Educating Boundary Crossing Planners: Evidence for Student Learning in the Multistakeholder Regional Learning Environment

Oonk, C.; Gulikers, J.T.M.; Mulder, Martin

doi:10.1177/0739456x17737598

Cited by 14 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Regional learning environments were set up in the Dutch life sciences sector by educational institutes in collaboration with various regional stakeholders [19,45,46]. These parties collaboratively developed a long-term regional knowledge agenda to foster sustainable development of the region.…”

Section: Context Of the Study: The Regional Learning Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The general aim of the RLE is twofold, namely (1) to support students' and other parties' learning through working on wicked, authentic sustainability problems, and (2) to contribute to sustainable regional development. From an educational perspective, the RLE is an authentic, demand-driven collaborative and multi-stakeholder learning environment (e.g., [19,47]) that inherently requires students to adopt boundary crossing learning processes. In the RLE, students work in groups on real world regional, i.e., supra-local, problems with various regional stakeholders like local and regional authorities, semi-governmental bodies, entrepreneurs, research institutes, NGOs and citizens [45,46].…”

Section: Context Of the Study: The Regional Learning Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each student group worked on a different project assignment, commissioned by a societal party, of which the results contributed to the sustainable development of the respective region. For a more elaborate description of the participating RLEs see [18,19].…”

Section: Design Of the Study: Using The Rle To Grasp Boundary Crossinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An argument is then made for why we developed a rubric as an instrument to visualise boundary crossing learning, and how this instrument is expected to be stimulating for sustainable learning. The method section first describes the context of this study, being the 'regional learning environment' (RLE) [18,19]. The RLE is an exemplary transdisciplinary learning environment, in which student groups, often from different disciplines and/or cultures, learn and work with stakeholders from outside the university on real world regional sustainability problems, with the ultimate aim of contributing to sustainable development of that region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To answer this question, this design-based study focuses on student learning and working in twenty transdisciplinary sustainability projects from different life science higher education institutions. The study used multiple methods and multiple rounds of data collection and interventions [18,19] to iteratively develop and refine the Boundary Crossing Rubric. The Boundary Crossing Rubric (further BC-rubric) operationalises the four learning…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a Rubric for Stimulating and Evaluating Sustainable Learning

Gulikers

Oonk

2019

Sustainability

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Preparing students for dealing with sustainability issues is a challenge in the field of education. This is a challenge because we don't know exactly what we are educating for, as there are no defined answers or outcomes to the issues; the future is unpredictable. Dealing with these issues requires crossing boundaries between people coming from different 'practices', e.g., disciplines, cultures, academia versus society, thereby making the learning and working process a challenging but critical learning experience in itself. We argue that education for sustainability should not primarily focus on student content knowledge or development of certain products or answers. It should focus on stimulating students to go through boundary-crossing learning processes critical for getting a grip on the unpredictable future. This allows students to learn to work with 'others' around the boundaries, and thereby to develop the ability to co-create new knowledge and work towards innovation or transformation for sustainable practice. Building on the boundary crossing theory and using mixed methods and interventions, this design-based study iteratively develops a boundary crossing rubric as an instrument to operationalise student learning in transdisciplinary projects into concrete student behaviour. This rubric in turn can explicate, stimulate and assess student learning and development in transdisciplinary sustainability projects.Sustainability 2019, 11, 969 2 of 20 integration of sustainable development into higher education curricula, at least in Flanders, is still scarce. Svanström et al. [10] showed in their analysis of various educational programs for sustainable development that the learning objectives varied in number and kind, but that "the integration of different perspectives" was one commonality found in all programs. Filho and colleagues [4] moreover stress that higher education should encourage more multi-stakeholder dialogue between students and (non-academic) organisations, confronting students with various aspects (e.g., economic, social, cultural or environmental) relevant for sustainable development.This requires transdisciplinary education [11] in which students work on real world wicked problems, as well as collaborate across disciplinary and institutional boundaries to work towards knowledge co-creation [12], innovation and transformation [1]. Though transdisciplinary education is sparsely emerging in higher education [3,11], most educational practices address well-structured problems that do not require multi-stakeholder interaction, probably because developing, implementing and assessing education that fosters sustainability competencies is a challenge for teachers and students [5,7]. Teachers are not educated in an inter-or transdisciplinary manner, or might not feel able to integrate sustainable development issues into their education [4,9]. Various reviews on assessment tools have also aimed to compare, evaluate or audit sustainability programs [13,14], and have shown that the actual design and activiti...

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Section: Context Of the Study: The Regional Learning Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Context Of the Study: The Regional Learning Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Design Of the Study: Using The Rle To Grasp Boundary Crossinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a Rubric for Stimulating and Evaluating Sustainable Learning

Gulikers

Oonk

2019

Sustainability

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Verknüpfungen, Zielkonflikte und Synergien der Nachhaltigkeitsziele für die Lehre fruchtbar machen. Didaktische Konzeption und Umsetzung einer gemeinsamen Vorlesungsreihe der deutschen UNESCO-Lehrstühle

Adomßent

2019

Aktuelle Ansätze Zur Umsetzung Der UN-Nachhaltigkeitsziele

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Teachers as brokers: adding a university-society perspective to higher education teacher competence profiles

et al. 2020

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Higher education institutions are increasingly engaged with society but contemporary higher education teacher competence profiles do not include university-society oriented responsibilities of teachers. Consequently, comprehensive insights in university-society collaborative performance of higher education teachers are not available. This study empirically develops a teacher profile for an exemplary university-society oriented, multi-stakeholder learning environment and builds an argument for university-society collaborative additions to existing higher education teacher profiles. A showcase example of a new university-society collaborative, multi-stakeholder learning environment, the Regional Learning Environment (RLE), provides the context of analysis. Thirteen RLE establishments were included in the study. The study uses a descriptive qualitative design, triangulating data from RLE documents, teacher interviews and focus groups with teachers and managers on RLE teacher roles, tasks and competencies. The resulting RLE teacher profile comprises nine roles, nineteen tasks and 21 competencies. The new profile echoes scattered indications for teacher responsibilities as identified in previous studies on teaching and learning in university-society collaborative learning settings. The study argues that the role of broker, including boundary crossing competence, and the competency 'stimulating a collaborative learning attitude', might be added to existing higher education teacher competence profiles. Adding this university-society engaged perspective to existing teacher competence profiles will support higher education institutions in developing their university-society collaborative responsibilities and subsequent teacher professionalisation trajectories.

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Educating Boundary Crossing Planners: Evidence for Student Learning in the Multistakeholder Regional Learning Environment

Cited by 14 publications

References 47 publications

Towards a Rubric for Stimulating and Evaluating Sustainable Learning

Towards a Rubric for Stimulating and Evaluating Sustainable Learning

Verknüpfungen, Zielkonflikte und Synergien der Nachhaltigkeitsziele für die Lehre fruchtbar machen. Didaktische Konzeption und Umsetzung einer gemeinsamen Vorlesungsreihe der deutschen UNESCO-Lehrstühle

Teachers as brokers: adding a university-society perspective to higher education teacher competence profiles

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