Environmental and societal challenges require responses that integrate a wide range of perspectives from different disciplines (i.e., interdisciplinary integration), as well as from research, policy, and practice (i.e., transdisciplinary integration). Integration in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research is a multidimensional process that involves cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions, in which worldviews come together to approach the complexities of real-world problems.

When integration is embedded in learning and teaching activities, lecturers are confronted with the challenge of teaching the theories, concepts, methods, and tools of integration at the interface of science, practice, and/or policy. They also coach and guide students to design, plan, and implement their own integration process and generate an integrated output. However, there are few tools that help lecturers to design and implement integration processes and assess the integrated outputs in teaching and learning processes.

In this training we offer an approach coined as integrative teaching and learning, to support lecturers and trainers into how to integrate integration in their courses. Elaborating on the concept of integrative teaching, we present practical lessons from a master’s course titled “Integration in Science, Policy and Practice: Inter- and Transdisciplinary Concepts, Methods, Tools” that is offered within the master’s program “Environmental Sciences” at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). We use case studies to offer students the opportunity to explore the theories, concepts, methods, and tools of integration in a hands-on experimental setting. The aim is for students to systematically analyze and cross-compare these cases and critically reflect on the experienced challenges and opportunities in designing, planning, and implementing their own integration process and generating a final integrated output based on their consolidated analysis and comparison.

To approach integrative teaching and learning successfully, we applied different strategies that we will explore together with participants in this training:

• methods and tools of integration applied to case studies,

• reflection on the challenges and opportunities in designing, planning and implementing an integration process with students and generating an integrated output.

• personal teaching and learning journal with individual reflections on the group work and the opportunities students and lecturers experience in bringing their different perspectives together and developing a shared perspective as a group. Participants will be invited to use a teaching and learning journal to adapt their own courses into integrative formats.

Outline of the training (90 minutes)

1. Welcome and Introduction (10 min.)

2. Input by the convenors on the concept of integrative teaching and learning and how to integrate integration into teaching and learning formats. This will be accompanied by an overview of (i) concepts of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary integration across different scientific communities, (ii) methods and tools of integration and (iii) researchers’ roles in integration processes at the interface between science, policy and practice. (30 min.)

3. Teaching and Learning Journal: based on a template provided by the convenors, participants will reflect on integration in teaching and learning contexts. Building on the input provided by the convenors, participants will use their journal to design and implement how to restructure their course to account for integration (20 minutes). A group discussion will follow to enrich the exchange (20 minutes).

4. Wrap-up and final feedback (10 min.)

References

Hoffmann, S., Deutsch, L., Klein, J. T. & O’Rourke, M. (2022). Integrate the integrators! A

call for establishing academic careers for integration experts. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 147. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01138-z

Vienni-Baptista B, Hoffmann S. forthcoming. Integrative Teaching and Learning in Szostak

R, ed. Elgar Handbook of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Administration.

Vienni-Baptista B, Klein JT. 2022. Institutionalizing Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity.

Collaboration across Cultures and Communities. Routledge.