–55% once quality and basic services are incorporated. Comprehensive and special parks retain the highest CES potential, whereas community and linear parks undergo significant losses due to aging facilities, insufficient maintenance, and inadequate infrastructure. Education and cultural services exhibit the most severe shortages, with deficits reaching 59–84%, underscoring structural limitations in learning-oriented spaces. By distinguishing structural (quantity), functional (quality), and experiential (basic service) constraints, the framework provides clear diagnostic guidance for targeted planning and management. Its multistage structure also reflects broader principles of sustainable urban development: improving CES requires not only expanding ecological elements but also enhancing service quality, strengthening infrastructure, and promoting equitable access to cultural benefits. The framework’s generalizability makes it applicable to high-density cities worldwide facing land scarcity and green-space inequality, supporting efforts aligned with SDG 11 to build inclusive, resilient, and culturally vibrant urban environments. Full article

The present paper discusses extended reality (XR) applications specifically designed to enhance experiential location-based learning in outdoor spaces, which are utilized in the context of an environmental education program of the Education Center for the Environment and Sustainability (E.S.E.C.) of Kastoria. With the use of augmented, mixed, and virtual reality technologies, an attempt is made to enrich the knowledge and experiences of the students during their visit to the representation of the Neolithic settlement (open-air museum) and their active participation in the learning process. Students take on roles such as those of an archeologist, a detective, and an explorer. By utilizing mobile devices and leveraging GPS technology, students search for and identify virtual findings at the excavation site, travel through time, and investigate the resolution of a mystery (crime) that occurred during the Neolithic period, exploring and navigating the space of the neolithic representation interacting with real and virtual objects, while through special VR glasses they discover the lifestyle of neolithic man. The design of the applications was based on the ADDIE model, while the evaluation was conducted using a structured questionnaire for XR experiences. The fundamental constructs of the questionnaire were defined as follows: Challenge, Satisfaction/Enjoyment, Ease of Use, Usefulness/Knowledge, Interaction/Collaboration, and Intention to Reuse. A total of 163 students were involved in the study. Descriptive statistics showed consistently high scores across factors (M = 4.21–4.58, SD = 0.41–0.63). Pearson correlations revealed strong associations between Challenge—Satisfaction/Enjoyment (r = 0.688), Usefulness/Knowledge—Intention to Reuse (r = 0.648), and Satisfaction—Intention to Reuse (r = 0.651). Regression analysis further supported key relationships such as Usefulness/Knowledge—Intention to Reuse (β = 0.31, p < 0.001), Usefulness/Knowledge—Interaction/Collaboration (β = 0.34, p < 0.001), Satisfaction/Enjoyment—Usefulness/Knowledge (β = 0.42, p < 0.001) and Challenge—Satisfaction/Enjoyment (β = 0.69, p < 0.001). Overall, findings suggest that well-designed XR experiences can support higher engagement, perceived cognitive value, and intention to reuse in authentic outdoor learning contexts. Full article

The contemporary landscape is characterised by overlapping values and pressures, where ecosystem services and cultural spaces are used by diverse categories of users. In fragile contexts such as the Phlegraean Fields in Italy, the exponential growth of mass tourism has intensified the anthropogenic impacts, exacerbated by limited landscape awareness among local communities. Thus, walkability fosters direct exploration, while experiential transects provide a lens to read ecological, cultural, and perceptual layers of places. Together with digital storytelling, these approaches converge in a phygital approach that enriches physical experience without supplanting it. The study covered approximately 115 km of routes across five municipalities, combining road audits, an 11-item survey, participatory mapping, and ArcGIS StoryMaps. Results showed a structurally complex and functionally fragile mobility system: sidewalks are discontinuous, lighting insufficient, less than one quarter of the network is fully pedestrian, and cycling facilities are almost absent. At the same time, digital layers diversified routes and supported situated learning. By integrating geo-spatial analysis and phygital tools, the research demonstrates a replicable strategy to enhance the awareness and sustainable enjoyment of complex landscapes. The present research is part of the PNRR project Changes ‘PE5Changes_Spoke1-WP4-Historical Landscapes Traditions and Cultural Identities’. Full article

