Abstract
Project-based learning (PBL) has been thoroughly integrated in university sustainable development curricula, but has not been well-established in curricula used at pre-university educational levels. Integrating real-world settings into the teaching of secondary school students can help to promote problem-solving skills and competencies at younger ages, which is a crucial task in sustainability education. Therefore, in this article we describe the results of a case study on the development of sustainable food products that involved a university and two secondary schools in Austria. The methods used in this case study were drawn from the transdisciplinary case study (TCS) and the PBL literature. Data were collected by carrying out participatory research methods such as photovoice, focus group discussions, food diaries, student evaluations, and surveys. We divided the study design into three phases: (1) exploration, (2) product ideation, and (3) product prototyping and optimisation. The case study illustrates that the use of PBL research approaches by students at different levels of education provides promising results, if the research process is clearly structured and managed. When a demand for learning is encountered by students, secondary school teachers and university researchers must provide the students with additional sources of information. The establishment and management of a transinstitutional research setting is a promising, yet time-consuming endeavour.
Highlights
Scholars widely agree that the most pressing problems of modern society can only be addressed by merging concepts and methods from different disciplines
Project-based learning (PBL) has been thoroughly integrated in university sustainable development curricula, but has not been well-established in curricula used at pre-university educational levels
We describe the results of a study in which a PBL research approach was taken in two secondary schools
Summary
Scholars widely agree that the most pressing problems of modern society can only be addressed by merging concepts and methods from different disciplines. In addition to these interdisciplinary research approaches, scholars consider transdisciplinarity (TD) to be a promising research paradigm that supports the movement of transformational processes towards sustainable development [1,2]. TD gained momentum due to the view that addressing the world’s most pressing problems (e.g., biodiversity loss, global warming, social challenges) can only be successful through enabling mutual learning processes between science and society [7]. Participatory research approaches have gained an increasing amount of recognition at the European level as part of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework, because they are considered to democratize knowledge production and transform scientific research from a closed into an open activity [14]
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