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Paper
Human agency in Dealing with Challenges in Transdisciplinary Learning for Sustainability in Higher Education: A Scoping Literature Review
Wageningen University, Netherlands, The
Presenting Author:Higher education institutions play a crucial role in educating future agents who are supposed to contribute to the successful implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The wicked nature of sustainability-related problems requires higher education institutions to re-design and broaden their curricula to become more real-life oriented and transdisciplinary by establishing connections among various disciplines and with non-academic partners from society (Sherren, 2008). Consequently, courses involving transdisciplinary learning approaches where students collaborate with peers with various disciplinary backgrounds and non-academic partners have become popular in higher education for sustainable development (Menon & Suresh, 2020).
Research has revealed numerous benefits of transdisciplinary learning settings for sustainability-oriented higher education. Students reported improved communication and teamwork skills, increased agency in terms of enhanced self-efficacy and self-regulation skills (Adefila et al., 2023) after participating transdisciplinary courses. Additionally, students became more willing to collaborate with societal stakeholders and were more open to different perspectives, as demonstrated in research on transdisciplinary learning workshop (Oonk et al., 2022). Another prominent learning outcome of transdisciplinary learning, mentioned by multiple studies, was that it empowered learners as agents capable of addressing sustainability-related problems and instigating changes through collective actions (Horner et al., 2021; Tassone et al., 2017).
While transdisciplinary learning for sustainability offers rich learning benefits, it is also regarded as a challenging learning process by many studies. Research on learners’ experiences highlighted that, due to the different and even conflicting viewpoints in transdisciplinary learning process for sustainability, engaging non-academic partners and integrating various disciplinary knowledge and capacities are difficult (Killion et al., 2018). As a result, students might simplify sustainability-related problems by not including all stakeholders and avoided authentic transdisciplinary learning experience by narrowing their focus (Veltman et al., 2021).
Current research recognizes transdisciplinary learning is a promising yet challenging approach for higher education for sustainability. However, hardly any research has been done to connect challenges in learning experience with the learning outcome of increased agency. It is still unclear what agency in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability entails and how it manifests itself in dealing with the corresponding challenges.
This present review study adopts a systems perspective by taking all three main groups of actors in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability-namely, students, educational staff and societal partners-into account and regards them as equal learners. The study aims to address the above-mentioned scientific gap and provide advice for future empirical research by mapping out the learning challenges in transdisciplinary learning experience from various learners’ perspective. It also explores how learners exert their agency to deal with challenges in transdisciplinary learning, and in return, increase their agency on both individual and collective levels. Agency for sustainability that refers to the intentions and corresponding capabilities to take individual, proxy or collective actions to continuously motivate and regulate individual and collective learning for sustainability will be used as conceptual framework of this review study . Proxy agency means accomplishing desired outcomes by employing others who are more proficient or in better situation, and collective agency refers to acting together with others (Bandura, 2006). The study addresses the following research questions:
- What are the experienced challenges in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability from perspectives of academic staff, students, and societal actors?
- What do these different learners take individual agentic actions to address challenges in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used
A scoping literature review, following the PRISMA guideline (Tricco et al., 2018), aimed to answer the research questions through a keyword search strategy based on the focus concepts of this study, namely transdisciplinary, sustainability, higher education, learning, challenges and agency. The search terms were selected based on relevant literature about transdisciplinary learning, higher education for sustainable development and agency for learning.
Executed in November 2023 on the bibliographic databases Scopus, ERIC (Education Resource Information Center), and Web of Science, the first phase included only peer-reviewed research articles in English. Web of science yielded 234 articles, Scopus and ERIC showed 115 and 48 articles meeting the criteria respectively. After removing duplicates, 297 articles remained for the second phase.
To further identify publications relevant to the research questions, the second phase screened titles and abstracts to selected articles that met the following criteria: 1) The article discussed one of four characteristics of transdisciplinary learning (respond to sustainability-related problems; include multiple perspectives; engage academic and non-academic partners; integrate knowledge and capacity from different disciplines), and/or the article discussed human agency in transdisciplinary learning; 2) The article investigated the transdisciplinary learning environment in higher education. This resulted in 103 articles for full-text screening.
In this third screening phase, 73 articles were excluded because of the following reasons: 1) The article didn’t discuss learners’ experiential challenges or agency in transdisciplinary learning environments; 2) The study was not an empirical study. 3) The article does not have an available full-text version. Through the snowball method, one additional publication was included. In the end, 31 publications were included for data analysis.
