The Responsive and Constitutive Character of Transdisciplinarity: Consequences for Higher Education
- Publisher:
- University of Venda
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- Journal of Educational Studies, 2022, 21, (1), pp. 30-50
- Issue Date:
- 2022-05-30
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There are increasing calls to incorporate transdisciplinary forms of learning and collaboration into higher education. Transdisciplinarity is widely recognized as key to tackling complex problems, driven by socio-technical and political-economic developments, and accordingly negative social, cultural and ecological effects. Thereby, transdisciplinarity plays a dual role: (1) it is a response to complex problems that emerge from rapidly changing life worlds and simultaneously (2) co-produces and shapes alternative social and epistemic regimes. This dual role has far reaching consequences when implementing transdisciplinarity within higher education as it cannot be simply taught as a techno-scientific means to address complex problems but rather requires critical and reflexive forms of learning while establishing new terrain. A promising way of enabling transdisciplinary learning is by creating spaces to experience transdisciplinarity as student-driven research processes. However, the experimental nature of transdisciplinarity and its impact in re-shaping social and epistemic regimes, means these learning spaces are highly dynamic, relational, often fragile and pose significant challenges to both students and educators in practice. In this paper, we outline challenges and opportunities in implementing transdisciplinarity in higher education that emerge from its dual role as both responsive and constitutive. We propose specific institutional and organisational strategies, educational practices and processes, and personal and community attributes by educators and students that are required to create enabling environments for transdisciplinary education at universities.
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