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The collapse of world economic systems brought the interconnectedness between business and global events sharply into focus. As Starkey points out: “leading business schools need to overcome their fascination with a particular form of finance and economics […] to broaden their intellectual horizons […] (and to) look at the lessons of history and other disciplines”. The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence from three years of research on the Aston MBA suggesting that an emphasis on developing capabilities within a far broader, connected and reflexive business curriculum is what business students and practitioners now recognise as an essential way forward for responsible management education.

This research paper examines the reflective accounts of 300 MBA students undertaking a transdisciplinary Business Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability core module.

As Klein argues, transdisciplinarity is simultaneously an attitude and a form of action. The student reflections provide powerful discourses of individual learning and report a range of outcomes from finding “the vocabulary or the confidence” to raise issues to acting as “change agents” in the workplace.

As responsibility and sustainability requires learners, researchers and educators to engage with real world complexity, uncertainty and risk, conventional disciplinary study, especially within business, often proves inadequate and partial. This paper demonstrates that creative and exploratory frames need to be developed to facilitate the development of more connected knowledge – informed by multiple stakeholders, able to contribute heterogeneous skills, perspectives and expertise.

The purpose of this self‐reflective paper is to focus on practical efforts to combat inequality and foster intercultural dialogue in education. It introduces “knowledge alliances”, a type of social practice open for education technologies.

The paper is structured in a theoretical and an empirical part. The theoretical part ledge production is divided in two sections: the first one summarizes transdisciplinarity and Paulo Freire's dialogical pedagogy as two innovative approaches to knowledge sharing, production and appropriation. In the second section knowledge alliances are presented as innovative forms of lasting learning and research partnerships. The empirical part presents a case study and discusses the potential and limits of this specific knowledge alliance.

The paper demonstrates the importance of a partnership approach to combat inequality and discrimination. Knowledge alliance is a normative as well as an analytical concept to grasp the dynamics of lasting and transdisciplinary cooperation. For multicultural education, their implementation can be supported by learning technologies.

The paper is a self‐reflection on a lasting learning and research cooperation which offers deep insights into practical challenges. The limitations of these socially innovative practices are the lack of ex‐ante scientific rigor.

The paper argues in favour of lasting cooperation.

The paper shows the necessity to link practice and theory in knowledge alliances which last beyond the single project.

The paper introduces the term knowledge alliances and the related normative and analytical implications.

There is pressure to transform graduate education in ways that better prepare and socialize students for academic careers that require entrepreneurial activities and/or professional pathways outside of academia. The inclusion of entrepreneurial learning in graduate curricula and programs is one strategy for responding to such calls. Yet, there lacks an understanding of how graduate students outside of the business fields make sense of entrepreneurial content relevant to their academic interests and career aspirations. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore entrepreneurial sensemaking by non-business graduate students enrolled in a transdisciplinary entrepreneurship course.

A single case study design was used to explore how seven nonbusiness graduate students in a transdisciplinary entrepreneurial leadership course made sense of entrepreneurial content relevant to their academic interests and career aspirations. Data were collected through direct observations, semi-structured interviews and the administration of an entrepreneurial leadership proclivity assessment tool.

Through experiential learning intentionally centering entrepreneurship, graduate students acquire entrepreneurial knowledge in ways that enhance their agency and sense of empowerment without diluting or overriding their academic and/or professional intentions.

Sensemaking is framed as a pedagogical resource for fostering the integration of entrepreneurial content in transdisciplinary graduate courses and experiences in ways that align with and support the academic interests and career aspirations of individual students.

A novel entrepreneurial sensemaking approach to the integration of entrepreneurial content with transdisciplinary curricula that is directly responsive to calls for graduate education transformation is introduced.

The purpose of this chapter is to offer reflections on conventional theories concerning causes and determinants of diseases. It also intends to examine both theoretical and empirical bases for adopting an Integrated Social-Ecological Systems (ISES) lens as a tool for understanding complexities related to drivers, determinants and causes of diseases.