A combination of deductive and inductive coding was used in this study. The included publications were analyzed with a deductive coding scheme developed from the theoretical framework with two analytical dimensions: 1) four characteristics of transdisciplinary learning, 2) four components of individual agency, as well as collective and proxy agency in transdisciplinary learning. To answer the three research questions of this study, we coded the findings from the above-mentioned categories separately and conducted inductive coding to extract and categorize prevailing patterns among challenges in learners’ experiences and the role of agency in transdisciplinary learning environments. The first author coded all the publications and other authors reviewed and verified the coding. In cases of disagreement, the authors went through calibration discussions to reach a shared understanding of the results.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
As mentioned above, only preliminary analyses of the included publications have been carried out so far. While investigating the learners’ experiences and/or perspectives in transdisciplinary learning, most studies included perspectives from students (N=27), and educational staff and societal partners’ viewpoints were investigated by 15 and 11 studies, respectively. Nine articles included all three target groups in their research.
Challenges in transdisciplinary learning experience reflected the characteristics of transdisciplinary learning. The wickedness and uncertainty of sustainability-related problems unsettle learners, making them feel powerless. Collaborating with societal and non-academic partners engendered tensions due to various goals and roles. Each discipline had its own language, way of thinking and methodology, increasing the difficulty of communication in a transdisciplinary team. Prevailing challenges emerging from the inductive analysis included addressing tensions generated from conflicting perspectives and uneven power relationships, investing massive time and energy required for reflection, and dealing with uncertainty and unfamiliarity in transdisciplinary learning environments. The role of agency explored in current literature mostly appeared as an outcome of transdisciplinary learning, especially as increased self-efficacy. Some studies also mentioned positive forethought of taking actions, which, in turn, motivated people to overcome challenges in transdisciplinary learning. Collective agency was discussed in existing research as an emphasis on group relationship building and an awareness of connection to a broader group of people and nature. This reinforced self-efficacy, as good relationships with team members empowered learners to engage in transdisciplinary learning. The connection between challenges and the concept of agency in transdisciplinary learning will be further explored and presented at the ECER 2024. Insights into learners’ experiences in transdisciplinary learning from the perspectives of academic staff, students, and societal actors and the concept of agency in transdisciplinary learning have theoretical and practical implications for the optimization of transdisciplinary higher education for sustainability.
References
Adefila, A., Chen, Y., Chao, C., Oyinlola, M., & Anafi, F. (2023). Developing transformative pedagogies for transdisciplinary education—Resources and competencies students need. INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION AND TEACHING INTERNATIONAL, 60(4), 476–487. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2022.2062032
Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164–180. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00011.x
Horner, C., Morse, C., Carpenter, N., Nordstrom, K., Faulkner, J., Mares, T., Kinnebrew, E., Caswell, M., Izzo, V., Méndez, V., Lewins, S., & McCune, N. (2021). Cultivating Pedagogy for Transformative Learning: A Decade of Undergraduate Agroecology Education. FRONTIERS IN SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.751115
Killion, A. K., Sterle, K., Bondank, E. N., Drabik, J. R., Bera, A., Alian, S., Goodrich, K. A., Hale, M., Myer, R. A., Phung, Q., Shew, A. M., & Thayer, A. W. (2018). Preparing the next generation of sustainability scientists. Ecology and Society, 23(4). Scopus. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10395-230439
Koskela, I.-M., & Paloniemi, R. (2023). Learning and agency for sustainability transformations: Building on Bandura’s theory of human agency. Environmental Education Research, 29(1), 164–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2022.2102153
Menon, S., & Suresh, M. (2020). Synergizing education, research, campus operations, and community engagements towards sustainability in higher education: A literature review. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 21(5), 1015–1051. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-03-2020-0089
Oonk, C., Gulikers, J., den Brok, P., & Mulder, M. (2022). Stimulating boundary crossing learning in a multi-stakeholder learning environment for sustainable development. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION, 23(8), 21–40. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-04-2021-0156
Sherren, K. (2008). A history of the future of higher education for sustainable development. Environmental Education Research, 14(3), 238–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620802148873
Tassone, V. C., Dik, G., & van Lingen, T. A. (2017). Empowerment for sustainability in higher education through the EYE learning tool. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 18(3), 341–358. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-12-2015-0209
Tricco, A. C., Lillie, E., Zarin, W., O’Brien, K. K., Colquhoun, H., Levac, D., Moher, D., Peters, M. D. J., Horsley, T., Weeks, L., Hempel, S., Akl, E. A., Chang, C., McGowan, J., Stewart, L., Hartling, L., Aldcroft, A., Wilson, M. G., Garritty, C., … Straus, S. E. (2018). PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation. Annals of Internal Medicine, 169(7), 467–473. https://doi.org/10.7326/M18-0850
Veltman, M. E., van Keulen, J., & Voogt, J. M. (2021). Using Problems with Wicked Tendencies as Vehicles for Learning in Higher Professional Education: Towards Coherent Curriculum Design. Curriculum Journal, 32(3), 559–583.
Session Details:
30 SES 02 B: Transdisciplinary approaches to ESE
Time: 27/Aug/2024: 15:15-16:45 · Location: Room 115 in ΧΩΔ 02 (Common Teaching Facilities [CTF02]) [Floor 1]
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