Since the global SDG:s were agreed upon in Paris in 2015 there has been an increased interest from institutions of higher education to contribute to their fulfillment through educational programs, courses and competence development. In this paper we describe and discuss the development of a forthcoming transdisciplinary International Master Program in Leadership for Sustainable Development. The program is a joint venture between three different social science disciplines at the department of Social Sciences, i.e. Business Studies, Economics and Sociology. During the planning of the program we have met both challenges and possibilities regarding structures, processes and cultures at the university, which we describe in the paper (Christie et al 2013 and 2015). Different stakeholders within the university such as teachers, the management and collegial structures together with partners from the surrounding society have contributed in different ways. In the development of the program’s structure, progression and learning outcomes special emphasis was placed upon to the collaboration with both students and external stakeholders such as companies, civil society and public organizations. In order to meet the challenges of sustainable development key competencies have been identified, such as: systems thinking, interpersonal competencies, strategic competencies, anticipatory competencies (MacDonald & Shriberg 2016, Wiek et al. 2011) and reflexive competencies (Allen et al 2017). All these competences are needed to cultivate responsible and reflexive leadership (Hibbert et al. 2015, Cunliffe 2009). An important learning outcome has been to give the students the courage and the conceptual and methodological tools to become agents of change in their future work life. This demands innovative pedagogical methods like challenge driven education and student driven learning which both have been explored and inserted into the curriculum (Corcoran et al 2004, Missimer et al 2013, Lozano et al 2017). The theoretical approaches to the concept of sustainability have been rooted in today’s scientific consensus that sustainability includes both environmental aspects, such as planetary boundaries and the carrying capacity of ecosystems (e.g. Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2011), as well as social aspects such as social justice, equality, social change and governance (Ibrahim et al. 2015). Another important theoretical foundation for the development of our masters course is Kate Raworths (2012) attempt to combine these essential dimensions of sustainable development in order to outline the possibility of a safe and just space for humanity. Even though this sustainable space according to Raworth (2012) is not impossible to reach, several obstacles and potential goal conflicts are present as major obstacles for sustainable development in today’s industrialized, late modern societies. In order to be able to autonomously identify, analyze and, if possible, overcome these obstacles we believe that higher education has to rely on more action oriented forms of teaching (Hesselbarht & Schaltegger 2014, Holmberg et al 2008, Ortiz & Huber-Heim 2017), as manifest in our program’s focus on challenge and student driven education.
Keywords: master program, transdisciplinary, key competencies, partnership, pedagogy
2b. Educating for sustainability