Introduction: John Dewey, a prominent educational philosopher, emphasized the importance of connecting education and democracy, and advocated for the cultivation of civic values through experiential learning. Dewey’s pedagogical model most often unfolds with educators designing students’ experiences, which Dewey believed instills and advances the moral foundation of a democracy. Dewey faced many detractors over his lifetime who maintained that his emphasis on experience and moral development lacked the substance of traditional educational philosophy and was marginally connected to civic education. In recent years and in an increasingly contentious social/political environment, Dewey’s perspective has been rediscovered and rehabilitated by research that has identified both political and moral identities to be central constructs in the construction of a civic identity. This paper explores how civic education is affected when socio-political crises disrupt the established educational order, leaving students to navigate these turbulent circumstances on their own. Methods: This study employs a mixed-methods approach to examine the impact of the socio-political crises of 2020—COVID-19 and racial unrest—on civic learning in higher education. A total of 1217 college students were surveyed during the spring of 2020 to assess how their academic experiences influenced their engagement with these twin crises. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered to provide insight into students’ experiences. Results: The findings suggest that students’ learning experiences during these crises had a significant impact on how they engaged with the socio-political challenges of 2020. Students who engaged in more self-reflective experiential learning during the pandemics reported a renewed understanding of their roles as citizens and increased commitment to a more equitable and just communal existence. Students reported that being forced to actively engage with the crises—rather than passively receiving information—helped them to develop a sense of civic responsibility. Discussion: The results of this study highlight the potential for civic education to be enriched during times of crisis, particularly when students are encouraged to actively engage with their experiences. Dewey’s model of experiential learning proves relevant when socio-political upheaval forces students into a direct, personal, unmediated experience with the issues at hand. The result seems to be deeper, previously unappreciated understanding of their roles in a democratic society. The study suggests that higher education can serve as a vital space for fostering civic engagement, even in the face of unexpected challenges. Furthermore, the disruption of traditional educational processes during crises can create opportunities for students to develop critical thinking skills and a more profound commitment to civic participation. Full article

This article argues that sustainability governance in small-scale regenerative aquaculture arises less from formal regulation than from the relational, ethical, and temporal labour of practitioners. Based on an ethnographic study of Câr-y-Môr, Wales’s first community-owned regenerative ocean farm, the research combines over 250 h of participant observation, 25 interviews, and document analysis with transdisciplinary humanities-informed sustainability science (THiSS). The study shows how technocratic environmentalism, reliant on auditing, reporting, and standardised procedures, often clashes with the shifting rhythms of tides, weather, and the embodied work of marine labour. Ethnography uniquely reveals the embodied knowledge, improvisation, and moral commitment through which practitioners continually remake governance, translating bureaucratic rules into ecologically and socially meaningful practice. The findings demonstrate that adaptive governance requires recognition of local and experiential expertise, proportionate regulatory frameworks, and protected spaces for experimentation and learning. Seen in this way, sustainability shifts from a fixed goal to a relational process. When governance learns from practice and care is recognised as a form of knowledge, it becomes more adaptive, situated, and responsive, revealing both the constraints of technocratic control and the possibilities of care-based policy and practice. Full article

Contemporary interpretations of psychedelic spirituality are dominated by the “mystical experience model,” which emphasizes that psychedelics can lead to well-being through bringing about ego dissolution and a unitive mystical experience. Rooted in perennialist and dualist assumptions—often derived from Christian mysticism, Vedanta, and Plotinian Neoplatonism—this framework has shaped both scientific discourse and popular understanding of psychedelic states. However, the mystical experience model is controversial: (1) secular critics consider it as too religious; (2) it is a form of mystical exceptionalism, narrowly focusing on only certain extraordinary experiences; (3) its ontological assumptions include a Cartesian separation between internal experience and external reality and a perennialist focus on ultimate reality; (4) it neglects psychedelic learning processes; (5) in the ritual and ceremonial use of psychedelics, shared intentionality and practices of sacred participation are more important than the induction of individual mystical experiences. This article proposes an alternative and complementary model grounded in theurgy, based on the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and the participatory ontological pluralism of Bruno Latour. Unlike the mystical experience model, which privileges individual unitary experiences, theurgy affirms ritual mediation, ritual competence, and both individual and collective transformation. Theurgic ritual practice makes room for the encounter with autonomous entities (framed by Latour as “beings of religion”) that are often reported by participants in psychedelic ceremonies. By examining how the theurgic framework can expand our understanding of psychedelic spirituality in a way that is truer to psychedelic phenomenology, especially the presence of autonomous entities, imaginal realms, and the centrality of intention and ritual, this article argues that theurgy offers a nuanced and experientially congruent framework that complements the mystical experience model. Framing psychedelic spirituality through theurgic lenses opens space for a vision of the sacred that is not about escaping the world into undifferentiated unity, but about individual and collective transformation in communion with a living, differentiated cosmos. Full article

