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Competencies for
Competencies for interdisciplinarity
interdisciplinarity in higher
education
325
Jenneth Parker
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Received 17 December 2009
Revised 12 February 2010
Abstract Accepted 30 March 2010
Purpose – The overall purpose of this paper is to clarify the current state of the debate with regard to
competencies for interdisciplinarity (ID) for sustainable development (SD) in higher education, to
provide further analysis, and to make suggestions for next steps on this basis.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs a critical literature review to identify key
themes and gaps in the debate and considers how competencies for ID might be further supported.
Findings – The literature review demonstrates developments towards action competencies in ID for
sustainability but with an over-reliance on students guiding their own practice and reflection. Findings
highlight potential elements of a more widely informed knowledge literacy, including philosophical,
sociological and cultural aspects, that is needed to support the development of these competencies.
Research limitations/implications – The paper is limited to discussion of foundational aspects
and does not cover possible pedagogical strategies, nor does it cover ways of assessing the attainment
of competencies. The literature review is also limited by reasons of space.
Practical implications – There is a need for a concerted research effort in order to develop coherent
sets of competencies to equip students for ID for SD and other-related fields.
Social implications – These competencies are at the heart of the new forms of inter-agency and
inter-professional working that is increasingly recognised as essential to deliver care and
sustainability in a joined-up world.
Originality/value – The originality is high as very little in the sustainability literature to date
specifically analyses competencies and supporting knowledge for ID in an accessible manner.
Keywords Sustainability, Higher education, Competences, Sustainable development
Paper type Viewpoint

1. Introduction
[We need a] “ [. . .] specification of the competencies necessary for an individual researcher
to move from accomplishment in his/her original discipline to successful participation in
interdisciplinary work. Focus on needed competencies can then drive team development
within established interdisciplinary centres and training programmes for the next generation
of interdisciplinary scholars” (Aboelela et al., 2007, p. 7).
This paper will review some key issues in interdisciplinarity (ID), focusing on the
definition and achievement of competencies in interdisciplinary teaching, learning
and research (IDR) in the context of sustainable development (SD). As the quote above
suggests, these competencies are not envisaged as in opposition to disciplinary International Journal of Sustainability
in Higher Education
Vol. 11 No. 4, 2010
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer and the editors for very helpful pp. 325-338
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
comments. Thanks also to Ann Finlayson, UK SD Commissioner, for noting the relevance of the 1467-6370
IB module Theory of Knowledge to this discussion. DOI 10.1108/14676371011077559
IJSHE achievement, but as based upon and additional to it. However, preparing the ground for
11,4 ID as increasingly mainstream practice should alter some of the ways in which we
present disciplinary knowledge in the first place. The author begins with a summary
outlining the need for interdisciplinarity for sustainable development (ISD), raising
some initial questions. A necessarily condensed and partial critical overview of some of
the literature on competencies for ID from across a number of fields, including medicine
326 and care, is then provided. This is followed by an analysis of some key themes arising
from the literature and an initial formulation of action competencies for ISD supported
by generic knowledge literacy.
This paper cannot address serious issues of structural impediments to ID in higher
education (HE; Glied et al., 2007; Griffin et al., 2006) and elsewhere. Further, there is not
space here to elaborate on suggestions and examples of pedagogies that can help to
achieve the competencies proposed, although some examples of practice will be
mentioned to illustrate the argument. Neither is there space to describe assessment
strategies for these competencies in detail, although attention to what we want to assess
often helps to clarify what it is that we need to teach. Education for sustainable
development (ESD) is, at least partly, about determining and providing arguments for
the development of skills, competencies, knowledge and values for SD. In identifying
problems and indicating some routes forward, this paper aims to contribute to the
setting of a research agenda and to recommend this as a priority to the ESD and SD
communities in HE and elsewhere.

