Much of the existing research on transdiciplinarity in education has focused on the student experience: that is, ways to scope transdisciplinary projects, as well as strategies to encourage students to think across disciplinary boundaries and integrate multiple perspectives when tackling a complex problem. An area that is still under researched is the role of the teacher in facilitating a transdisciplinary module or project – in particular, the extent of agency they have in the classroom. This is important because the teacher must play an active role in enacting the curriculum to suit the needs of a transdisciplinary class, where students come from diverse backgrounds.

Teacher agency is the extent of control that teachers have in their classroom and in their professional development. It is enhanced when there is personal and shared meaning of the curriculum, a sense of personal mastery over the subject, and a sense of connection and collaboration to develop change agentry (Hoban, 2002; Fullan, 2007; Ngyuen and Bui, 2016). This presentation will focus on the role of teacher agency in the following two aspects of a transdisciplinary classroom:

(i) Co-creation of lesson materials and classroom experiences: teachers should be empowered to adapt lesson materials, pacing and modes of delivery to suit the diversity of students in a transdisciplinary classroom;

(ii) Differentiating assessments: teachers should be empowered to adapt assessments and negotiate standards with students to allow for innovation and emergence to take place.

Using Singapore Polytechnic’s Media, Arts & Design School as a case study, this presentation will share the experiences of lecturers who developed and taught a series of three transdisciplinary project-based modules. In particular, how teacher agency is deliberately built into the lesson plans and assessments (based on the dimensions mentioned above), the ways teachers responded to and enacted their agency in their lesson materials and assessments, and finally, how teacher agency may have impacted learning outcomes. It is hoped that this presentation will generate greater discussion and research into the area of teacher agency and its impact on learning outcomes in a transdisciplinary classroom.

The co-production of new integrated knowledge by transgressing boundaries between science and society is one major principle of transdisciplinarity. Against the background of the planetary grand challenges and therefore on simultaneous scales of societal and scientific transformation, the implementation of participatory, transdisciplinary and transformative research and how it is embedded in the field of research practice by various sets of formats, methods and tools can no longer be called into question. However, it is still struggling to become a regular and natural part of the scientific system of research institutions as an established mode of research (alongside basic research and interdisciplinarity). This is necessary in order to initiate transdisciplinary projects in a more targeted manner and to support them in an advisory capacity, to link them in research and teaching and to establish long-term collaborations between research and society. An institutional transformation is essential at the strategic level of higher education policies, rules and processes. How can we overcome boundaries and create a common knowledge base to better enable and support transdisciplinarity as a research principle at Universities?

In the framework of the ENHANCE alliance and following the research and innovation dimension seven European Technical Universities aim to develop such a transformation agenda which enact the universities as drivers for sustainable development. Therein the knowledge exchange between science and society is one building stone of the transformation modules – named as sustainable development through transdisciplinary research. Both, common aspects and the diversity of practices, universities cultures and methodologies, are taken into account to develop synergies among the European network. Beyond this background, the following objectives has been followed:

1) to taken into account different status of experiences with transdisciplinarity, different universities policies and strategies as well as different practices,

2) to develop an integrative process for achieving a joined knowledge and working base and

3) to generate recommendations for institutional change within the alliance in terms of a gradual instituationalisation of transdisciplinarity.

Two key paths have been conducted and stimulate future implementation into practice: firstly, the development of a shared understanding of transdisciplinarity addressing interaction, societal challenges, co-production of new knowledge and aiming to societal transformation. Secondly, the development of a concept of good practices by identyfying and analysing a variety of different approaches of transdisciplinary initiatives. They represent all ENHANCE partners and the connection between the strategic and practice level of transdisciplinary projects, the different levels of societal engagement and a broad scope on societal impacts.

With this paper we want to represent how we step-by-step developed this mutual learning impact, discuss what triggers and barriers we identified and how we integrated them in the toolbox for institutional transformation. In doing so, we want to critically reflect on how we have worked through the process together, what different perspectives have been brought in and how synergies have been realised in the ENHANCE network. We want to show what we have learnt from this field of experimentation at the strategic level of institutional transformation and how it can possibly be transferred.

