Human agency intransdisciplinary learning for sustainability in higher education

The complex nature of sustainability innovation 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.

The challenges in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability reflect in its four characteristics: (a) respond to sustainability problems, (b) engage those affected by and living with sustainability problems, both academic and non-academic partners (c) involve various disciplinary paradigms, and (d) create a new unification of knowledge.

Dealing with these challenges entails an underlying requirement on the capacity of learners to take actions. Yet, some study pointed out that students preferred to be told what to do instead of ‘learning by doing’, because the latter manner is time-consuming and more uncertain. An assumption can therefore be made that without facilitation of taking actions to deal with the challenges in transdisciplinary learning, students might have less possibility to realise authentic transdisciplinary learning for sustainability.

However, while studies on sustainability education have reported positive outcomes in aspects of increased awareness of sustainability, there is not much empirical research on how current sustainability education can support learners’ capacity to initiate actions for a more sustainable future and deal with the challenges alongside the transdisciplinary learning process. To fill this knowledge gap, this project will first review the literature on transdisciplinary learning environments from Bandura’s perspective of human agency as this is considered an important part of the one's capacity, to conceptualise human agency in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability in higher education.

Then, this project will use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to assess the development and expression of human agency in bachelor- and master-level transdisciplinary courses for sustainability within Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Next, this project aims to shed light on affordances of a transdisciplinary learning environment for sustainability and, finally, on pedagogical approaches that strengthen human agency in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability in higher education.