1.1 Setting the terms of the debate in this paper

HE is treated here as the primary knowledge creation system in our global societies
(Ison, 1999), a system that links teaching and learning with research. Much of the
discussion here could apply across the spectrum of HE – from undergraduate provision
through to developing the capacity of international research teams – the need for
enhanced learning in response to SD to become endemic in the system. However, as the
“pinnacle” of educational achievement, HE and its structures must also be seen as a
major driver for other educational sectors, in particular secondary education.
The majority of the literature cited here is from the developed part of the world.
Issues of curriculum relevancy and quality education in developing countries have
important relationships to interdisciplinary understanding across all sectors of
education (Parker and Wade, 2009; Barrett and Tikly, 2010) which cannot be dealt with
here in any depth. However, points made here about “action competence for
interdisciplinarity” and the need for supporting “knowledge literacy” will be relevant to
all countries that have adopted a disciplinary-based system in HE and elsewhere.
Here, the author presents SD as being a research programme based upon (or implicitly
utilizing) an ontology of a real world, containing different kinds of system in dynamic
interaction (Bhaskar, 2010; Parker, 2008). That this is becoming a mainstream model,
and/or possibly a research paradigm, can be seen from many major current research
calls. For example, the UK ecosystem services for poverty alleviation (Living with
Environmental Change (LWEC), 2009, p. 18) call put out by three research councils under
the joint programme LWEC, states that applications should:
[. . .] demonstrate potential for scientific or methodological breakthrough [. . .] by
encompassing research [. . .] that holds opportunity for real integration across the different
 scientific disciplines, and by promoting new ways of inter-disciplinary cooperation and Competencies for
systems based approaches.
interdisciplinarity
The SD research community may have agreed on general goals in the SD programme, but
we do not currently know a great many of the potential outcomes and recommendations of
this programme. A New Zealand report on learning for sustainability describes
sustainability as both a goal and a process, arguing that sustainability can be thought of
as both a destination and a journey (Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment 327
NZ, 2004). Contrary to some policy discourses, learning perspectives suggest that this
process will not be centrally one of “implementation”, but of discovery, learning and the
creation of new knowledge. Indeed, the research programme may develop in all kinds of
unexpected ways that challenge how we conceive of knowledge. This will include issues
of negotiation with indigenous, local and lay stakeholder knowledges, both in developed
and developing countries, which will figure as a part of the knowledge literacy proposed
below.
There are many different definitions of varied kinds or typologies of ID,
mostly designed to capture what is felt to be “degrees” of interdisciplinary, for
example the discussion in Griffin et al. (2006). The author will not be discussing
this issue in detail here, nor engaging with debates on typologies of ID such as
“post-disciplinary”, “multi-disciplinary” or “trans-disciplinary”. Rather, these issues
would be seen as potentially part of the curriculum of generic knowledge literacy
proposed below.

2. Why ID for sustainability?

he sustainability research programme is, at least partly, driven by our knowledge of
our current un-sustainability that represents, in part, a “knowledge crisis”. Our
un-sustainability is partly an outcome of systems that produce fragmented knowledge,
frequently disastrous when applied in a joined-up world. Holistic analysis is not required
because of an arcane commitment to a holistic ideology or metaphysics. It is required
because, time and again, in sustainability we see the disastrous results of forgetting to
include vital factors in the analysis (Hoyer, 2010; Naess, 2010). A philosophical and
methodological commitment to holism can help to warn us of some of the worst
unintended consequences from our interventions into the complex world that we inhabit
and provide support for the precautionary principle (Parker, 2002). Although much
remains to be done to document un-sustainability, our assessment of positive ways
forward and strategies for adaptation, mitigation and restoration of life systems
(including human social systems) must be based on more joined-up forms of knowledge.
Hence, though ID may be difficult, finding ways to deal with it productively could be
considered to be one of the main intellectual tasks of the SD research programme and
HE should be at the forefront of this effort.
Ecology, economy, society and culture have all been identified as key intertwined
aspects of sustainability. One set of definitions of these different areas – aspects of
sustainability (TeacherNet, 2006) – is presented as follows:
.
Culture. An understanding of the values we cherish, including the role of world
faiths and philosophies, the ways in which we perceive our relationship with
others and with the natural world, and the creative means that we use to express
these values and relationships.
IJSHE .
Society. An understanding of social institutions and their role in change and
11,4 development, as well as the democratic and participatory systems which give
opportunity for the expression of opinion, the selection of governments, the
forging of consensus and the resolution of differences.
.
Environment. An awareness of the resources and fragility of the physical
environment and the affects on it of human activity and decisions, with a
328 commitment to factoring environmental concerns into social and economic policy
development.
.
Economy. Skills to earn a living as well as a sensitivity to the limits and potential
of economic growth and its impact on society and on the environment, with a
commitment to assess personal and societal levels of consumption out of concern
for the environment and for social justice.

