1 The Role of Transformative Learning in Fostering a More Sustainable Society: The Case of Consuming Organic in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Food is a powerful symbol in the struggle to transition to a more sustainable pathway, and interest surrounding food and food security has increased steadily over the last few years.The choices citizens make around food have deep environmental and social impacts within their communities, and around the world.This research explores organic farming as an example of resource management grounded in community and environmental sustainability, and how it affects the leaming of those who seek it out.The underlying premise is that food is the basis of societal organisation, and that the conventional food system (and therefore our societal organization) is unsustainable having been undermined by a number of interdependent factors including the globalisation of our food supply focused on trade liberalization, introduction of genetic engineering technology, and loss of local fatmers, local foods, and therefore biological diversity and system resilience.Using transformative leaming theor¡ the research explores the leaming that takes place amongst adults who consume goods directly from local organic producers, and how this affects their worldview.The ultimate question investigated is whether transformative leaming can create lasting change amongst leamers, resulting in more environmentally responsible decision making, and therefore a more sustainable society.The objectives of the research examine the individual leaming associated with differing models of organic farms; understand why people support organic fatmers; explore what this means in the transformation of individual normative ideologies, and the potential impacts on sustainability; and communicate the fìndings.The research was conducted on the East Coast of Canada through face to face interviews, as well as through the researcher's own observations while working on the organic farms.Th¡ee different models of producer/consumer interfaces were considered: a market garden operation, an education and outreach centre, and a Community-Shared-Agriculture project.The researcher found that all participants experienced some fotm of either communicative or instrumental leaming.The role of informal, experiential learning was key in creating shifts in participants worldview related to food and environmental issues.Eight participants identified transformative leaming experiences related to food, and their stories showed that the change was longJasting, shared with others, and contributed to a more sustainable society.Closing the gap between producer and consumer tkough direct contact with the farmer at a market, visiting the farm, or participating in food production oneself is not only a desirable step in reaching a more sustainable lifestyle, it proves to be a powerful leaming tool linking the customer to a world of other environmental and social issues.1V Acknowledgernents I would like to express my gratitude to my Advisor, Dr. John Sinclair, who gave me every advantage during my studies and coaxed me tkougheven from afar.Thank you for getting me to Winnipeg, and providing your
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.034 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".