Teaching Sustainability Using a Focused Multi-disciplinary Approach
Teaching Sustainability Using a Focused Multi-disciplinary Approach

Summary/Abstract: The myriad definitions and measures of sustainability complicate the development and teaching of an introductory sustainability course. The United Nations’ Brundtland Report provided a definition for sustainable development and John Elkington and others modified the concept with the Triple Bottom Line, which sought to balance environmental stewardship, economic growth and social responsibility. Sustainability’s growing popularity and relevance to many academic majors compelled course developers to create multi-disciplinary courses that are relevant to many academic disciplines. During the development of a course on sustainability, University of Houston and Colby College course developers believed the main challenge for effective pedagogy involved effectively intertwining the complexity of sustainability with an applied focus in a multi-disciplinary classroom. In this case, the course developers choose a specific policy focus – energy in this case – to explore sustainability’s complex and multi-disciplinary nature. With this specific analysis, the students were then able to apply these new skills to other sustainable policy programs. Additionally, the explicit multi-disciplinary character of the classroom allowed the professors and the students to bring their strengths and use them to increase the awareness of the importance of the multi-disciplinary approach to solve problems.

• Details
• Contents