Chapter 13 Working towards Transdisciplinary Futures: Complexities and Concepts in Education

Abstract

As the concluding chapter of the book, ‘Contemporary Design Education in Australia: Creating Transdisciplinary Futures’, this chapter draws on cases from across the book while seeking to advance conversations on transdisciplinarity in two main ways. The first section details the myriad complexities faced when developing and delivering transdisciplinary education, complexities that in themselves are ‘wicked problems’. These include the tensions surrounding disciplinary identities and views on the purpose of education, as well as the messiness of administering and operationalizing transdisciplinarity in learning and teaching. The latter half of the chapter moves discussions toward a more positive space, offering a collation of theoretical concepts and frames referred to across the book. Collectively, these serve to aid educators in both making sense of, and carrying out transdisciplinary learning and teaching endeavours.