Session 5.4

Cut the Crap – Teach for Future! Transdisciplinary Learning for Sustainable Development

Karl Herweg 1, Thomas Tribelhorn 2, Anna Lewis 1, Isabelle Providoli 1, Lilian Trechsel 1, Camilla Steinböck 1

1 Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland; 2 Centre for Unitersity Continuing Education, Educational Development Unit, University of Bern

Are you a lecturer in a higher education institution concerned about current unsustainable development? If you believe that education can play a key role in transforming society towards more sustainability, the question is what you can do about it.

Sustainability contexts are often characterised by complex society-environment interrelationships with ill-defined and wicked problems – typical settings predestined for transdisciplinary research (td). Knowledge co-production and social learning processes are key features when an interdisciplinary team of scientists collaborates closely with other societal actors to elaborate sustainable solutions jointly. But how do we prepare young scientists to master these situations? Given the prevailing disciplinary structures of academic institutions, it becomes clear that many current educational formats are ineffective for supporting td learning and research. Some indications to change this arise out of the above understanding of td: focus on real-world contexts with complex problem settings; solution-orientation; involvement of various disciplines; and interaction with practitioners.

Unsustainable development is, among other things, a result of problematic, often taken for granted mind-sets and patterns of behaviour. Envisioning a great transformation towards SD means, first of all, transforming such mind-sets. Transformative learning (TL) involves a deep shift of meaning perspectives that steer our daily routines. It is usually triggered by a fundamental dilemma, e.g. in the form of emotional personal experiences, or less spectacular, by an artificial disruption of expectations created by a teacher. For us as lecturers, this is the critical point, because we might want to achieve more effectiveness in our teaching on the one hand, but we are not supposed to misuse it to overwhelm and manipulate students on the other hand. Both the individual and the social learning for transformation demands leaving the personal comfort zone, which involves a certain level of disruption from our current ways of thinking and doing. Higher education must create spaces for transformative moments of learning. The question arises, how to implement this.

Educational research provides empirically supported principles that enhance transdisciplinary learning for sustainable development (SD), such as:

• Metacognitive strategies – "thinking about one's own thinking" – to develop self-reflective and responsible personality

• Competence orientation – building academic knowledge, professional skills, and critical awareness (attitude, values) simultaneously;

• Avoid inert knowledge – combining theoretical ideas with practical application (experiential learning)

• Active involvement of students – less teaching, more learning

• Situational didactics – situations (cases studies) as starting points serving as memory anchors for associated knowledge

• Constructive alignment – creating coherence between learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment.

A team of researchers, lecturers and educational developers at the University of Bern elaborated a comprehensive documentation: Transdisciplinary Learning for Sustainable Development – Sharing Experiences in Designing Courses and Curricula. The document will soon be available online as as a print version, containing tips and tools for designing td learning activities, combining long-term experience in transdisciplinary education with a solid body of evidence from educational research. It includes a number of detailed examples of td courses that we applied and gradually optimised over many years.

Learning and experimentation in daily life practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic – results from the “Logbook of Change”

Bettina König 1 & 2, Benjamin Nölting 1

1 Hochschule für nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde, Germany; 2 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, IRI THESys, Germany

Transition scholars have discussed in the last months whether the COVID-19 pandemic might be a window of opportunity for deep sustainability transitions by changing unsustainable routines and practices (e.g. Schot 2020, Cambridge Sustainability 2021). Yet to test this assumption, empirical insights into ongoing and potentially prevailing processes of change are needed (Nölting et al., in review). Yet, learning in transitions generally faces difficulties from limited conceptualisation (Van Mierlo and Beers 2020) and thus generating empirical evidence. The Citizen Science project ‘Logbook of Change’ (https://logbuch-der-veraenderungen.org/) invites (German speaking) citizens to record their personal impressions in times of the COVID-19 pandemic in a digital logbook. Citizens are affected by the consequences of the health crisis in different ways, which makes them ‘individual experts’ on the daily life adaptations forced by COVID-19. The data material obtained through this longitudional qualitative diary study allows for insights from very different perspectives into processes of change in the making since shortly after the first lockdown began in Germany. By beginning of July 2021, observations were documented in 1,188 logbook entries in six survey phases between 26.3.2020 and 07.07.2021, which cover six fields of action (Mobility; Shopping & Supply; Family & Leisure; Work; Care & Support; Information & Communication), a general qualitative situation assessment and other.

