Heuristic principles to teach and learn boundary crossing skills in environmental science education

Since the 1970s academic environmental science curricula have emerged all over the world addressing a wide range of topics and using knowledge from various disciplines. These curricula aim to deliver graduates with competencies to study, understand and address complex environmental problems. Complex environmental problems span broad spatial, temporal and organisational scales, are multi-dimensional and involve political controversies. They are further characterized by many uncertainties and conflicting views on the nature of the problem and the best way to solve them. Generally accepted frameworks to educate environmental science graduates with the necessary competencies to address complex environmental problems are scarce. With this thesis, I aimed to explore and develop heuristic principles (i.e. ‘rules of thumb’) for teaching and learning activities that enable environmental science students to especially acquire boundary crossing skills. These skills are needed to develop sustainable solutions for complex environmental problems. I focussed on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cognitive skills as a sub-set of boundary crossing skills, and on the potential contribution of conceptual models and environmental systems analysis in teaching and learning these skills. In order to achieve this aim, I did four studies (see Chapters 2 - 5). These studies were based on an extensive literature review, analysis of existing courses and course material at Wageningen University and elsewhere, personal experience and analysis of reflection papers written by students in authentic learning settings. The last study (Chapter 5) was an empirical statistical study. Here, I developed a strategy for teaching and learning reflexive skills, a subcomponent of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cognitive skills, and evaluated this strategy in a quasi-experimental setting. The studies showed that operationalizing skills and developing teaching and learning activities are closely in