To change the mindset from us-and-them to team-strengths
July 3, 2019
The last thing I did before leaving academia were to develop an interdisciplinary research and teaching approach to learning and teaching in sustainability. Having been very fortunate that my old institution during my doctoral research promoted an interdisciplinary approach to research I have in the last decade worked across fields such as art, design, engineering and science. With a college degree in art, bachelor’s degree in product design, PhD in recycled glass and a post doc in engineering my interdisciplinary experience has made me appreciate the complexity of sustainable development.
The global crisis is not a single problem that only experts can solve, nor a solution with government legislation. The consequences of the global crisis are as much a mindset that needs to be changed and this mindset can be seen at all level of the society, on a micro level as well as on macro level. To change the mindset from us-and-them, short-term-success and individual-career-goals, to team-strengths, collaborative-attitudes and social-economy is not done overnight. The paper Using interdisciplinary research project collaborations as a pedagogic tool to enhance learning and teaching published in the open source journal Wales Journal of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education in 2019 are describing the results from a interdisciplinary project that fostered the five-ways-of-working from the Wellbeing of Future Generation Act (collaboration, integration, prevention, involvement and long-term thinking).
Below is a picture of some of the authors in the published paper.
Fron Left: J. Ferriz-Papi, G.Owen, A.Nantel, L. Hopkinson, I. Standen and T. Oseng-Rees
