Teaching–learning environmental conflicts through case studies and experiential immersion: introducing students to transdisciplinary research

Environmental conflicts have increased considerably in recent years and approaches from situated and complex perspectives have gained relevance for their study. However, disciplinary approaches are still dominant to the detriment of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies. This article analyzes the relevance of a transdisciplinary approach applied to case studies coupled with what we have called “experiential immersion”, as a pedagogical strategy to better understand the complexity associated with environmental conflicts, which are a key challenge to achieve sustainability. We analyzed and compared two pedagogical experiences—one in Argentina and another one in Mexico—that we developed in undergraduate courses to teach about environmental conflicts. We used transdisciplinary approaches, situated cognition and different strategies of pedagogy for sustainability, promoting the experiential immersion of students in real cases and promoting dialogs and knowledge exchange with the actors involved in the conflicts analyzed. Our experience shows that using a transdisciplinary approach applied to case studies coupled with experiential immersion can be an effective strategy for teaching–learning the inherent complexity of environmental conflicts. Implementation of our pedagogical strategy poses, however, several challenges for all the participants: lecturers, students and the social actors engaged in the conflict. Despite several limitations identified in our experiences, we suggest that the pedagogical strategies we have developed and implemented may also be effective for teaching–learning the multiple complex relations and trade-offs associated with transitions to sustainability.