Nienke Nieveen, Judith Gulikers, Irene Visscher-Voerman, Janina den Hertog, Klaasjan Visscher This contribution reports on a four-year project exploring principles for designing and implementing sustainable educational configurations that foster transdisciplinary co-learning among students, teachers, and stakeholders. The project focuses on contributing to societal transformations by addressing challenges such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Transdisciplinary education goes beyond multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary education (De Greef et al., 2017). While multidisciplinary approaches combine disciplinary contributions without integrating them, interdisciplinary approaches integrate disciplinary knowledge but typically exclude experiential or other forms of non-academic knowledge. The project addresses the need for joint, transdisciplinary efforts to tackle societal challenges, while acknowledging that collaboration among diverse stakeholder groups is challenging due to differences in perspectives, interests, and values. Higher education can play a crucial role in developing transdisciplinary competencies, but integrating such configurations into higher education curricula presents significant challenges. The central research question is: What are the principles for designing and implementing sustainable educational configurations that enable and scaffold transdisciplinary co-learning of students, teachers, and stakeholders, with the aim of contributing to societal transformations? The project involves a consortium of eleven Dutch higher education institutions and follows a cyclical educational design research approach (McKenney & Reeves, 2012) to evaluate, refine, and establish principles for transdisciplinary learning. The study focuses on three main challenges: 1. enabling co-learning, 2. scaffolding transdisciplinary learning, 3. embedding transdisciplinary education sustainably in higher education curricula. We present results of the first two phases of the four-year program: Phase 1: The development of a tentative framework with design principles for transdisciplinary learning, based on a literature review, an analysis of existing transdisciplinary initiatives in the Netherlands and abroad, and participant feedback. The framework serves as the foundation for the second phase: the case studies. Phase 2: The application of the framework in six cases of existing educational configurations in higher education. The cases represent co-creative efforts by innovative teachers and educational researchers, in collaboration with students and societal stakeholders. Each case was analyzed and adapted in light of the tentative framework. Based on the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, as well as cross-case analyses, the tentative framework evolved into a more mature version. Through cycles of analysis, redesign, and evaluation, the research will identify effective strategies in different contexts, deepen understanding of underlying mechanisms, and develop a contextualized, validated framework with design principles that can be applied across various educational settings.

De Greef, L., Post, G., Vink, C., & Wenting, L. (2017). Interdisciplinary education: A practical handbook for university teachers. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. McKenney, S. & Reeves, T. C. (2012). Conducting educational design research. Routledge.