With this article we aim to conceptually deepen the notion of process knowledge for transdisciplinary research and create a framework for process design and facilitation of transdisciplinary events.

Transdisciplinary research represents a collective process in which societal actors together with scientists, do not act as recipients of academic results, but also come together in transdisciplinary events or workshops to pursue both their own and joint research questions through a collaborative process. Transdisciplinary research events and gatherings are thus of great importance for sustainability transformation, but also sensitive to heated human dynamics because of the diverse political and cultural perspectives and value systems that end up mingling in these processes. The concept of process design for transdisciplinary events, however - what it means, and especially how it is adequately executed - has hardly been addressed in the transdisciplinary literature. It is simply often assumed that events of participation, knowledge integration and co-creation are straight forward, without recognizing that enabling, hosting, and facilitating transdisciplinary spaces is an expertise. Hereby, psycho-dynamic insights are crucial aiming to be sensitive towards and drawing from social human dynamics as well as constantly questioning the very purpose of the process.

We therefore investigate the transdisciplinary literature and search for the very purpose of transdisciplinary research to better understand what to accomplish during these events. We find that there is no unified understanding of transdisciplinarity with a great difference in purposes. Although they stem from various schools with differences in ontology and epistemology, we argue that a transformative research methodology may start from here to distinguish process purposes of transdisciplinary events.

Building on this, the authors propose a pragmatic framework for designing and facilitating transdisciplinary events that foregrounds the purposes of transdisciplinarity. It undergoes three steps of opening, deepening, and closing the transdisciplinary space and proposes specific questions for the group and the individual.

The authors then highlight examples from illustrative transdisciplinary events embedded in research projects, including sessions at the UN Climate Change Conference, a workshop for initiating transdisciplinary projects, a community of practice, and an urban real-world lab. Finally, the importance of process knowledge and studying facilitation expertise for transdisciplinary research is emphasized.

The future of doctoral training is interdisciplinary. This is certainly the message put across by UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) via its growing portfolio of Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs). These offer to students a cohort-based PhD training programme that expects projects to come from and span different disciplines. In the CDTs for Topological Design and Formulation Engineering at the University of Birmingham, we have grappled with how to ensure that interdisciplinarity is not merely a buzzword but actually helps mould a coherent cohort identity that enhances the doctoral education experience. We want to do this to open students’ eyes to diverse career perspectives within and beyond academia, and to get staff and students challenging the academic status quo. In the case of doctoral education, a status quo that has persisted from 19th century Germany.

In this talk we will demonstrate how we are achieving this by actually extending the interdisciplinary expectations of physical science and engineering students via a transdisciplinary assessment experience in a module that explicitly addresses the interface between science and society through the lens of responsible research and innovation (RRI). After a learning experience on the module characterised by a flipped classroom approach and involving guest lecturers from non-scientific academic disciplines (Law, History of Science) and external partners (lawyers, entrepreneurs, industrial collaborators), students are then assessed by running their own citizens’ assembly on deliberative democratic principles, exploring a controversial scientific issue of their choosing. Through survey and interview data, we will show that this is a distinctly novel and transformative mode of assessment for students, and their overwhelmingly preferred one (of two in the module). We will also present data collected by the students themselves in the course of the assemblies, demonstrating their self-directed learning as a cohort as well as the impact their deliberations have had. We are lucky to have two distinct student bodies taking this module from two different CDTs, only one of which has had previous explicit training on the theory of interdisciplinarity—this offers us the unique opportunity to compare them and explore whether such priming in interdisciplinary scholarship affects the learning experience in a subsequent transdisciplinary assessment, as well as outcomes regarding views on careers and challenges to the academic status quo.

Running this module and assessment for five cohorts of students has provided a rich seam of data and experience to influence further impacts beyond those immediate ones on our students. At its most basic, we have produced a template for embedding a novel and exciting assessment method in other education programmes. But the explicitly transdisciplinary experience—unusual for most physical science and engineering students and staff members—provides a unique mechanism by which staff and students can shine a light on the very processes of the academic enterprise within which they find themselves. It encourages critical self-reflection and can lead to tangible impact across an institution. We will outline our plans to include more external stakeholders for even wider positive impact.