From Solo to Shared: Building Resilient Interdisciplinary Teaching Through Co-Construction

Higher education faces three interconnected pressures for change. First, modern societies and work environments demand new competencies and flexible ways of working that challenge traditional academic structures. Experts must not only master their disciplines but also develop transferable skills and adaptive mindsets to co-create knowledge. Second, increasing student diversity and enrollment call for collaborative and agile teaching approaches to ensure sustainability of resources and educator well-being. Third, competitive and individualistic academic cultures potentially undermine efforts toward interdisciplinary education.

Interdisciplinary teaching is widely recognized as essential for addressing complex sustainability challenges, yet it frequently rests on the shoulders of individual instructors. These educators must navigate disciplinary boundaries, balance leadership duties, and innovate without systemic support, making such efforts difficult to sustain or scale. Drawing on relational pedagogy and partnership models, we argue that co-construction is not a supplementary innovation but a structural necessity. Co-construction (Bovill, 2020) involves collaborative design and delivery of curricula by educators, students, institutions, and external stakeholders. This approach redistributes responsibility, fosters epistemic pluralism, and creates enabling conditions for long-term success. Epistemic pluralism refers to the recognition and integration of multiple ways of knowing, including scientific, Indigenous, and experiential perspectives, which is essential for addressing complex and contested issues such as climate change.

Our contribution builds on a case study of an interdisciplinary climate change course developed through co-construction. The course integrated expert-led modules, reflective assessments, and asynchronous discussion forums to promote critical thinking and knowledge co-creation. Topics ranged from Indigenous knowledge and environmental history to sustainable engineering and mental health, challenging disciplinary silos and traditional hierarchies of expertise. This design aligns with democratic education principles and supports intellectual adaptability, agency, and resilience among learners (Whalen and Paez, 2021).

Importantly, co-constructed models provide early-career researchers with opportunities to participate in curriculum design and teaching innovation under mentorship, strengthening academic identity and career development. These models also enable responsiveness to evolving scientific, social, and political contexts, ensuring that curricula remain relevant and dynamic.

This session seeks to collect and synthesize best practices for interdisciplinary education across bachelor, graduate, and early-career stages. By exchanging experiences and identifying structural enablers, we aim to build a foundation for scalable, sustainable interdisciplinary programs in geosciences and beyond. The targeted outcome is a set of articles synthesizing approaches and frameworks that support co-construction. Ultimately, our goal is to advance sustainability and geoscience education through shared innovation and systemic support, empowering educators and learners to tackle the “wicked” sustainability challenges of our time.

Whalen, Kate, and Antonio Paez, ‘Student Perceptions of Reflection and the Acquisition of Higher-Order Thinking Skills in a University Sustainability Course’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 45.1 (2021), pp. 108–27, doi:10.1080/03098265.2020.1804843

Bovill, Catherine, Co-Creating Learning and Teaching: Towards Relational Pedagogy in Higher Education, Critical Practice in Higher Education (Critical Publishing, 2020)