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This paper aims to explore a transdisciplinary approach to the careers and employability education of transnational education (TNE) students of higher education. It proposes that an approach which adopts three lenses of academic study, lived experience and career stage can provide maximum benefits to the TNE students' careers education, particularly in response to the modern workplace. The study aims illustrate the potential benefits of such an approach to multiple stakeholders within higher education.

This paper adopts a viewpoint approach drawing on higher education career service practitioner-based experience of using a specific approach to employability with TNE students studying with a large university based in the UK. Student evaluation data from this practice are referred to in the paper.

This paper provides insights into how this approach to employability was received by higher education TNE students who participated in a pilot project led by a higher education careers service, which adopted the three lenses approach.

This paper illustrates how a transdisciplinary approach to the careers and employability education of TNE students can be of significant value to the higher education students themselves, the institutions within which they study and the graduate recruiters looking to attract future employees for the workplaces of the future. It is hoped that by sharing this approach more stakeholders within the TNE and careers and employability communities within higher education will adopt a similar approach.

This paper aims to propose and evaluate an innovative approach to education for sustainable consumption (ESC) which empowers teenagers and young adults to improve sustainable consumption competences. This approach combines pedagogical learning approaches such as real-world learning (e.g. experiential learning and research-based learning) with transformative and transdisciplinary research approaches (i.e. real-world laboratory research).

Through a transdisciplinary research design, the authors explore if real-world experiments (RWEs) offer a suitable approach for sustainable consumption education at schools. RWEs are a research approach for knowledge production, aiming to go beyond temporary interventions, to establish semi-permanent spaces for sustainability transformation and reflexive learning. To evaluate this proposal, the authors study already existing active teaching and learning approaches developed within and for ESC and put these in perspective, to define and understand the RWEs.

Insights from a transdisciplinary research project which applied RWEs as a teaching and learning approach in German schools complement conceptual considerations. As a result, advantages, such as the development of core competencies among learners, but also challenges experienced, are illustrated. Though, the challenges found are not unique to the RWE, rather they point out important potentials for ESC through suggesting systematic changes in educational institutions and teaching approaches.

This paper explores RWEs as an active and participatory teaching and learning approach for sustainable consumption education at schools and delivers practical insights and a definition of RWEs as an innovative teaching and learning approach.

This study aims to investigate the potential of an empathetic mindset aimed at empowering undergraduate students to work toward sustainable development (SD), addressing both theoretical and practical dimensions.

A mixed quantitative and qualitative research method was used in this study. Cross-sectional quantitative survey data on students’ mindsets and actions toward SD was collected to examine the theoretical relationship between belief and behavior. Qualitative inquiry using focus-group interviews explored students’ on-site learning experiences.

This study provides evidence for the impact of an empathetic mindset on education for sustainable development (ESD). Results showed that students with a more empathetic mindset showed better attitudes and behaviors toward SD actions. Findings suggest that developing an empathetic mindset improves students’ attitudes toward taking substantial action to protect the environment.

This study introduces a novel perspective extending the application of empathetic mindset in ESD.

In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies.

This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews.

First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach.

This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education.

This chapter contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning in extracurricular enterprise and entrepreneurship education. It draws on research from two annual ‘Business Challenge Weeks’ (BCW) held at Oxford Brookes University in 2021 and 2022, in which teams of postgraduate students from three faculties worked on external client projects, supported by an academic mentor. It presents and discusses findings derived from a survey and interviews conducted after the second of these years. The chapter takes a transdisciplinary perspective, after Budwig and Alexander (2020), Piaget (1972) and Klein et al. (2001) and explores the relationship between this and the enterprise and entrepreneurship development pipeline set out by QAA (2018). It analyses the experiences of the three main participating groups engaged in the challenge weeks – students, external clients and academic mentors – and explores the organising challenges inherent in multiparty pedagogical initiatives. The chapter contributes to knowledge in this area by revealing and reflecting on the motivations and expectations of the three participant groups, the roles they played during the week and the outcomes they reported. It also expands understanding of transdisciplinary enterprise pedagogy.