We assessed the theoretical underpinnings of a range of historical and contemporary lenses for viewing infectious disease drivers and the implications of their use when used to explain both personal (i.e. individual) and population health. We examined these issues within the empirical context of the City of Dhaka (Bangladesh) by adopting an ISES lens. Within this study an emphasis has been placed on illustrating how feedback loops and non-linearity functions in systems have a direct bearing upon various aspects of infectious disease occurrences.

A brief triumph over microbes during the last century stemmed in part from our improved understanding of disease causation which was built using disciplinary-specific, monocausal approaches to the study of disease emergence. Subsequently, empirical inquiries into the multi-factorial aetiology and the ‘web of causation’ of disease emergence have extended frameworks beyond simplistic, individualistic descriptions of disease causation. Nonetheless, much work is yet to be done to understand the roles of complex, intertwined, multi-level, social-ecological factors in affecting disease occurrence. We argue, a transdisciplinary-oriented, ISES lens is needed to explain the complexities of disease occurrence at various and interacting levels. More theoretical and empirical formulations, with evidence derived from various parts of the world, is also required to further the debate.

Our study advances the theoretical as well as empirical basis for considering an integrated human-nature systems approach to explaining disease occurrence at all levels so that factors at the individual, household/neighbourhood, local, regional and global levels are not treated in isolation.

This paper aims to critically focus on the UK's People & Planet's “green league table” in order to explore to what extent such league tables contribute to the transitional and transdisciplinary challenge of ecological sustainability for universities.

By taking a narrative and metaphorical perspective, the paper endeavours to understand how the green league table impacts on university greening, particularly around the apparent disengagement of academic and non‐academic actors in their bio‐cultural connection.

The paper conceptualizes the ecological sustainability challenge for universities by arguing that current sustainability managerial agendas and narratives, promoted by league tables are underpinned by what is conceptualized as the primacy of the “greenwashing glass cage” organisational metaphor. This highlights the self‐serving nature of sustainability approaches by managerial technocrats, consisting of carbon officers, sustainability managers predominantly based in estates departments. Drawing on the immediacy and “common‐sense”, doomsday imperative and legitimacy of the climate change agenda rather than embracing the wider inherent social, environmental and economic stakeholder conflicts and systemic bio‐cultural engagement challenges of sustainability, this top‐down, punitive, self‐satisfied approach around carbon targets and performance measures self‐perpetuates the myth that sustainable universities contribute effectively to the wider ecological challenge.

This paper not only offers a critique and warning against the blind adherence to league tables within university but also proposes a new grounded bio‐cultural and defamiliarizing narrative for universities. This narrative represents a more inclusive, non‐instrumental, contextual, experiential approach to ecological sustainability.

To properly address complex sustainability issues, higher education institutes (HEIs), such as universities, need to implement innovative educational programmes that adhere to transdisciplinary principles. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of how to do so across and beyond a university.

This study presents a module comprising two courses, the first of which centres on the identification of sustainability issues in student-led multi-actor dialogue sessions and the second on addressing those sustainability issues through interdisciplinary collaboration among master’s students who are at the same time also working on their own thesis. The authors conducted continuous evaluations during the first two pilot years, including community (partners), faculty and student perspectives.

The authors found that the module was successful in training students for inter- and transdisciplinarity. Moreover, high levels of commitment were observed from a diverse range of students and faculty across one HEI as well as positive responses from the community (partners) involved in the module. Further improvements of the module rely on active buy-in from programme directors and ensuring continuous collaboration throughout the co-creation process by streamlining the translation of the issues into manageable research projects with specific research questions.

This study provides inspiration and lessons on how to implement university-wide inter- and transdisciplinary module into higher education.

The module is innovative in combining university-wide and interdisciplinary learning with and transdisciplinary learning through long-term, co-creational collaboration within and beyond the university.

The purpose of this paper is to describe experiences with the initiation of transdisciplinarity in academic case study teaching with special reference to regional planning, based on the case study “Leben 2014 (Life 2014) – perspectives for regional development in the national park region Ober‐pinz‐gau, Salzburg”.

The methodology used, was the evaluation of process steps of the project, based on the general project concept, protocols and questionnaires.

