From food waste data to transformative sensemaking: the Motta Framework for sustainability learning

This study examines how contextual data on food waste become pedagogically meaningful within a sustainability learning experience. Conducted in a Brazilian public secondary school, the qualitative, applied and interpretive study integrated Design Science Research and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Twenty-eight secondary school students took part in the pedagogical activities, and 18 formed the core group for in-depth interviews. Merenda Inteligente, a hybrid artefact comprising a digital application and a teaching sequence, supported data recording, visualisation and discussion. Triangulation across waste weighing, observations, questionnaires, student-produced materials, artefact records and interviews revealed four interdependent movements: problem materialisation, phenomenological friction, collective sensemaking and shared agency oriented towards socio-environmental value creation. These movements did not occur uniformly; trajectories were extended, partial or interrupted. Building on these findings, the article develops the Motta Framework for Transformative Sensemaking as a processual, recursive and non-linear configuration. The contribution lies in explaining the conditions under which data can participate in reframing a normalised socio-environmental problem, without attributing autonomous transformative capacity to technology or inferring enduring behavioural change.