Enabling university educators to equip students with inter- and transdisciplinary competencies

Abstract

PurposeInter-and transdisciplinarity are core concepts in almost all ESD competence frameworks and curricula. To equip students with inter-and transdisciplinary competencies is highly demanding for educators. Educators must not only know how to teach students such competencies, but need to be experienced in inter-and transdisciplinary research and must have some technical knowledge about inter-and transdisciplinarity. The paper shows how university educators can be supported in their teaching. Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a case study based on research and on experiences in interdisciplinary teaching and in supporting educators in their interdisciplinary teaching. FindingsThe paper presents a competence framework of interdisciplinary competencies to guide university teachers that has been developed, implemented and refined in interdisciplinary study programmes belonging to the field of ESD. It shows how the professional development of educators could be addressed referring to the experiences in these programmes. The measures presented consist for one thing of interdisciplinary processes among the educators and of measures directly supporting educators in their teaching for another thing. Originality/valueThe case study the paper refers to is of special value first, because the experiences are based on long-standing research and on two decades of experiences. Second, because considerable efforts were made to deliver coherent and consistent interdisciplinary teaching in which interdisciplinarity was not only a teaching subject for the students but showed by the educators as well so that the educators involved did not only talk about competencies for inter-and transdisciplinary collaborations but also set an example in their own doings. KeywordsInterdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary teaching, teaching interdisciplinarity, teaching transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary competencies Di Giulio, Defila -International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 18, Nr. 5 -1Enabling university educators to equip students with inter-and transdisciplinary competencies Abstract Purpose

Scientific Support for Redesigning a Higher-Education Curriculum on Sustainability

“…The third point, which proves to be decisive for quality, is the creation of a space for interdisciplinary consensus building. Such an interdisciplinary process enables all actors involved to contribute their disciplinary point of view and at the same time ensures that a common understanding of didactics and content can be developed for the study program [53].…”

“…Less successful was the integrative course at achieving its goal of consolidating what was learned in the lectures. This was mainly caused by the difficulty of finding a suitable lecturer for this course (considering the requirements that teachers in interdisciplinary teaching have to meet, this is not surprising [53], and in the case of TQNE, the lecturer not only had to be qualified in interdisciplinary teaching, he/she also had to be qualified in the topic chosen for the course). Furthermore, this lecturer had to be willing to commit to the curricular requirements even though he/she had not participated in the redesign.…”

Acquiring transdisciplinary knowledge by engineering students of Russian universities

“…Рассмотрена методика для развития меж-и трансдисциплинарных компетенций у преподавателей, участвующих в реализации образовательных программ в области устойчивого развития [26].…”

The Role of Higher Education Institutions in Preparing Youth to Manage a Sustainability-Oriented Future Workplace

“…Studies regarding further conceptualization and integration of individual sustainability competences focused on the perspective of the university educators, more specifically professional development and empowerment of academic staff (e.g. Di Giulio, Defila 2017;Lambrechts et al 2017;Mula et al 2017), as well as different transdisciplinary or "real-world" educational approaches in order to better prepare students for their future role (e.g. Brundiers et al 2010;Tejedor et al 2018).…”