Higher education stands on a tripod of pressures for change. First, modern societies and work life call for new kinds of competencies (c.f. OECD, 2019) and facilitate ways of working that may not be familiar in academic communities, or are merely nascent and finding their shape. We need experts who simultaneously master their own field, have good transferable skills, and attitudes toward adapting and creating new knowledge. These problems are depicted by complex and even conflicting interests that require science, policy, practice, and participation for the solution (Fallon et al., 2021). Second, the increasing diversity and number of students call for new kinds of collaborative and agile teaching to ensure sustainability of teachers and resources. Third, the high individualism and competitive culture challenge the efforts for interdisciplinary education.

In this session we are collecting best practices for educators on how to facilitate peer and collaborative learning in interdisciplinary setting. Hitherto, interdisciplinary teaching has been on the shoulders of individual teachers who often need to navigate across disciplinary borders and balance efforts with leadership duties. Thus, their educational efforts are usually not long-term or upscaled.

However, prominent examples exist. In this session we invite contributions covering all aspects of interdisciplinary education from bachelor to doctoral programs, and further to post doctoral career development. For example, teachers have successfully applied for example problem-base and project-based learning, often involving stakeholders in teaching. We aim to exchange, learn, and network around interdisciplinary education and early career development aiming to build up diverse experts who can tackle the wicked sustainability challenges across academic fields. explore and co-create the elements and features required for success in interdisciplinary programs and projects. The targeted output of the session will be one or a set of articles synthesizing the identified approaches and modalities for geosciences education.