Models of earth system governance, degrees of participation and the roles of expert and
lay knowledge will partly determine how decisions about trade-offs between different
areas of sustainability will be made – and by whom (IHDP, 2010). This consideration
also highlights the fact that in promoting ID we are also promoting the need
for inter-agency, inter-professional collaboration and partnerships as well as raising
questions of the learning processes in these contexts:
At the last World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 there was a strong
multinational plea for partnerships that would allow communities, professionals and
governments to jointly take action [. . .]. However, a lot of learning needs to be done to make
these partnerships work. Imagine a community that is concerned about the steady decline of its
inshore fishery. Catch and income have dropped and people are leaving the town.
An international non-governmental organisation (NGO) offers assistance, as does the local
government fisheries office, the marine studies department at the local university, the state
urban planning department and the neighbouring community. Who’s going to learn what from
whom? Are they learning about fish, marine ecosystems, social systems, property rights,
economic incentives or some combination of these? What learning processes will be used to
share ideas effectively and plan for action? (Keen et al., 2006, p. 2).
This quote highlights the fact that, in sustainability, the systems that we are trying to
change range from the ecological, through the social, to the cultural (Johnston, 1991).
How can we gain the understanding to take effective action across these different
systems and what kinds of complementary elements might we need in each of these
systems in order to generate a positive cycle of change for sustainability? The list
above mixes aspects of reality and recommended knowledge of those aspects, and does
not consider their relationships, in particular relationships of dependency. The author
will assume here that any sustainability initiative must recognise human dependence
upon functioning bio-physical life support systems (Cornell, 2010). Rational choices for
society would dictate that these, and other, dependency relations should partly
determine hard choices/trade-offs to be made between desirable goals in each of these
aspects. These dependencies should be a key consideration in the identification and
development of ID competencies for SD.

3. Literature in ID competencies: some critical considerations

This section does not claim to be in any way comprehensive, but does attempt
to isolate some key issues to address arising from an analysis of the cited literature.
3.1 Action competencies for sustainable livelihoods? Competencies for
Jensen and Schnack (1997, p. 165) in their classic paper persuasively stated the need for interdisciplinarity
“action competence” and their emphasis on the development of agency: “‘Competence’ is
associated with being able, and willing, to be a qualified participant”.
Bishop and Scott (1998, p. 229), rightly emphasised the role of knowledge in action
competence proposing that a qualified participant must be one who is competent to
utilize relevant knowledge. 329
Indeed, it is not just the intention but the knowledge that supports effective agency,
including moral agency (Parker, 2010). For example, it is pointless exhorting the public
to change behaviours towards SD, even if they wish to do so, if our social knowledge base
and physical and institutional infrastructure do not support these changes (Darnton,
2004). In “Section 4”, we will explore how this discussion transfers to the issues of
competencies for ID.
It is very important to emphasise that much knowledge needed for SD will not
necessarily be “scientific” in any formal sense and may well be local and/or indigenous
knowledge in negotiation with more formal expertise. Recognition of different
knowledges does not imply relativism (Parker, 2001), but can value the different kinds
of knowledge needed for the complex and locally embodied tasks of SD. This wide
perspective on knowledge for SD has been further enriched by the discussion on
inter-agency and inter-professional ID in the caring professions. For example,
consideration of interdisciplinary teams for medical care raises the issues of
participatory knowledge development and ownership of knowledge “Members of an
interdisciplinary team may include a variety of professionals, consumers, families and
community partners” (MCH, 2009). This means that the co-creation of knowledge in
these teams will require reflection upon the standards, criteria and negotiation of
medical knowledge itself.

