Holding Complexity: Lessons from Team-Teaching an Interdisciplinary Collegiate Course on Urban Sustainability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper discusses a topic that I suspect is becoming of increasing importance for universities wanting to teach sustainability and as such it is of relevance. The cross-disciplinary nature of the topic throws up some challenges for teachers and it appears, based on the descriptions provided, that the university described here has provided a way forward.

However, in its current form, this paper is not a research paper. This could be corrected with the inclusion of a methodology section. It looks like the findings presented are based on some kind of evaluation of the program, but I suspect the best methodological fit for the paper would be some kind of self-reflective critical ethnographic case study. Regardless the authors need to be clear what the bases for their findings are. 

The paper also needs a dedicated literature review. Literature is smattered throughout the paper, but a review of the key issues discussed in the findings would be essential in order to turn the paper into a strong case study report. 

The conclusions as 'best practices' are a bit of a long bow to draw. There are learnings, but to argue for best practice, you would need to offer some theoretical basis for this, based in part on the literature review and the theory, both of which are not included.

I encourage the authors to take a fresh look at what they have done, and consider other papers that have similar things to say. I have no doubt there are lots, which would provide fertile ground for a more critically reflective paper. I've attached the manuscript with some comments for additional consideration.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #1,

 

            We hope that you and yours are well during this challenging time worldwide. We appreciate your time, attention and comments on this paper, as well as the forbearance of both you and the journal staff as revisions took us an unusual amount of time, during this difficult time.

The most fundamental changes you recommended for the paper have all been implemented. We see these as 1) a methodology section 2) a clearer purpose and 3) a literature review.  With these, we clarify that this is a self-reflective essay and that our methodology is ethnographic in nature. A few quotes from students about the course remain, though we clarify that systematic review of these responses is beyond our scope and do not seek to generalize with these statements. While track changes revisions became too messy, we outline below the line numbers in which first the more extensive revisions and then the minor revisions have been addressed.

Sincerely,

The Authors

 

Extended revisions:

• Literature review now on lines: 70-104
• Methodology discussion on lines:106-131
• Clearer purpose articulated on lines: 34-62
• Integrated more literature into our discussion on “holding conceptual complexity” : Lines 369-448
• Clarified conclusion by substituting “Lessons Learned” for “Best Practices” and integrated literature into this more (lines 690-743;
• Updated Bibliography to include integration of more literature

 

Minor revisions where we addressed, changed or clarified the comments made on the original PDF lines (some of which were addressed by adding a literature/methodology section):

• 23 is now addressed in lines 70-153
• 54 is addressed in lines 783 which substituted “Lessons Learned” for “Best Practices”
• 67 UNIVERSITY refers to George Washington University (we were asked to use an anonymous reference for the peer review)
• 90 addressed by the addition of the literature review on lines 70-104
• 97 addressed by the addition of the literature review on lines 70-104
• 114 (now lines 258-259 ) clarified
• 117 and 118 (now lines 273-274)  changed wording
• 140 (now line 312) question about case study. This refers the fact that we organized the course around examining sustainability themes within Washington, DC (readings, lecture material, field trips, etc) .  We also assign students research around Washington, D.C. as our “thematic case study”
• 296 (now line 485) should now be addressed in the modifications to lit review and purpose
• 302 (now lines 496-499; 505-507; 513-515)  tied our discussion to literature more clearly
• 325 (now line 827) “Lessons Learned” substituted for “Best Practices” literature tied to this discussion (see lines 828-833);

 

 

The following references were added to the bibliography:

 

 

(Brookfield, 2017) Brookfield, Stephen. 2017. Becoming a critically reflective teacher (2nd edition) San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

 

(Burns, 2013) Burns, Heather. 2013. Meaningful sustainability learning: A study of sustainability pedagogy in two university courses. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 25:166–175.

 

 

( Coops, et al 2015) Coops, Nicolas., Marcus, Jean., Construt, Ileana, and Frank, Erica. 2015. How an entry-level, interdisciplinary sustainability course revealed the benefits and challenges of a university-wide initiative for sustainability education. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 16:729–747. 

 

(Colburn et al, 2012) Colburn, Michael, Sullivan, Daniel, Daniel Fox 2012. An examination of the impact of team teaching on student learning outcomes and student satisfaction in undergraduate business capstone courses. American Journal of Business Education 5(2).

 

 

(Conderman, 2011) Conderman, Greg. 2011. Middle School CoTeaching: Effective Practices and Student Reflections. Middle School Journal, 42(4), 24-31.

