Chapter 8: Integrative teaching and learning

Overview & Synopsis

Meeting environmental and societal challenges requires responses that integrate a wide range of perspectives from different disciplines (i.e., interdisciplinary integration), as well as from science, policy, and practice (i.e., transdisciplinary integration). When integration is embedded in teaching activities, a third dimension of the process is required: integrative teaching and learning. In using the term “integrative teaching and learning,” we understand an iterative and reflexive process performed by lecturers when collaborating in a teaching and learning environment that includes the actions of individual reflections on integration from different knowledge backgrounds and research cultures, collective discussions, and continuous adaptations of the course structure and content. In this chapter, we present practical experiences and examples from a master’s course in the environmental sciences program at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). Drawing on case studies, we have designed a collaborative master’s course offering students a setting to explore the theories, concepts, methods, and tools of integration in a hands-on experimental setting. To approach integrative teaching and learning successfully, we invited students and lecturers to build a personal learning journal with reflections on the challenges and opportunities they experience in bringing their different perspectives together and developing a shared perspective on integration. The chapter explores the value and utility of the teaching and learning journal for lecturers.