Transdisciplinary curriculum design for sustainability transitions: A reflective dialogue

Abstract

Inter- and transdisciplinary curricula can potentially develop an integrated understanding of an increasingly interconnected, complex world and develop students’ agency, empathy, creativity and critical thinking skills. Within the South African qualification landscape, the Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) is identified as a multi- or interdisciplinary qualification that allows working professionals ‘to undertake advanced reflection and development by means of a systematic survey of current thinking, practice and research methods in an area of specialisation’. In this paper, four academics reflexively share their experiences of (re)developing and piloting transdisciplinary curricula for the PGDip in Sustainable Development (at Stellenbosch University) and the PGDip in Sustainability Learning (at Rhodes University). Reflections centre around the rationale, context and emergence of the two programmes, their structure and intended learning outcomes, and principles guiding the overall curriculum design. We highlight the appropriateness of transdisciplinary approaches to curricula focused on the sustainability field, and it distils three broad features of the two PGDip programmes that seem important – even necessary – for developing students’ competencies as sustainability practitioners. These are ontological groundedness, epistemological openness and ethical attentiveness.
Significance:
This paper provides a rationale for pursuing transdisciplinary curricula that are oriented to sustainability. It shares reflections from two postgraduate diploma curriculum design processes and provides summative insights into broad features of transdisciplinary curriculum design that may enhance sustainability transitions. These features may help to guide other university curriculum developers wanting to design similar programmes to support sustainability transitions.