A key for successful transdisciplinary cooperation is the integration of non‐academic actors at an early stage of the project. Important principles are the implementation of a structure of communication and networking in the case study region and the definition of rules of collaboration. The establishment of personal relations and network building is indispensable in order to guarantee a constant and broad exchange between all participants. Joint decision‐making processes are essential for stable cooperation, which includes a joint problem definition process at the outset of the case‐study phase as well as joint responsibility for decisions and joint ownership of ideas during and after the case‐study phase.

Transdisciplinarity in case‐study teaching also requires thorough preparation of academics. A constant discussion of different approaches to inter‐ and transdisciplinarity, the adaptation of existing conceptual frameworks to the specific requirements of the current case, the building of a committed teaching team and joint teaching of classes are all important. The careful selection of students and their specific preparation with respect to methodology and content are prerequisites for a successful outcome of a transdisciplinary case study.

The paper describes the experience of initiating transdisciplinarity in academic case study teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the pedagogical tools that can enhance transdisciplinarity in higher education and stimulate sustainability transitions, based on the case study of a partnership between the University of Brasilia and an ecovillage in Brazil.

A qualitative study was carried out, based on professors’ experience, students’ reports and registration data. Emergent themes were discussed based on the concepts of sustainability transitions, transdisciplinarity and active/experiential learning methods.

Undergraduate classes at the ecovillage have motivated students to work towards sustainability transitions by presenting them with new repertoires of sociotechnical configurations and social practices, by promoting a feeling of belonging and co-responsibility for the world and by a horizontal sharing of knowledge and affections that instigated reflections about their purposes in personal and professional life.

This experience demonstrates the potential of transdisciplinary pedagogical approaches to education for sustainability that promote collaboration with different stakeholders and the reflection on individual and collective motives and values – the inner dimension of sustainability.

It describes an innovative and transformative initiative in the heart of Latin America.

To prepare students to address complex sustainability issues, they need to be trained in inter- and transdisciplinarity. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding how to do this, by providing insight into design elements and strategies deployed in inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability education.

A systematic literature search was conducted to select inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability programmes. Through deductive and inductive qualitative analysis, design elements and strategies were identified and defined.

Eleven inter- and transdisciplinary programmes were identified. A comprehensive overview of their design elements and strategies is provided. Moreover, three patterns emerged: students were often only involved in the execution, but not in the preparation and evaluation stages of projects, and thus not trained in these; many programmes relied on diverse student representation for interdisciplinary learning and did not explicitly train interdisciplinary integration; and the societal value of transdisciplinary collaboration received little attention in the evaluation of outcomes and impacts.

Follow-up research into the effectiveness of design elements and strategies for inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability education is needed, because the field seems to be understudied.

The comprehensive overview of design elements and strategies for inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability education holds the promise to inform design of novel programmes with similar ambitions. Moreover, the findings urge additional attention for explicitly training interdisciplinary integration and safeguarding the societal value of transdisciplinarity.

This review presents new insights into strategies and design elements for inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability education.

Inter- and transdisciplinarity are core concepts in almost all education for sustainable development (ESD) competence frameworks and curricula. To equip students with inter- and transdisciplinary competencies is highly demanding for educators. Educators must not only know how to teach students such competencies, but need to be experienced in inter- and transdisciplinary research and must have some technical knowledge about inter- and transdisciplinarity. This paper aims to show how university educators can be supported in their teaching.

The paper is a case study based on research and on experiences in interdisciplinary teaching and in supporting educators in their interdisciplinary teaching.

The paper presents a competence framework of interdisciplinary competencies to guide university teachers that has been developed, implemented and refined in interdisciplinary study programmes belonging to the field of ESD. It shows how the professional development of educators could be addressed referring to the experiences in these programmes. The measures presented consist for one thing of interdisciplinary processes among the educators and of measures directly supporting educators in their teaching for another thing.

The case study the paper refers to is of special value, first, because the experiences are based on long-standing research and on two decades of experiences. Second, because considerable efforts were made to deliver coherent and consistent interdisciplinary teaching in which interdisciplinarity was not only a teaching subject for the students but showed by the educators as well so that the educators involved did not only talk about competencies for inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations but also set an example in their own doings.