Educating for sustainable and equitable futures: A transdisciplinary future-making capability framework

Debates around the purpose of higher education reflect diverse societal aspirations, from enhancing national economies to addressing sustainability issues and advancing social justice. Educators seeking to contribute to positive social and environmental futures must navigate these varied and sometimes conflicting future visions to identify the capabilities needed for transformative action within their particular context(s). Drawing on diverse areas of literature and over a decade of transdisciplinary education practice, we present a reflexive process of identifying and articulating capabilities to ensure our transdisciplinary education efforts support transformations towards more sustainable, equitable and just futures. Adopting the term 'transdisciplinary future-making capabilities' and drawing on the human development framing of capabilities, we propose a Transdisciplinary Future-making Capability Framework developed through a framework synthesis review. This framework offers an expansive view of capabilities required to create desirable futures, serving as an example of collaborative sensemaking that educators can undertake in navigating and integrating diverse perspectives into their own practice. The paper concludes by highlighting the transformative potential of transdisciplinarity to enrich and redefine higher education approaches.