In this opinion article, the authors share their experiences with and perspectives on course design requirements and barriers when applying challenge-based learning (CBL) in an online sustainability education setting. CBL is an established learning approach for (higher) sustainability education. It enables teachers to engage students with open, real-life grand challenges through inter-/transdisciplinary student team collaboration. However, empirical research is scarce and mainly based on face-to-face CBL case studies. Thus far, the opportunities to apply CBL in online educational settings are also underinvestigated.

Using the TPACK framework, the authors address technological, pedagogical and content knowledge related to CBL and online sustainability education. The integration of the different components is discussed, providing teachers and course designers insight into design requirements and barriers.

This paper supports the promising future of online CBL for sustainability education, especially in the context of inter-/national inter-university collaboration, yet emphasizes the need for deliberate use of online collaboration and teaching tools.

This article explores the implications of virtual social spaces for conceptualizing community engagement in the practice of architecture and design by critically analyzing multidisciplinary approaches to conceptualizing community namely space, place, and context to envision social spaces of virtual community engagement by architects and designers.

This conceptual article utilized narrative literature review as the primary method for conducting a transdisciplinary theoretical integration. First, the authors defined the metaverse as all manner of human-technological interaction. Second, the authors discussed theories of place from architecture, social geography, and human ecology and employed neoecological theory to describe the interactional processes inherent in research and practice with virtual communities. Finally, the authors documented specific types of virtual engagement strategies in architectural research and practice.

Virtual environments provide varied opportunities for effective collaborations among architects, designers, and community members. The primary strategies identified by the literature review of virtual community engagement were collaborative, augmented reality, and situated digital experiences. In addition, researchers have found that the most effective community engagement bridges interactions in the physical space and digitally mediated interactions.

The authors advocate for increased research towards understanding how the expanded availability of more complex technological tools, such as future versions of artificial intelligence (AI) software, may further layer the landscape of community engagement in ways that may be unpredictable and currently less understood. Additional research is also needed to address participants' perspectives in virtual community engagement and explore how the building of communities in the meta-context is felt, lived, and understood by those who act in them.

The availability of new technological tools and digital platforms challenges diverse professionals to expand their community-engaged practice into the metaverse. Although not every community has broadband Internet or software access, many physical locations whether community centers, libraries, schools, or one’s own home may serve as safe spaces for novel virtual engagement experiences by individuals and groups. Digital engagement can increase opportunities for involvement from persons who are home-bound, lack transportation or child-care to attend in-person community events, or may desire the anonymity afforded by virtual engagement.

Virtual environments can provide varied opportunities for effective collaboration among architects, designers, and community members by overcoming physical or nonphysical barriers to in-person engagement. For example, recent case studies of civic and community organizations have successfully integrated physical and virtual community engagement during the global COVID-19 pandemic by overcoming physical or nonphysical barriers to in-person engagement. Community development theorists have referred to such contexts as a “post-place community” in which individuals find solidarity through digital global networks.

This article theorizes virtual community engagement in the metaverse from a transdisciplinary perspective and coins the innovative concept of meta-contexts to describe a global “post-place” community. Integrating theories of place from architecture, social geography, and human ecology guides an original review of effective strategies for meta-contextual digital community engagement by architects and designers.

This paper aims to investigate the role of multidisciplinary course requirements in shaping student attitudes toward sustainability and education for sustainable development. Previous research indicates that students conceptualize sustainability based on their academic discipline; thus, this research investigates whether there is a difference in student attitudes toward sustainability at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland, where students are encouraged to cross the borders of their academic disciplines.