3.2 The holistic object of study?

One of the key areas that is seriously and urgently considering how to embed ID
competencies is medical practice, along with many other areas of care for humans. There
is much that the ESD and SD communities could learn from these studies and
discussions in addition to the points about inclusivity above. Critical realists, Bhaskar
and Danermark (2006) have described the academic scenario of competing approaches
or “models” of disability, ranging from the medical, to social constructionism, to cultural,
identity and psychological approaches. They argue that the whole range of approaches
is actually necessary to engage effectively with any one specific case because the object
of study is the whole human being comprised of dialectically related dimensions.
Transferred to the context of the joined-up system of our planet with its living
inhabitants, this argument implies the need for wide ranging ISD, and the urgent need
for disciplines to find ways to work together.
In the wider literature concerned with interdisciplinary medical practice there is also
an awareness of the holistic “object of study” – the whole human being, referring
to holistic perspectives that can usefully inform study of complex problems that require
multi-disciplinary approaches (Aboelela et al., 2007, p. 2). In this way the joined-up
phenomenon can be clearly seen as the driver for interdisciplinary. The medical
literature cited here displays a keen recognition of the need to develop training and
capacity building for ID working to facilitate better care.
IJSHE As an example of this kind of approach applied to SD, a model was developed by the
11,4 German Advisory Council on Global Change (1997), utilizing an analogy from medicine
and its holistic object of the person to describe “syndromes” or “global diseases”. They
propose that the overlaying of different kinds of syndromes can help understanding of
“the environmental and developmental state of the Earth” (p. 27). They argue that:
Syndromes are characterized by their trans-sectoral character, i.e. the problems take effect
330 across the borders of individual sectors (e.g. industry, biosphere, population) or environmental
media (e.g. soil, water) but always have direct or indirect relationship to natural resources.
The syndromes are given global relevance when in their entirety they modify the character of
the Earth System and thus have a direct or indirect noticeable influence on the foundations of
life for a majority of people or when globally coordinated action is required to overcome the
problems (p. 27).
This is one of many attempts to provide a map of SD issues that can be holistic but also
analytic and, hence, can guide knowledge acquisition, joint working and research
agendas.

3.3 Understanding disciplinarity

There are other areas where policy demands for inter-professional and inter-agency
work are driving curriculum development, for example in library and information
services studies, where constructive thinking has been done. Coleman (2002, p. 5)
discusses the ID needed for library studies in the context of the role of information
services in the developing “trans-disciplinary university”. This paper proposes that
some level of sociological and cultural understanding of disciplinarity is required in this
time of change. Coleman argues that understanding disciplines might help library
workers see how their decisions might appear to academics still embedded in
disciplinary thinking.
In this respect, Heckhausen (1972) proposes that the following are required for
understanding a discipline: material field (or broad area of concern); subject matter; level
of theoretical integration; methods; analytical tools; application of a discipline in fields of
practice; and historical contingencies (for example, the opportunistic validation and
institutional embedding of disciplines at certain times). This list itself proposes an
interdisciplinary approach to understanding disciplines in order to develop
understanding for interdisciplinary working.

3.4 Interdisciplinary competencies: the “black box”?

At first sight, there is a substantial array of research reports, narratives and case studies
on ID, including much that relates to competencies. In a paper on the team-taught ID unit
on SD at Bristol, UK, Hoare et al. (2008) note that part of the assessment of students’
achievement is their production of “interdisciplinary synthesis” of some kind. This unit
also uses student ID team-work as a learning approach – in this case joint work on a
topic using Wiki technology. A similar approach has been taken by some participants in
the EU-funded virtual campus for a sustainable Europe (VCSE, 2006) project, where the
emphasis is not just on ID student collaboration, but also on cross-European
collaborative learning on SD topics in a European virtual seminar.
On closer examination, there is rather less detailed explanation of how to design
teaching and learning to develop SD competencies. For example, the ground-breaking
“Developing key competencies for sustainable development in higher education”
(Barth et al., 2007) includes competency in interdisciplinary work (p. 418) as one element Competencies for
in a range of other necessary competencies. Amongst requirements for learning in interdisciplinarity
formal settings they propose the following:
Working out solutions for complex problems in heterogenous teams necessitates including
and understanding various perspectives in order to combine them profitably (p. 420).
The recommended strategy is problem-based learning in teams, which certainly has a 331
lot to recommend it. However, the key competency for ID is not fully unpacked.

