Findings Report: Qualitative Codebook for NC-FEW Disciplinary Workshop Study

Abstract

The Food-Energy-Water (FEW)-Nexus provides a context for education that supports understanding the complex intersections among food, energy, and water systems, and promotes socio-ecological systems thinking and decision-making about natural resources and sustainability challenges. Using perspectives from participants in education workshops and existing literature, we explored the foundations of an integrated framework that can inform both educational practice and educational research within the FEW-Nexus. These foundations include ontological (thoughts about the socio-ecological systems aspects of the FEW-Nexus) and epistemological (thoughts about education and educational research of the FEW-Nexus) dimensions. Using these dimensions, we probed deeply into workshop participants’ responses using thematic content analysis.