This research reports on the findings from a mixed-methods study to assess the impact of program requirements on student attitudes toward sustainability and education for sustainable development at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland. In phase one, an anonymous survey was administered to students regarding their perceptions and attitudes toward sustainability and education for sustainable development. The survey yielded 100 usable responses. Phase 2 consisted of a series of 10 semi-structured expert interviews with key faculty and staff at Grenfell Campus and a representative from the City of Corner Brook, which gave further insights regarding sustainability programming and campus culture.

Contrary to previous research, the results of this research indicate that the School of Study does not have a statistically significant impact on student attitudes toward sustainability. This may be attributed to Grenfell Campus’s Breadth of Knowledge requirement within the School of Arts and Social Science and the School of Science and the Environment, which requires that students take elective courses from a broad range of subject matter to develop their holistic awareness of social, cultural, scientific and political issues.

The results of this research indicate that students who are exposed to broad multidisciplinary requirements may be more likely to have positive attitudes toward sustainability than students who focus on a single discipline.

A limited number of studies investigate the impact of core program requirements on student attitudes toward sustainability. This paper promotes an effective way of raising sustainability-literate young people/citizens in a Canadian higher education context.

Guided by paradox theory, the study aims to significantly advance Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions (SHEI) scholarship and inform change agents’ (CAs) practices by uncovering the tensions underlying the challenges CAs face in embedding sustainability in their universities and learning about potential strategies to manage these tensions.

The authors conducted a multi-step, mix-methods study including interviews (n = 15), an online survey (n = 36) and focus groups (n = 29) with CAs from 17 of Austria’s 22 public universities. Participating CAs consisted of faculty, staff and administrators with leading roles in their Higher Education Institutions’ sustainability change processes.

Austrian SHEI CAs’ responses revealed 15 tensions at and between the individual, organizational and system level addressing academic, organizational and external stakeholder engagement aspects. Six tensions were selected for more in-depth exploration including elaboration of management strategies, building on CAs’ experiences. Results revealed examples of acceptance, separation and synthesis strategies.

Based on the exploratory nature of our study, the authors do not claim to have identified a comprehensive list of tensions underlying the challenges faced by SHEI CAs, nor of all potential management strategies.

Although this study focused exclusively on Austrian SHEI CAs, the challenges they shared were consistent with those in the literature and, thus, insights should also support the CAs’ efforts in other countries.

This study offers novel perspectives on how to manage the challenges to SHEI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to describe paradox theory-informed management strategies recommended by a heterogenous group of SHEI CAs to address the barriers they face in transforming their universities toward sustainability.

The aim of this paper is to outline the collaborative approach used to craft national learning standards for tertiary programs in the field of environment and sustainability in Australia. The field of environment and sustainability is broad and constituted by diverse stakeholders. As such, articulating a common set of learning standards presents challenges.

The authors developed and used a staged collaborative curriculum design methodology to engage more than 250 stakeholders in tertiary environmental education, including discipline scholars, students, professional associations and employers and other environmental educators. The approach was adaptive, to ensure underrepresented stakeholders’ perspectives were welcomed and recognised. The project was commissioned by the Australian Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (ACEDD) and funded by the Federal Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching.

The collaborative approach developed and used for this work facilitated an inclusive process that valued diversity of perspectives, rather than marginalise diversity in favour of a perspective representing a minimum level of agreement. This is reflected in the standards themselves, and is evidenced by participant feedback, piloting of the standards and their subsequent application at multiple universities. Achieving this required careful planning and facilitation, to ensure a democratisation of the stakeholder consultation process, and to build consensus in support of the standards. Endorsement by ACEDD formalised the standards’ status.

Collaborative curriculum design offered the opportunity to foster a shared sense of common purpose amongst diverse environmental education stakeholders. This approach to curriculum design is intensive and generative but uncommon and may be usefully adapted and applied in other contexts. The authors note one subsequent instance where the approach has been further developed and applied in transforming a generalist science program, suggesting the methodology used in this case may be applied across other contexts, albeit with appropriate adjustments: the authors offer it here in the spirit of supporting others in their own complex curriculum design challenges.