Teaching sustainability as complex systems approach: a sustainable development goals workshop

Abstract

Purpose: Approaches to solving sustainability problems require a specific problem-solving mode, encompassing the complexity, fuzziness and interdisciplinary nature of the problem. This paper aims to promote a complex systems’ view of addressing sustainability problems, in particular through the tool of network science, and provides an outline of an interdisciplinary training workshop. Design/methodology/approach: The topic of the workshop is the analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a political action plan. The authors are interested in the synergies and trade-offs between the goals, which are investigated through the structure of the underlying network. The authors use a teaching approach aligned with sustainable education and transformative learning. Findings: Methodologies from network science are experienced as valuable tools to familiarise students with complexity and to handle the proposed case study. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work which uses network terminology and approaches to teach sustainability problems. This work highlights the potential of network science in sustainability education and contributes to accessible material.