We address the following three questions that summarize the concerns of commentators: (a) Is the metaphor of creativity as catching the big fish useful? (b) What is the relationship between radical constructivism and the 4E approach? (c) What do we understand by teaching from the 4E approach?
> Context • The 4E approach proposes an alternative framework to understanding cognition and learning. However, its application to the study of creativity from new educational approaches such as STEAM is incipient. > Problem • How can the 4E approach that fosters creativity be implemented in STEAM education, through participation in technology-mediated learning ecosystems? > Method • Through face-to-face ethnographic participant observation, we observe students engaging in creative activities suggested by our theoretical approach. We use these observations to illustrate our theoretical approach. > Results • Our examples show the many possibilities to encourage creativity by participating in STEAM educational environments that promote design and prototyping with technologies. We highlight collaborative work, disciplinary integration and learning by doing, characteristics of the STEAM approach, which favor the implementation of the 4E approach. > Implications • The STEAM approach encourages creativity and learning that gives primacy to training processes over final products, so it is consistent with the 4E approach. > Constructivist content • We adhere to the 4E approach to cognition: embodied, enacted, embedded and extended.
The construction industry remains under immense pressure to reduce its material and climate related impacts. Increasing material demand and reduced building lifetimes have therefore motivated efforts for urban mining in buildings. Even though urban mining has been projected as a crucial measure for improving resource efficiency, its adoption as a practice in the construction industry remains at a very symbolic stage. Upscaling secondary resource recovery and reuse in the construction sector requires further efforts to understand urban mining feasibility from the perspective of project timelines, salvage time, skills and costs. Hence, this study develops an empirical research approach to measure urban mining feasibility and applies it to demolition-ready urban residential buildings stock in Singapore with semi-skilled construction workers. It develops indicators for urban mining feasibility based on planning stages, process change, behavioural practices and reuse-driven economic considerations. Based on urban mining of over 350 building components from 34 categories, results show an average of 1 to 12 min recovery time with an estimated urban mining cost from S$0.8 to S$9 per building component. Further, regulatory requirements for demolition permits can provide sufficient time for urban mining without affecting project timelines. Even though the mining skills of workers seem important, results highlights significant improvement in mining skills based on repeated salvage of specific building components. Results also provide robust evidence of reuse-driven urban mining feasibility in the case under study with significant prospects for embodied carbon savings. Overall, urban mining of buildings can contribute to net-zero targets and climate mitigation efforts with greater multi-stakeholder involvement and market push for reuse in the construction sector.
The residential built environment plays a crucial role in supporting many human activities. In urban areas however, high-rise residential buildings require significant investment of material resources, which are stacked for a long time over the building's lifetime. Assessing the Material Stock (MS) of buildings has been the focus of several studies for insights into in-use materials and their potential availability as secondary resources. The study of material circularity, or the potential to reuse materials emerging from end-of-life buildings, has so far been mostly limited to metals. This study argues that material stock analysis at individual material or material categories e.g. mineral, or metals, need to be complemented with building component stock estimations to enhance the potential for secondary resource recovery. Based on a bottom-up stock analysis approach, we estimate both the material and component stock of public housing developments in the city-state of Singapore and associated annual in- and out-flows. Results show that public housing in this city, which accommodates over 80 percent of its residents, accounts for 125.7 million tons of non-metallic minerals, 6.52 million tons of steel, 6.45 million windows, 8.61 million doors, 1.97 million toilet accessories, 15.33 million lighting fixtures, 0.99 million kitchen accessories (such as cookstove, kitchen cabinets) and 52.54 million m2 of tiles. The average stock of materials for these residential buildings is estimated at 27.4 tons of non-metallic minerals per capita and 1.4 tons of steel per capita. The average annual inflow of materials has been estimated to be 1.94 million tons for concrete and 0.1 million tons of steel, with a considerably low outflow of 0.31 million tons concrete and 0.02 million tons of steel, implying growth in these material stocks. This study provides a methodological approach to quantify building material and component stock and flows, which can be used by policy makers, urban planners and designers to consider responsible resource consumption. In particular, material and component stock estimations like that reported in this study contribute towards component-level circularity in the built environment.
Garreton, M., Basauri, A., & Valenzuela, L. (2020b). Exploring the correlation between city size and residential segregation: comparing Chilean cities with spatially unbiased indexes. Environment and Urbanization, 32(2), 569-588. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247820918983
Garreton, M., Basauri, A., & Valenzuela, L. (2020). Exploring the correlation between city size and residential segregation: comparing Chilean cities with spatially unbiased indexes. Environment and Urbanization, 32(2), 569-588. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247820918983
Vera, R., Araya, R., Garín, C., Ossandón, S., & Rojas, P. (2019). Study on the effect of atmospheric corrosion on mechanical properties with impact test: Carbon steel and Galvanized steel. Materials and Corrosion, 70(7), 1151-1161. https://doi.org/10.1002/maco.201810666
