A round peg into a square hole: transdisciplinary sustainability education in a modular mass education system

Sustainability education is fundamentally systemic and transdisciplinary, placing emphasis on the linkages and interconnectedness between disciplines to create emergent ideas which can address our urgent sustainability challenges. Its measure of success, progress towards sustainability, requires education that extends beyond the cognitive domain to engage students’ ‘head, heart and hands’. This chapter argues that, in contrast, most modern higher education is fundamentally reductionist, arranging learning within discrete modules and disciplines and rewarding students’ cognitive performance.