Transdisciplinary orientation scale scores as an indicator of undergraduate environmental course capacities development

The demand for interdisciplinary environment and sustainability (IES) education is increasing because these programs prepare students to become professionals who can help solve interdisciplinary complex environmental and sustainability problems. In this article, we report on an unexpected observation we discovered when collecting student data for a project to help environmental programs evaluate student knowledge of complex food-energy-water systems (NSF award 2013373). Our sample of 114 students enrolled in entry-level IES courses across 10 diverse institutions of higher education revealed uniformly self-reported high scores on a validated measure titled the transdisciplinary orientation (TDO) scale. The scale measures the values, attitudes and beliefs; conceptual skills and knowledge; and the behavioral repertoires that predispose an individual to collaborating effectively in inter-/transdisciplinary research teams. Higher scores on the scale were significantly correlated with publication of interdisciplinary research articles with higher potential societal impact as judged by independent raters, and higher scores were associated with experience in transdisciplinary research. We explored correlations of the TDO scores with the students’ characteristics and discussed the use of the TDO as an assessment tool for environmental curricula and courses.