Education for sustainable development: from disciplinary to transdisciplinary approaches

The aims of this chapter are to demonstrate that Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is relevant to all disciplines, to explore how ESD might be integrated into diverse disciplinary programmes and to investigate the ontological and epistemological implications of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teaching and learning. The purposes of education at a university require us to prepare learners in all programmes for a complex, uncertain future, and to address inter- and intra-generational justice and environmental limits, whatever the student subject, vocation or employment. We examine illustrative examples from several disciplines and discuss how the sciences, arts and humanities might contribute to critical debates and practical solutions on sustainable development. The emerging discipline of sustainability science is generating a body of literature and learning with which other disciplines can engage, but it is not the exclusive intellectual location of ESD in universities. Increasingly, university programmes have interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary elements which raise epistemological, practical and ethical challenges. We conclude that ESD is essential in all disciplines, but that it cannot be ‘disciplined’ and confined; it can occur in weak forms, and it can stimulate transformative and transgressive learning in any discipline.