3.5 Acquiring a “meta-perspective” and communicating disciplines

Barth et al. (2007) mention using a meta-perspective in order to:
[. . .] develop a debate about how representatives of other disciplines deal with their own and
other technical terms and how the application of terms, methods and strategies with regard to
problem solving takes place (p. 423).
Inquiring into the necessary conditions for inhabiting this “meta-perspective”, and
whether students can be assisted in learning how to do this, is a key question for further
thinking and research. It is noticeable in the literature that many institutions and
agencies are discussing the skills and competencies that students need to participate in
the “knowledge economy” or the “knowledge society” (Coleman, 2002; Segarra, 2009).
A further recommendation that needs to be highlighted is the need to develop:
[. . .] the ability [. . .] to communicate one’s own specialised knowledge comprehensively to
persons from other disciplines in order to eventually be able to develop a shared knowledge
base (Barth et al., 2007, p. 423).
Can we plan disciplinary teaching and learning to support students, academics and
researchers to describe their disciplinary knowledge to a useful extent? This would
involve re-thinking disciplinary learning in the light of the broader landscape of
necessary interdisciplinary cooperation. The ability to situate our disciplines in a wider
“map” of knowledge would assist in achieving this aim.

4. Critical summary: “Making our students do our interdisciplinarity for

us”?
Overall, one striking feature of the approach taken in the literature reviewed in the
“Section 3” is the concentration on student-led learning and processes. There is a broad
level of agreement in the literature of the advantages of student-directed and
collaborative enquiry with increased degrees of student responsibility for determining
the directions and contents of their studies. Research has concentrated on the character
traits and dispositions that are conducive to ID, leaving interdisciplinary competencies
(IDCs) as largely unarticulated, but desirable elements – in fact, a “black box” in need of
unpacking. Whilst agreeing that dispositions are important, we should also ask where
do these intellectual virtues originate and can they be developed and encouraged?
In summary, the question is what are our academic responsibilities in terms of providing
the tools, materials and frameworks to help students in these key intellectual challenges?
The title of this section is a quotation from a concerned academic in a recent ID
workshop. In the author’s experience with postgraduate students engaging in IDR,
is that they are quite clear about their needs for methodological support. We cannot
begin to really engage with these questions without engaging with the philosophical,
IJSHE sociological, cultural and learning challenges of ID – thus recognising that knowledge
11,4 literacy for ID will itself rightly be an ID effort.

4.1 The absence of the holistic object of study

In the literature, IDCs are rarely fully analysed with respect to the substantive holism of
the object of study, and consequently that the knowledge required of substantive
332 curriculum areas is not fully defined. The absence of this, albeit tentative, object of
study, could deprive us of a clear basis from which to provide a rationale for ID to
learners, funders and fellow academics, and make it very difficult to outline the
substantive connective understandings required for SD. Further, the absence of the more
holistic object of study, can also lead to an absence of guidelines for relevant learning.
Students need academics and theorists to develop and pass on their analysis of the
substantive knowledge dimensions that are required along with understanding of how
they can be usefully synthesized or related in ID study. The lack of the object of study
sets the scene for an over-concentration of effort on ID as student-focused and
student-determined, considered as a safe “lowest common denominator”. In the light of
this critical analysis, it would be important to review the various different positive
attempts to outline bigger pictures of the object of study of SD – as for example in the
German Advisory Council for Global Change approach, cited above. Such a review could
help to develop resources to assist understanding of the holistic nature of SD, but from a
range of different perspectives having their own specific focus.