Urban streets serve as essential spaces for commercial activities and social interaction, yet the mechanisms through which their landscape elements influence consumption vitality remain insufficiently explored. Focusing on Lixia District, Jinan, China, this study integrates street-view image semantic segmentation with machine learning techniques to capture the nonlinear interactions between streetscape features and consumption vitality, thereby establishing an analytical framework for examining their associations. The results show that: (1) pedestrian-friendly facilities are significantly associated with higher street-level consumption vitality, with benches and streetlights showing marked effects once their visual proportions exceed 10% and 12%, respectively; (2) the visual proportion of parking space becomes positively associated with consumption vitality when exceeding 0.15, whereas carriageway proportion shows an overall negative association; (3) the marginal effect of advertising density gradually diminishes, with billboard visibility ratios above 25% exhibiting saturated impacts; (4) when green-view visibility exceeds 30%, consumption vitality increases substantially, peaking within the 35–40% range; (5) potential synergies or trade-offs exist among streetscape elements—compared with individual factors, the combinations of benches and parking spaces, benches and billboards, as well as parking spaces and billboards, are associated with higher street-level consumption vitality. In contrast, combinations involving a larger sky view ratio are often linked to lower consumption vitality, suggesting that overly open spaces may weaken consumer attractiveness. This study not only extends the methodological toolkit for analyzing consumption vitality but also provides theoretical and practical guidance for the refined design and experiential construction of urban street environments. Full article

Detecting available road space is a fundamental task for autonomous driving vehicles, requiring robust image feature extraction methods that operate reliably across diverse sensor-captured scenarios. However, existing approaches process each input independently without leveraging Accumulated Experiential Knowledge (AEK), limiting their adaptability and reliability. In order to explore the impact of AEK, we introduce MemRoadNet, a Memory-Augmented (MA) semantic segmentation framework that integrates human-inspired cognitive architectures with deep-learning models for free road space detection. Our approach combines an InternImage-XL backbone with a UPerNet decoder and a Human-like Memory Bank system implementing episodic, semantic, and working memory subsystems. The memory system stores road experiences with emotional valences based on segmentation performance, enabling intelligent retrieval and integration of relevant historical patterns during training and inference. Experimental validation on the KITTI road, Cityscapes, and R2D benchmarks demonstrates that our single-modality RGB approach achieves competitive performance with complex multimodal systems while maintaining computational efficiency and achieving top performance among single-modality methods. The MA framework represents a significant advancement in sensor-based computer vision systems, bridging computational efficiency and segmentation quality for autonomous driving applications. Full article

This study investigates the applicability of the Japanese forest education model, exemplified by the Whole Earth Nature School (WENS), to environmental education programs within urban parks and botanical gardens. Focusing on WENS’s approach—characterized by immersive natural experiences, innovative facilitation techniques, and support from interdisciplinary educator teams to foster independent thinking through experiential learning—the research identifies three transferable insights: (1) Reorienting educational philosophy to prioritize nature-based learning for holistic development, particularly within urban green spaces; (2) Developing localized curricula that leverage the unique ecological resources of specific park and garden environments; (3) Establishing dedicated professional development systems for educators focused on site-based pedagogy. The findings demonstrate that adapting the forest education model can significantly enhance environmental education initiatives in urban parks and botanical gardens, which offers actionable strategies for integrating experiential nature learning into their educational planning. Full article