 

(Davis, 1995) Davis, James R. 1995. Interdisciplinary courses and team-teaching: New arrangements for learning.  Phoenix, AZ: American Council on Education, Oryx Press.

 

(Dugan and Letterman, 2008) Dugan, Kimberly, & Letterman, Margaret 2008. Student appraisals of collaborative teaching. College Teaching, 56(1), 11–15.

 

(Eisen, 2000) Eisen, Mary-Jane 2000. The many faces of team teaching and learning: An overview.  New Directions For Adult And Continuing Education, 87(Fall), 5-14.

 

 

(Friend and Cook, 2010) Friend, Marilyn and Lynne Cook. 2010. Interactions: Collaboration Skills for School Professionals, Seventh Edition. Pearson. 432 p.

 

(Lee, 2013) Lee, Sook Hee. 2013. An evaluation on a team teaching by university students and lecturers in Australia. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 4(5), 914–923.

(Levintova and Mueller, 2015) Levintova, Ekaterina, and Mueller, Daniel W. 2015. Sustainability: Teaching an interdisciplinary threshold concept through traditional lecture and active learning. Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 6, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2015.1.3 

 

(Metzger, 2015) Metzger, Kelsey J.  20015 Collaborative Teaching Practices in Undergraduate Active Learning Classrooms: A Report of Faculty Team Teaching Models and Student Reflections from Two Biology Courses Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, v41 n1 p3-9 May 2015

 

(Michelsen, 2013) Michelsen, Gerd.  2013. Sustainable development as a challenge for undergraduate students: The module ‘‘Science Bears Responsibility'' in the Leuphana Bachelor's Programme. Science and Engineering Ethics 19:1505–1511, doi:10.1007/s11948-013-9489-5

 

(Misiaszek, 2017) Misiaszek, Greg W. 2017. Educating the global environmental citizen: Understanding ecopedagogy in local and global contexts New York: Routledge

 

(Money and Coughlan, 2016) Money, Arthur, Coughlan, Jane. Team-taught versus individually taught undergraduate education: a qualitative study of student experiences and preferences. High Educ 72, 797–811 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9976-5

 

 

(Rives-East and Lima, 2013) Rives-East, Darcie., and Lima, Olivia K. 2013. Designing interdisciplinary science/humanities courses: Challenges and solutions. College Teaching 61:100–106

 

(Shibley, 2006) Shibley, Ivan A. 2006. Interdisciplinary team teaching: Negotiating pedagogical differences. College Teaching, 54(3), 271–274.

 

(Walsh and Davis, 2017) Walsh, Emily O.  and  Davis, Emily C. 2017. The Geology and Sociology of Consumption: Team-Teaching Sustainability in an Interdisciplinary First-Year Seminar, Journal of Geoscience Education, 65:2, 126-135, DOI: 10.5408/16-172.1

 

(Wilson et al, 2019) Wilson, Paula, White, Peter, Smith, Karen., & Kelly, Tamara. 2019. Team Teaching as an Agent for Change. Discussions on University Science Teaching: Proceedings of the Western Conference on Science Education, 2(1). Retrieved from https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/wcsedust/article/view/8041

 

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Article shows how to achieve the course Sustainable City in an interdisciplinary manner. The presentation of each stage of the course is well formulated with rich scientific content and well structured information. The article is of interest because the topic is current and of interest to universities and the community. I propose to the authors to replace in table 1 the colleges and departments with the disciplines concerned because confusion between the title of the table and content is created.

Author Response

                                                                                                                        4/25/20

 

Dear Reviewer #2,

 

            We hope that you and yours are well during this challenging time worldwide. We appreciate your time, attention and comments on this paper, as well as the forbearance of both you and the journal staff as revisions took us an unusual amount of time, during this difficult time.

 

We modified the Table 1 per your suggestion; eliminating the faculty’s specific school representations, and leaving the discipline specific information. 

 

Sincerely,

 

The Authors

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, it's good to see you take on board suggestions for improvement. The paper is now of a standard that is suitable for publication and does what it now sets out to do. I'd encourage you to come back to this topic again in the future with further critical reflection, maybe with a view to reflecting on what didn't work well and learnings that come from failures (beyond challenges). This would then make the next paper a lot stronger. No one likes to talk about professional or institutional failure, but in failures we find the real gems of learning that help us make changes that go well beyond the incremental learnings that I think are being reported here. I wish you well!