Teaching and Learning in an Interconnected World. A Guide to Transnational Education for Sustainability

Urbanization trends pose interconnected problems to both our human well-being locally and our global carrying capacity. These problems also involve challenges for science and society to find solutions for adaptation to climate... [ view full abstract ]

Urbanization trends pose interconnected problems to both our human well-being locally and our global carrying capacity. These problems also involve challenges for science and society to find solutions for adaptation to climate change and urban heat islands, to create resilient energy infrastructure, or to innovate at the urban food-energy-water nexus. The way we deal with these challenges also extends to higher education and the way we empower students to address these issues. Empowering involves the development of competencies that capacitate them as change agents in science and a range of societal spheres. We need innovative approaches to translating these competencies into formats that allow students learning about the local nature of sustainability problems, while dealing with and connecting these issues on a global, international scale. Higher education for sustainable development is a well established and fast expanding field. It offers strong educational and transformational concepts that already find application in a variety of disciplines, such as health studies, civil engineering, or industrial ecology. While majors and minors in sustainability science are being established, in other disciplines it is often taught as an individual or facultative subject. Teaching concepts such as problem- or project-based learning are still in initial stages of practice in these disciplines. In our talk, we address the question: how can we facilitate a systematic transfer of a change agent education into a variety of formats and concepts? The purpose is to advance sustainability education interdisciplinarily and internationally, by drawing on recognized experiences in sustainability science and converging on shared topics across many disciplines.

We present results from the Global Classroom project in which we worked with around 70 interdisciplinary undergraduate students from Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany) and Arizona State University (USA) on the topic “Sustainable Cities: A Contradiction in Terms?”. Between 2012 and 2016, students engaged transnationally in experience-based learning about global and urban phenomena, in research-based learning on projects together with the local community, as well as in a digitally supported e-learning environment. This project was accompanied with a comprehensive set of formative and summative evaluations.

Insights of the project resulted in the comprehensive concept of the Glocal Curriculum. The mix of global and local – glocal – characterizes our approach to transnational collaboration and our teaching and learning model. Merging global and local means bringing together local learning, engagement, and impact with global communication, collaboration, and knowledge production. This process takes place across social, cultural, and geographical boundaries and involves the way students learn about the world as well as how they learn to act responsibly in it. We present insights about the practical design and implementation of such transnational and e-learning environments, with a competence-oriented curriculum and the corresponding transformative teaching approaches. The transfer of this glocal curriculum is of interest for program designers as well as instructors who aim for providing a unique space for students in which they can develop solutions to pressing sustainability problems while using latest research in industrial ecology and integrating their work in their local communities.