How an entry-level, interdisciplinary sustainability course revealed the benefits and challenges of a university-wide initiative for sustainability education

Abstract

Purpose – Delivery of sustainability-related curriculum to undergraduate students can be problematic due to the traditional “siloing” of curriculum by faculties along disciplinary lines. In addition, while there is often a ready availability of courses focused on sustainability issues in the later years of students’ programs, few early entry-level courses focused on sustainability, broad enough to apply to all disciplines, are available to students in the first year of their program. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, we describe the development, and preliminary implementation, of an entry-level, interdisciplinary sustainability course. To do so, the authors describe the development of a university-wide initiative designed to bridge units on campus working and teaching in sustainability areas, and to promote and support sustainability curriculum development. Findings – The authors describe the conceptual framework for organising course content and delivery. The authors conclude with an informal assessment of the successes and challenges, and offer learning activities, student assessments and course administration recommendations for consideration when developing courses with similar learning goals. Originality/value – The positive and negative experiences gained through developing and offering a course of this nature, in a large research-focused university, offers knew insights into potential barriers for implementing first-year cross-cutting sustainability curriculum.

Holding Complexity: Lessons from Team-Teaching an Interdisciplinary Collegiate Course on Urban Sustainability

“…Scholars have called for changes in current teaching practice to emphasize interdisciplinary perspectives and focus on critical problem solving, experiential learning, collaboration, and personal empowerment (Davis 1995;Burns 2013). Recently, scholars have examined team-teaching in sustainability courses (see, for example, Burns 2013;Michelsen 2013;Coops et al 2015;Levintova and Mueller 2015).…”

“…Wilson and colleagues (2019) discuss the ways team-teaching can "act as an agent of change" (Wilson et al 2019). Coops and colleagues discuss how sustainability reveals the benefits and challenges of a university-wide initiative for sustainability education (Coops et al 2015). Walsh and Davis note that complex issues in sustainability, such as climate change and ecosystem degradation, along with instabilities and inequalities necessitate an increasingly interdisciplinary approach to sustainability (Walsh and Davis 2017).…”

Learning Outcomes in Sustainability Education Among Future Elementary School Teachers

“…In terms of sustainability education, the course was not designed to take the preservice teachers into 'real world' current event problem contexts, to attempt to grapple with those challenges unfolding right now. This stands in contrast to the current thinking on connecting sustainability education across the curriculum (Coops et al, 2015). This course was designed to build the preservice teachers' proficiency in four skill areas (futures, values, systems and strategic thinking) and content knowledge in other categories.…”

Developing leaders to tackle wicked problems at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems

“…Thus, institutional change and buy-in is necessary to overall program success (Box 5). Barriers to such change may be 1) structural, such as challenges working across disciplinespecific departments, lack of support for interdisciplinary team teaching, or lack of incentives for interdisciplinary or community-based research; 2) cultural, such as biases about specific disciplines, lack of experience with and knowledge about effective interdisciplinary or experiential teaching, or lack of long-term planning to institutionalize the courses and opportunities for altered graduate education; and/or 3) financial, in particular insufficient resources (Blanco-Portela et al, 2018;Coops et al, 2015;Marchesi and Rolls, 2016).…”