Vignette 8 Revisiting higher education's heartland: (Inter)disciplinary ways of knowing and doing for sustainability education

Abstract

Sustainability education has at its heart an ethic of interdisciplinary research and teaching practice. This is because sustainability problems require integrated solutions, multiple perspectives, bodies of knowledge and skill sets. Given the imperative to address looming environmental challenges and the need for every graduate to be equipped to do so, how do we enable and support interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability education within our disciplines and professional programmes? It is increasingly apparent that organisational learning for change must be taken forward in the context of local disciplinary meanings and priorities; this is how academics know themselves and identify and value their research – and teaching – priorities. However, at the same time this may create tensions when disciplinary boundaries need to be crossed and disciplinary identities are challenged. This chapter will consider (inter)disciplinarity in engagements with organisational learning and change, and suggest a way forward in order to create ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ transformation in education for sustainability.

Citation

Hegarty, K. and de la Harpe, B. (2010), "Vignette 8 Revisiting higher education's heartland: (Inter)disciplinary ways of knowing and doing for sustainability education", Davies, M., Devlin, M. and Tight, M. (Ed.) Interdisciplinary Higher Education: Perspectives and Practicalities (International Perspectives on Higher Education Research, Vol. 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 225-237. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3628(2010)0000005016