In universities worldwide, there has been a movement away from mono-disciplinary towards multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary education, motivated by the notion that complex societal issues call for more than a single disciplinary perspective. To prepare students for a role in addressing these issues, flexibility within educational programs is…

This study marks a resting point within ongoing explorations of creativity, transdisciplinarity, materiality, and spatiality in Higher Education (HE) pedagogy. It interrogates how different materialities and spatialities shape learning to re-create practices to better respond to societal challenges. This is situated within an imperative to move…

This book explores interdisciplinary university teaching in both theory and practice, drawing on the experience and expertise of educators from across the social sciences and humanities. Based around pedagogical theory and concrete practical examples and experiences from the classroom, the book contributes with a multiplicity of knowledge to the…

Publicly funded universities have been under increasing pressure to provide evidence regarding the economic value of their core activities, not least when it comes to the social benefits accrued from the research mission. This study offers a glimpse of Nordic perspectives on the social impact of research from the positions of policymakers,…

This essay explores and expands the boundaries by which honors is defined and defines itself. By opening a path toward a more expansive and public perception of honors, the author argues for emphasis on the public good as a key element in honors discourse and the broader dissemination of its theories and practices. Drawing from characteristics of…

This case study explores how a problem-based learning (PBL), graduate education course could be organized in ways that utilize the current knowledge of how people learn within diverse, real world community settings. Students were asked to identify an educational enterprise and a social problem within a culturally diverse, high-need community.…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are drivers of social change embedded in a society which is experiencing increasingly complex and multifaceted crises. This is partly attributable to the use of conventional and deterministic problem-solving curricula. A combination of a transdisciplinary approach and indigenous knowledge (IK) as transformative…

This article discusses the challenges and opportunities identified in the implementation of the Citylab project in Latin America during the period of 2015-2018. The project was funded by the Erasmus+ Key action 2 programme of the European Union. The project aims to innovate teaching for sustainability in higher education institutions through…

To prepare a differently educated citizenry and to play meaningful roles in new forms of community-building, colleges and universities must model informed and collaborative ways of learning and working within their own institutional contexts as well as through their interactions with the broader society of which they are an integral part. The path…

Stigma and prejudice are barriers to developing policies addressing homelessness. Awareness development, using civic hackathons, may be beneficial in reducing stigma and promoting policy while offering unique training to social work students. The current study explores the feasibility of hosting a university-based homelessness hackathon;…

This paper examines shifts in the knowledge production policy agenda at Japanese research universities -- a transition from discipline-based academic tradition towards interdisciplinary forms of knowledge production -- through a case study of a leading interdisciplinary research institute. We examine this transition through the case of Tohoku…

"New Directions of STEM Research and Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A Comparative Perspective" illustrates new directions of STEM higher education from the perspective of twenty-first century types of learning outcomes and focuses on need for developing an interdisciplinary approach to STEM higher education reform. It provides…

Professionals in the environmental domain require cognitive interdisciplinary skills to be able to develop sustainable solutions to environmental problems. We demonstrate that education in environmental systems analysis allows for the development of these skills. We identify three components of cognitive interdisciplinary skills: (1) the ability…

Discusses the need for an interdisciplinary approach to environmental problems as well as the realization of the necessity for action - oriented proposals in a politically bound society. Suggests that conservative and vested-interest university departments are barriers to concerted action. (BR)

A social studies educator responds to a paper by Glen Aikenhead titled "Science in Social Studies." To remind science people that social issues are ultimately human as opposed to ultimately scientific, the author begins the paper with a discussion about the ways humans come to gain knowledge through science, religion, philosophy, and art. If…