Print Email Facebook Twitter Education in collaboration with cities Title Education in collaboration with cities: The intentions of transdisciplinary courses Author Bohm, N.L. (TU Delft Urban Development Management) Klaassen, R.G. (TU Delft Policy & Implementation) van Bueren, Ellen (TU Delft Management in the Built Environment) den Brok, Perry (Wageningen University & Research) Department Management in the Built Environment Date 2023 Abstract PurposeIn collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies.Design/methodology/approachThis research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews.FindingsFirst, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach.Originality/valueThis paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education. Subject transdisciplinary learning and teachinguniversity-city collaborationurban sustainabilityhigher education To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7e13f9e5-5008-472a-b72e-9b108225ce01 DOI https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-11-2022-0359 Embargo date 2024-06-18 ISSN 1467-6370 Source International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 25 (2024) (4), 801-820 Bibliographical note Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2023 N.L. Bohm, R.G. Klaassen, Ellen van Bueren, Perry den Brok Files PDF 2023_IJSHE_Bohm_Klaassen_ ... cities.pdf 477.77 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:7e13f9e5-5008-472a-b72e-9b108225ce01/datastream/OBJ/view