4.2 “Integration” of knowledge and knowledge and power

The unnecessary agnosticism about the holistic object of study is also interestingly
related to a kind of opposite phenomenon in the literature, which is the frequent
requirement that people should be skilled at “knowledge integration”. “Integration” may
be far too strong a term when considering the presentation of data from diverse fields –
real synthesis may await a further integrative paradigm breakthrough – yet to be
achieved. In addition, disciplines and interdisciplinary clusters vary greatly in their
degree of institutional and societal integration, the extent to which they are allowed or
required to inform policy, and consequently in their degree of funding. All these factors
contribute to the relative power of disciplines in ID interactions, in teaching and
learning, as well as in research teams. “Integration” raises the spectre of reductionism of
diverse data to the terms of the most powerful discipline. In addition, there are many
kinds of established and developing “interdisciplinarities” and there is an issue of
historically established and/or politically popular existing interdisciplinarities seeking
to expand their power base and funding to take on relatively new areas such as SD. Much
of the analytical research literature on ID notices differential power relations from the
point of view of IDR, but more explanatory analysis would aid understanding. Research
is also needed into the ways that these power relations can be traced in the setting up and
funding of interdisciplinary centres and institutes.
Power relationships between disciplines, and particular “interdisciplinarities”,
manifest in the ways in which different interdisciplinarities are formed and play out in
relation to policy. Consideration of disciplines as centres of cultural capital becomes
apposite (Bourdieu, 1986) and can illuminate struggles over which disciplines “annexe”
sustainability agendas and funding. For example, such developments as “ecosystem
services” (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003) can be considered as heuristic
devices, suitable for achieving some level of understanding and policy coherence at a Competencies for
particular point in time, and within a knowledge landscape still dominated by a interdisciplinarity
particular discipline, in this case a particular form of economics. Whilst agreeing that
transitional concepts can be vital for doing the “heavy lifting” in moving thinking, it is
necessary that they should be kept open for revision. As many influential institutions
(including most governments) do not yet even aspire to become learning organisations,
such concepts can become deeply embedded in policy and difficult to change. 333
4.3 Interdisciplinary learning, disciplinary cultures and identities
Much of the literature cited refers to the need for some kind of “action learning” in ID that
can help to break down the barriers between disciplinary perspectives. However,
discussion in the literature to date tends to deal with “end-of-pipe” issues, where students
with already formed exclusive disciplinary identities and frameworks are thrown into
the deep end of ID problem-solving. Perspectives from philosophy of education can be
helpful here. For example, it has been proposed that much learning is very challenging to
self-identities and certainties in a very fundamental way (Kerdeman, 2003). Knowledge
and approaches from systems thinking (Maiteny and Ison, 1999; Sterling, 2005), learning
theory and anthropology (Strathern, 2005), could also assist in deepening discussion,
and contribute to devising new ways of teaching disciplines that mitigate potential
conflicts of ID without loss of disciplinary expertise. Further in some areas of ESD it is
considered important to develop students’ understanding that there is cultural uptake
of science in social myths and narratives, just as there are scientific analyses of culture
(EFS, 2010).

4.4 Back to “Action competence”

There is clearly much benefit in providing students with opportunities to engage in
ID work in projects, where they will gain direct experience of both the need for ID work,
but also of its problems. In this way, students can demonstrate a level of action
competence in practicing ID approaches to problems and cases. This can also link with
work-related skills agendas in HE. Whilst agreeing with the emphasis on agency,
there is ethnocentricity in concepts of action competence formulated in the context
of social democratic systems in developed countries. Competencies for developing
and participating in sustainable livelihoods is perhaps a more globally accessible
formulation:
Sustainable livelihoods approaches are based on [. . .] the importance of structural and
institutional issues [. . .] participatory approaches to development have highlighted great
diversity in the goals to which people aspire, and in the livelihood strategies they adopt to
achieve them (DFID, 1999, p. 4).
Although developed solely with an emphasis on “the poor”, sustainable livelihoods must
become a global aspiration if we consider global eco-justice (Meyer, 2003). The developed
world is far from achieving SD – the links between development and environmental
degradation have not been broken (Inter Academies Panel, 2010). The aim of developing
competencies for sustainable livelihoods should thus involve comparatively greater
challenges to curricula in developed countries.
There are already some good examples of practice, at undergraduate and
postgraduate levels, which seem to be using an implicit action competence framework.
Some also explicitly mention reflection on these experiences as a part of demonstration
IJSHE of competency. If this reflection is not to be a hit and miss affair, the question then
11,4 becomes “what kinds of elements of knowledge literacy should help to guide this
reflection in ways that can assist analysis”? “Literacy” in knowledge would include
gaining different perspectives on knowledge, its production, validation, roles in society
and so on. Here we might start from the International Baccalaureate (IB) requirement for
a theory of knowledge module (IB, 2010) suitably modified to take account of key
334 questions in ISD. Thus, the author argues that, if we want to assess students’ work for
the quality of their reflections on such ID experiences, we should consider what kinds of
knowledge do we need to provide in order to facilitate this. One rationale for making
these issues more explicit is that as professionals we should be helping our students to
identify and consolidate their learning (Young, 2007). This constructive reflection
should help to identify and analyse problems and issues in ISD, linking in with faculty
research agendas as is appropriate in HE. Analytical reflection can also help to engage
and motivate students in the development of the many different but related areas of IDR
that are needed to really embed change for SD across the range of human practices and
perspectives.

