Abstract
This chapter discusses how complex, real-world topics related to sustainable development are tackled through a curriculum that fosters transdisciplinary skills and thinking for students at an environmental sciences department at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland (ETH Zurich). We describe a process through which university students at all levels learn how to handle complex, real-world problems. We argue that the ability to frame complex problems and the ability to empathize with diverse points-of-view are key skills for transdisciplinary learning and research. Competence fields are identified by reflecting on the actual skills needed for conducting a transdisciplinary research process and by identifying elements from past teaching experiences that have proven to be effective. We then develop a framework which shows how these competence fields link different learning domains, so that students develop not only cognitive, but also affective and psychomotor abilities. This framework may serve as a starting point for the design of other courses aimed at training transdisciplinarians.
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Notes
- 1.
Table 12.4 contains a complete list of these dimensions for each learning domain.
- 2.
Many of these tools can be found on the website of td-net, a Swiss-wide organization supporting transdisciplinary research (https://naturalsciences.ch/topics/co-producing_knowledge/methods).
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Pearce, B., Adler, C., Senn, L., Krütli, P., Stauffacher, M., Pohl, C. (2018). Making the Link Between Transdisciplinary Learning and Research. In: Fam, D., Neuhauser, L., Gibbs, P. (eds) Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93743-4_12
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