The Aalto Co-Educator Team
All Aalto graduates should have the capability to analyse and tackle complex sustainability challenges especially related to their own field, and to grasp opportunities for making a change.
How to integrate sustainability and multidisciplinary problem-solving skills into curricula?
Responding to the challenges of the future, such as the sustainability crisis, requires the graduate to have knowledge of sustainability challenges, multidisciplinary problem solving skills, and the ability to apply their own in-depth knowledge of the discipline to solving these challenges. On this page you will find practical tips for curriculum development.
Steps for integration
Take everyone along
When renewing the curriculum, collaboration is important. Creating a common understanding of goals and the knowledge and skills needed by the graduate is an important starting point for the development of a solid, aligned curriculum.
Identify and build meaningful connections to sustainability
Identify the sustainability challenges associated with the discipline and industry. The discipline may have direct connections to sustainability solutions, or on the other hand, a need for reforms to reduce negative sustainability effects such as carbon dioxide emissions.
Tools for this stage: To identify connections, you can use sustainable development goals or other frameworks of sustainability and sustainability transition. You can also search for research literature on sustainability in different disciplines and industries, as well as on integrating sustainability into the teaching of different disciplines.
Identify key graduate competencies
When we integrate sustainability, the goal is that the graduate is able to utilize the expertise of their own field to cope with sustainability challenges and develop solutions. For this, the student needs both disciplinary knowledge and skills as well as knowledge and skills related to sustainability and solving sustainability challenges.
Even if the industry's perspective on sustainability focuses on certain solutions, solving complex sustainability challenges requires the ability to think on systems level, create future scenarios, weigh different perspectives and also ethical reflection. Solving the challenges also requires problem-solving skills, the ability to think strategically, and ability to create and develop viable solutions. Examining complex problems requires the ability seek for alternative perspectives, as well as creative problem solving and teamwork skills.
Renew gradually but be ambitious
With the challenges of sustainability, the need for renew in education is great. You don't have to do the whole change at once, but it's important to start. So, work together with your teaching community to identify both short-term measures and a long-term vision and measures towards it.
The examples of development measures are compiled from the practices utilised by Aalto University's programmes.
- Implementing teaching experiments with current courses You can try integrating the competencies related to sustainability and multidisciplinary problem solving within the current curriculum, by developing the implementation of teaching. Through these experiments, you will get valuable information for further teaching development, and gain experience of teaching these themes in practice.
- Developing the Intended learning outcomes (ILOs) of the programme and courses As part of the curriculum work, you can examine the ILOs of a programme or a course. Are sustainability and multidisciplinary problem solving competencies already part of the ILOs? How should the themes be described as part of them? To develop the ILOs of the programme, you can organize a workshop, and get facilitation support from Aalto Co-Educator team.
- Mapping and developing sustainability and multidisciplinary problem-solving skills though curriculum mapping exercise With the help of the mapping exercise, you can identify how the selected themes are approached in teaching, identify development needs or ideate what kind of connections to sustainability can be identified across the curriculum. Read more about curriculum mapping.
Literature to support integration of sustainability, entrepreneurial mindset and radical creativity
Research on competencies for sustainability
- Wiek, A., Withycombe, L., Redman, C.L. (2011) Key competencies in sustainability: a reference framework for academic program development. Sustainability Science 6(2):203–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0132-6
- Brundiers, K., Barth, M., Cebrián, G. et al. Key competencies in sustainability in higher education—toward an agreed-upon reference framework. Sustain Sci 16, 13–29 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00838-2
Research on pedagogies related to teaching sustainability
- Lozano, R., Merrill, M., Sammalisto, K., Ceulemans, K., & Lozano, F. (2017). Connecting Competences and Pedagogical Approaches for Sustainable Development in Higher Education: A Literature Review and Framework Proposal. Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 9(10), 1889–. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9101889
- Tejedor, G. et al. (2019). Didactic Strategies to Promote Competencies in Sustainability. Sustainability. 11(7), 2086. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11072086
Reach out to the Aalto Co-Educator team for support!
Pedagogical Training: Sustainability in Teaching
Pedagogical training: Sustainability in Teaching (3 ECTS), spring 2025
Teaching period: 7.3.-23.5.2025, in English, register by 12.2.2024
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