The project’s overarching research question is: What conclusions can be drawn from the observed changes on societal learning and transformation potentials with regard to sustainable development? Specific research questions are: a) What has changed? b) How are the changes to be discussed from a sustainability perspective? Based on answers to these two questions and logbook entries, we explore further whether the adaptation of practices and daily routines to COVID-19 regulations and circumstances has triggered processes of individual and societal learning and experimentation that can be analysed and reflected upon in the citizen science project. A third question is: c) Have individuals and actor groups based on their experiences gained acquired general change competencies that are valid beyond COVID-19 adaptations and thus open up windows of opportunity for sustainability transformations?

In order to identify and analyse behavioural changes and possible learning processes in dealing with them, we adapted a practise theory perspective (Reckwitz 2003; Shove et al. 2012), allowing to reconstruct changed practices on the basis of the heterogeneous logbook entries.

Using the method of qualitative content analysis, logbook entries were evaluated to identify and reconstruct practices and bundles of practices. In total, 30 everyday practices and bundles of practices were identified that emerged in the pandemic. (Being forced to) avoiding the materiality of other people lead to changes through adaptation (re-crafting), substitution up to interlocking/recombination of old and new practices. Examples for re-crafting or adaptation of practices for avoiding other people are new forms of office-work, communication and information for work and leisure. Along with these, new competencies for some practices were documented, e.g. living together, riding the bicycle for longer distances, testing new digital work and communication tools, restricting digital time and information, cooking or taking care of one’s own wellbeing. Meanings of practices are often linked to temporal measures to combat the pandemic, but also after (enforced) experimenting new meanings were documented, of which reflexions on the long-term impacts on social relations were prominently found.

We discuss empirical findings and aspects of this citizen science diary study with regard to its relevance for TD learning: 1) What influences learning from a practice theory perspective? 2) How can indications for individual learning found in the empirical material be discussed in the light of individual transformative learning? 

Creating Transdisciplinary Teaching Spaces. Cooperation of Universities and Non-University Partners to Design Higher Education for Regional Sustainable Transition

Birgit Hoinle 1, Ilka Roose 2

1 Societal Transformation & Agriculture, University of Hohenheim, Germany; 2 Hochschule für Nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde, DE

Teaching formats involving non-university partners are increasingly gaining importance to deliver key competencies needed in higher education for sustainable development. At the same time, more and more universities create sustainable development certificates programs in teaching. Against this background, this session focuses on how universities foster regional transition through teaching, particularly in collaboration with local non-university partners. Using the interdisciplinary certificate programs on sustainable development offered by the German Universities of Tübingen and Duisburg-Essen as case studies, we analyse the potentials and challenges of teaching programs on sustainable development for promoting regional transition. Leaning on the multi-level-perspective-approach, we have used qualitative interviews to shed light on the design of cooperation between the university and regional partners as well as the creation and integration of transdisciplinary learning spaces. Our main interest in the empirical research was to discover the perspectives and visions of the regional partners (such as local food policy councils, fair trade initiatives) for participating in transdisciplinary teaching formats with universities. Based on the findings, we discuss the role of the sustainable development certificate programs, its opportunities, and challenges on different levels (classroom, curricula coordination, university structures) to foster regional transition in transdisciplinary teaching formats.

For this session, we will outline the impact of such teaching formats on the regional transition consisting primarily of awareness and network building. We will talk about the most fundamental challenges: unequal power relations in terms of access to resources, financing, and course planning, and we discuss the role of co-design, mutual understanding, and collective decisions on responsibilities as well as empathy and trust as crucial factors for successful teaching cooperation towards regional sustainability. By situating local level collaborations between the university and non-university partners in larger debate on sustainability and how collaborative teaching methods can bring transformative and mutually beneficial changes, we would like to present our cases and findings as templates for such successful collaborations.

We are looking forward to discussing our results with the participants and learn about their experiences. We propose the following guiding questions for reflection and discussion in the live-session:

• According to your experiences, what are the potentials and challenges in the design of transdisciplinary teaching projects?

• What role can students play within the creation of transdisciplinary teaching programs and what are their visions for promoting regional sustainable change?

• What steps would be necessary to unfold the full potential of transdisciplinary teaching programs to foster long-term transitions at the interface of science and society?