Many of the challenges the world faces today, such as climate change, food waste and healthcare, are multifaceted and require solutions that go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Transdisciplinary education encourages students to understand and engage with these complex problems by integrating knowledge and perspectives from multiple disciplines. It fosters collaboration and innovation, enables holistic and effective solutions, and prepares students for a rapidly changing future.
On September 19 at TU Delft Teaching Academy’s Meet & Eat, Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer, Carissa Champlin, and BinBin Pearce will discuss their work towards shaping transdisciplinary education.
Teaching complexity
Complex challenges are indeed difficult, but that is not the only thing that defines them. Challenges such as climate change, poverty, healthcare, or food waste often involve many different facets and stakeholders, making them intricate issues to understand and solve. Addressing them therefore requires considering different perspectives. “What we see at the moment is that in education, students are not very well prepared for this type of context because we teach them into their disciplinary silos,” said Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. “They're also very isolated in the academic world, so not really connecting to the outside world where all these challenges are happening. And we generally teach them a very linear way of thinking.” There is a need for a different way of teaching.
Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer
Carissa Champlin
BinBin Pearce
We don’t have the answers, but I see teaching as being more of a guide.
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BinBin Pearce
Treating students as people
The role of teachers is not to tell students that there is a particular way of looking at the world or to try to give them answers, said BinBin Pearce, Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis and Design at the Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management. “What we’re here for is to accompany students so that they can try to figure out the messiness that they will encounter that we might not even necessarily know what to do with either,” she said. “We don’t have the answers, but I see teaching as being more of a guide.”
Carissa Champlin, Assistant Professor within TU Delft's Climate Action Programme at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering agrees. “I have found it rewarding and insightful seeing students not just one-dimensionally as students,” she said. “They're humans, they're citizens, and they're adults, so just feeding them information is a lost opportunity. And we as researchers can learn a lot from students by bringing our research into the classroom.” So how do you teach students to deal with complexity in a future that is inherently uncertain?
Ways of knowing
In addition to understanding what complexity is, students need to have creative methods and practices to tackle the challenges. That involves collaborating across different disciplines, but it also involves different ways of knowing. There’s academic knowledge, but there are many other kinds of knowledge that are just as valuable - from a psychologist who studies how people behave, to a biologist who studies the natural world to a philosopher who explores ethical and moral issues. Citizens, end users, and organisations have important knowledge, while the arts and spiritual or indigenous ways of knowing can also play an important role in creating holistic solutions to the world’s wicked problems. “We need all those ways of knowing to come together,” said van der Bijl-Brouwer.
These are just some of the ideas and methods that van der Bijl-Brouwer, Pearce and Champlin will be weaving into a new master’s course. The course will be offered across all faculties at TU Delft and is scheduled to launch in September 2024.
Students will still be working with different disciplines, preferably also from other universities, as well as external organisations, but the framing and the scoping of the challenges will be much broader.
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Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer
Structured flexibility
The Joint Interdisciplinary Project at TU Delft currently offers students the opportunity to work together with people from different disciplines on a predefined challenge provided by a company. The new course envisioned by van der Bijl-Brouwer, Champlin and Pearce will build on that idea while adding some new facets. “Students will still be working with different disciplines, preferably also from other universities, as well as external organisations, but the framing and the scoping of the challenges will be much broader,” said van der Bijl-Brouwer. “Students will spend a lot of time reframing a problem and looking at it from different angles.”
Want to learn more about shaping transdisciplinary education?
The course will involve teaching new methodologies that cross the boundaries between disciplines both within the university and beyond. “The more you get into transdisciplinary thinking, the more the lines between education, science, and society blur because it is all a constant process of learning and sharing knowledge. But this can be a very sloppy, hard, intangible sort of experience of integrating knowledge,” said Champlin. “We need tools that can provide structured flexibility, some sort of framework or scaffolding for this very complex sort of realm that we work in. Dealing with these challenges, but then giving the flexibility and the openness to reframe, to rethink, to question, to explore, to experiment, and to engage in the shared learning. We cannot guarantee solutions, but when you take this approach, you always see a better process.”
We need to equip students with an understanding of how to deal with the complex challenges that have become our current reality.
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Carissa Champlin
Growing community
The trio of transdisciplinary champions recognises that there are likely others at TU Delft and beyond doing similar things and are hoping to connect. It is powerful to put a name to something like this, said Pearce. “I think more people do it than they might realise. To have a community of people who share similar thoughts about teaching, that's how we get better.” Champlin added that sometimes researchers and teachers might recognise the need for transdisciplinary education from their own experiences, but they might not have the methodological background or even the time to reflect. “We hope to get more people trained on transdisciplinary thinking and methods and make it more inclusive. We need to equip students with an understanding of how to deal with the complex challenges that have become our current reality.”
For Pearce, it is also important to help people become change agents. “The ideal case is that students come out of the course feeling like they have a little bit more efficacy in the world. Not that they will have all the solutions, but to have the confidence that they can make an impact along with the awareness that they need to do that with a lot of other people.”