5. Conclusions: a research agenda

The literature at present is still implicitly based on ID as an accepted but always
marginalized and relatively minor part of academic life. In this context it might be
acceptable to simply rely on “dispositions” and character traits of a few academics, and
leave interdisciplinary study to a small minority of committed and able students.
However, if we are dedicated to the need for widespread understanding of our joined-up
world, this perspective is woefully inadequate. We have to work in interdisciplinary
ways in order to adequately address SD and a deeper understanding of ID should also
enable us to improve the quality control essential to ensure that precious ISD research
funds are well spent. How can we develop this understanding in all our students and
what can conceptually support their development of ID competencies? Part of our role as
educators, curriculum and capacity developers is to provide coherent guidance on the
substantive features and requirements of any field (Young, 2007). As a research
community we have to say, of course, that any guiding outline will be revisable, there
will be extensive negotiation, interpretation and uncertainty about exactly how specific
areas of knowledge can be related. In order to do this effectively, and to fulfill the aims of
Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 (UNCED, 1992) to transform HE, the author has argued that we
have to move the development of ID competencies to centre stage.
The author has argued that a priority consideration must be devising teaching
strategies to develop a more generalized awareness of issues – or knowledge literacy for
ID. This has been presented this as a diverse project that itself requires an ID approach to
disciplinarity. It has been further argued that more attention to generic aspects of ID can
help speed up the learning and research processes for SD that are so urgently required.
The following questions begin to outline a research agenda:
RQ1. What kinds of frameworks can help us to assess “action competence for ID”?
What generic assessment criteria could be formulated to help to embed this
kind of practice across the curriculum in HE?
RQ2. What kind of interdisciplinary understanding of disciplinarity do we need to
deploy in pursuit of knowledge literacy for ID?
 RQ3. How might we transform or supplement the IB module Theory of Knowledge Competencies for
to act as a basis for ISD? interdisciplinarity
RQ4. What kinds of generic transferable skills could be developed by, for example,
working in ID teams and in contexts calling for joined-up approaches?
RQ5. What are the general issues of ID that learners/researchers need to be able to
identify and what kinds of strategies do learners/researchers need to be able 335
to deploy to deal with these issues?
RQ6. What range of models exists for describing the holistic object of study of SD?
Which models might be useful for which purposes?
RQ7. What kinds of competencies do we want learners/researchers to develop with
regard to managing big picture or holistic analysis and focussed research and
learning?
RQ8. What do learners/researchers need to know about the politics of knowledge
and governance, including the possibility of attacks on unpopular knowledge,
and working with local, indigenous and other stakeholder knowledge bases?
RQ9. Which elements of knowledge literacy are most important for different ID
areas, including SD? What kind of different levels of understanding of these
key elements would be needed at different levels of study from undergraduate
to building the capacity of senior researchers?
The time is ripe for an international effort on these questions. Can we develop some
international networks and research strategies to organise and deepen our
development of this essential literacy?

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About the author

Jenneth Parker has a BA Hons (Cardiff) and MSC (London School of Economics) in Philosophy
338 and an Interdisciplinary DPhil from the University of Sussex drawing on Ethics, Philosophy of
Science and Social Movement Theory to discuss Ecofeminist Ethcis for sustainability. She is a
former Co-Director of the International EFS distance learning Masters programme at London
South Bank University, developed by NGOs after the first Earth Summit of 1992. She has carried
out consultancy in sustainability and education issues with a range of organisations including
local government, NGOs such as WWF-UK, Science Shops Wales and internationally, with
UNESCO, working on the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, and with the EU.
She has published on critical realist philosophy, and ethics of sustainable development in
addition to many publications on ESD. She has been working with the Bristol-based QUEST
Earth System Science climate change team on interdisciplinary synthesis and is a Research
Fellow on the EU funded CONVERGE project. She is a visiting fellow at the Graduate School of
Education, Bristol, working on ID and sustainability research. Jenneth Parker can be contacted at:
jenneth.parker@bristol.ac.uk

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