(1) Background: In today’s digital society, challenges like cyberbullying, harmful social media use, and unhealthy digital habits demand innovative and inclusive educational responses. This study investigates the potential of service-learning (SL) and electronic service-learning (e-SL) as experiential approaches to enhance digital well-being among youth. By actively engaging students, educators, and community stakeholders in co-designed projects, SL/e-SL promotes critical awareness, digital citizenship, and prosocial values while addressing digital risks. (2) Methods: This review offers a literature-based analysis of existing programs and good practices that apply experiential education to encourage responsible digital engagement. It explores SL and e-SL experiences across various educational settings. (3) Results: The findings show that SL and e-SL can be effective educational tools, creating meaningful opportunities for youth to participate in tackling digital issues and building inclusive spaces where students, faculty, and communities collaborate to foster digital literacy and well-being. The analysis also led to the development of quality standards for SL and e-SL practices that promote digital well-being. (4) Conclusions: This study highlights key implications for teaching, underscoring the value of integrative pedagogies that connect experiential learning to digital challenges, promoting a more inclusive and responsible digital culture. Full article

This study analyzes the differences in the selection of teaching methodologies, assessment instruments, and educational values in Master’s Theses (TFMs) written within the Geography and History specialization of a Teacher Training Master’s program in Spain. The aim is to examine how these pedagogical components vary according to the gender of the author and the educational level targeted by the instructional proposals. A mixed-methods approach was applied combining statistical analysis (Chi-square and ANOVA tests) with qualitative content analysis of 54 anonymized TFMs. The results indicate that while gender-related differences were not statistically significant in most categories, qualitative patterns emerged: female authors tended to adopt more reflective, participatory approaches (e.g., oral expression, gender visibility), whereas male authors more often used experiential or gamified strategies. Significant differences by educational level were found in the use of gamification, inquiry-based learning, and project-based learning. A progressive increase in methodological complexity was observed from lower secondary to upper levels. In terms of educational values, interdisciplinarity and inclusion were most frequently promoted, with critical perspectives such as historical memory and gender visibility more prevalent at the Baccalaureate level. These findings underscore the TFM’s role as a space for pedagogical innovation, reflective practice, and value-driven teacher identity formation. Full article

Introduction: The increasing cultural diversity of patients poses new challenges for nurses. Cultural competence, especially knowledge of the cultural determinants of health and illness, is an important element of professionalism in nursing care. The aim of this study was to analyse nurses’ self-assessment of cultural knowledge, with a focus on the six dimensions of the Giger and Davidhizar model, prior to formal training in this area. Methods: A triangulation method combining qualitative and quantitative analysis was used. The analysis included 353 statements from 36 master’s student nurses. Data were coded according to six cultural phenomena: biological factors, communication, space, time, social structure, and environmental control. Content analysis, ANOVA, Spearman’s rank correlation, and cluster analysis (k-means) were conducted. Results: The most frequently identified that categories were environmental control (34%), communication (20%), and social structure (16%). Significant knowledge gaps were identified in the areas of non-verbal communication, biological differences, and understanding space in a cultural context. Three cultural knowledge profiles of the female participants were distinguished: pragmatic, socio-reflective, and critical–experiential. Conclusions: The cultural knowledge of the participants was fragmented and simplified. The results indicate the need to personalise cultural learning and to take into account nurses’ level of readiness and experience profile. The study highlights the importance of the systematic development of reflective and contextual cultural knowledge as a foundation for competent care. Full article

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms often exhibit significant performance variability across different training runs, even with identical settings. This paper investigates the hypothesis that a key contributor to this variability is the divergence in the observation spaces explored by individual learning agents. We conducted an empirical study using Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) agents trained on eight Atari environments. We analyzed the collected agent trajectories by qualitatively visualizing and quantitatively measuring the divergence in their explored observation spaces. Furthermore, we cross-evaluated the learned actor and value networks, measuring the average absolute TD-error, the RMSE of value estimates, and the KL divergence between policies to assess their functional similarity. We also conducted experiments where agents were trained from identical network initializations to isolate the source of this divergence. Our findings reveal a strong correlation: environments with low-performance variance (e.g., Freeway) showed high similarity in explored observation spaces and learned networks across agents. Conversely, environments with high-performance variability (e.g., Boxing, Qbert) demonstrated significant divergence in both explored states and network functionalities. This pattern persisted even when agents started with identical network weights. These results suggest that differences in experiential trajectories, driven by the stochasticity of agent–environment interactions, lead to specialized agent policies and value functions, thereby contributing substantially to the observed inconsistencies in DRL performance. Full article