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Author(s): Center for Sustainable Futures
Citation: Published online at: http://csf.plymouth.ac.uk/?q=node/712
URL: http://csf.plymouth.ac.uk/files/Getting_it_Together_18.06.09.pdf (Full Report)
This paper seeks to clarify the relationship between sustainability and interdisciplinarity as a contribution to furthering policy and practice towards sustainability oriented interdisciplinarity in teaching and learning in higher education.
Key Findings:
- There appears to be rising demand for interdisciplinary understanding in elation to sustainability issues characterised by complexity and uncertainty, and this is likely to exert pressures on traditional disciplinary modes of organisation in higher education.
- There is a difference between the level of interest in interdisciplinarity and sustainability at the level of discourse and rhetoric, and manifestations in practice as regards policy and programmes.
- There is a gap between the level of interest in interdisciplinarity and sustainability in research, and their manifestation in teaching and learning.
- Programmes which are promoting an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability are often recognised as innovative by their host institution, yet common problems persist around the uneasy fit between their cross-boundary integrative approaches and participatory pedagogies on the one hand, and discipline based university structures and methods on the other.
- Innovation in this area often requires one or more people with energy and enterprise to make it happen, but the survival and flourishing of
- interdisciplinary programmes requires support from senior management.
- Sustainability theorists and practitioners widely recognise the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding sustainability issues. However, theorists and practitioners interested in interdisciplinarity are not necessarily interested in sustainability.
- The outlook for interdisciplinary programmes is made more positive by rising interest and growing initiatives in HEIs in response to the sustainability agenda: however change in teaching and learning policies and practice in terms of embracing interdisciplinary approaches is slow to take effect.
- One way forward for interdisciplinary sustainability programmes is to link more overtly to the skills debate and employers’ calls for graduates to possess ‘real world’ and ‘soft’ skills of flexibility, adaptability, creativity etc.
- Achieving transdisciplinarity in sustainability programmes in mainstream institutions is particularly difficult, and may be largely the province of educational establishments outside the mainstream who can work across boundaries more easily.
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PROJECTS
Minnesota 2050 Pathways to a... University of MinnesotaWorldwide Virtual Network of Young Practitioners Working... Knowledge Methodologies Sector (KAM), JRC-EC,... Water Allocation and Water Security: A Canadian... Department of Geography, University of... EVENTS
2009 Forum on Sustainability Science Programs. February 12, 2009 4 Degrees and Beyond. September 28, 2009 Great Transformation. June 8, 2009 MEMBERS
Harald Heinrichs, Universität Lüneburg, Germany Lila Khatiwada, University of Missouri-Columbia, United States Thangavel Palanivel, United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU/IAS), Japan PUBLICATIONS
Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability.
National Research Council, Board on Sustainable Development.
What is Sustainable Development? Goals, Indicators, Values, and Practice.
Kates, Robert W., Thomas M. Parris, and Anthony A. Leiserowitz
Rethinking Community-Based Conservation. Berkes, Fikret
COMMENTARIES
A Case for More 'Joined Up Thinking'.
David Dickson, SciDev.Net
Industrial Sustainability through Biotechnology.
Peter C. K. Lau
Sustainable Development. ...
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