Teaching methods and interdisciplinary learning

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the possibilities, but also of the difficulty of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration. Principal characteristics of sustainability are complexity and interdependence, therefore the task of implementing in this domain is complex and varied. For resolving sustainable development problems, simple descriptions of cause-action mechanisms are not sufficient. There is a need for proceedings that satisfy the complexity, that give sustainability a common use, and that furthermore do not run the risk of being oversimplified. In the first section of the article, inter- and transdisciplinarity are presented at first as adequate principles with which it is possible to elaborate general solutions for complex problems. To solve comprehensively the complex problems of sustainability, different (scientific) methods have been developed over the past years that are being applied in research and teaching. In this case, it is about approaches that do not belong to a particular scientific discipline, but that cross them. With the goal of obtaining data for solving complex problems in practice, section two presents common inter- and transdisciplinary approaches and applications. The last section presents a summary of the different methods mentioned.