Becoming a Creative Genius

The increasing complexity of society's sustainability issues requires new educational approaches that facilitate transversal skills and competencies suitable for the 21st century. Students must be equipped with discipline-specific expertise or technical skill; but also competencies to collaborate across disciplines in creating innovative solutions to complex problems. This paper explores whether a problem-based learning environment focusing on creativity facilitates transdisciplinary engagement and creative competencies and to what extent this manifests into transdisciplinary career paths and creative mindsets in a life-long learning perspective. An analysis of interviews with graduates from a transdisciplinary program, Creative Genius, at Aalborg University indicates that a pedagogical approach focusing on the embodiment of creative competencies helps prepare students to transition from student to professional and equip them to engage in transdisciplinary and complex problem-solving in industry and society. Based on the results, the paper proposes a model for creative transdisciplinary thinking and suggests a focus on creative self-efficacy as an essential learning outcome in transdisciplinary PBL environments.