Empirical scale development of meta-competences for interdisciplinary teaching in the context of the SDGs Open Access

There is a general agreement on the severity of problems the world is facing today (GSDR, 2023; World Economic Forum, 2025, p. 7) due to grand or global challenges. Although these two concepts are used interchangeably as overarching ideas that influence policy frameworks, global challenges may refer to wicked problems, which are highly complex and uncertain (Ludwig et al., 2022). They may differ from grand challenges, which are ambitious, solvable societal goals with a clearer scope that require collaboration between different sectors (Brammer et al., 2019). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) address the grand challenges most universally and extensively ( Appendix 1). They demonstrate how significant global problems such as climate change and armed conflicts can be overcome through collective human effort, collaboration and coordination. (George et al., 2016, p. 1881). Efforts to meet the SDGs by 2050 are more than ever, in jeopardy (Allen and Malekpour, 2023). This is due to a mix of occurring crises – “rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, and planetary, environmental, and economic distress, along with regional and national unrest, conflicts, and natural disasters” (GSDR, 2023, p. 17). Consequently, many societal challenges confronting nations grow more complex and require clear sets of supra-national actions (e.g., the European Green Deal) that are collaborative and strategically designed.

Action is required to develop curricula across disciplines aligned with the topics of sustainable development in education. In short, programmes of higher education need to equip students with competences to adapt and cope with these complex problems collaboratively and cross-disciplinarily (Franco et al., 2019; Horn et al., 2022). At the same time, the need to define appropriate competences has already been widely recognized and a significant range of frameworks of competences ^[1] for sustainability have been elaborated (Wiek et al., 2011; Rieckmann, 2012; Lozano et al., 2017; UNESCO, 2017; Brundiers et al., 2021; Bianchi et al., 2022). As an example, in the European Sustainability Competence Framework, Bianchi et al. (2022, p. 16) describe four competence areas that align with the definition of sustainability including embodying sustainability values, embracing complexity in sustainability, envisioning sustainable futures, and acting for sustainability, which demands the ability to drive change through collaboration with others.

Universities around the world embrace their responsibility for a sustainable development, deriving from the societal challenges and the “Agenda 2030” in which the general assembly of the United Nations sets out an action plan to transform our world by shifting it to a sustainable and resilient path (United Nations General Assembly, 2015). Thereby, higher education institutions (HEIs) have the potential to contribute to all SDGs, by incorporating the SDGs in the curricula either by developing new courses or revising existing curricula in relation to sustainability-related topics (Filho et al., 2023).

This study is set at the Austrian University for Continuing Education Krems (UWK). The University’s incorporation of the SDGs into their key strategy and societal impact is one of the three key principles forming the strategic position of the university towards a dialogue between societal stakeholders and scientists (UWK, 2021). In so doing, lecturers are key actors in the process of putting the integration of the SDGs into practice across disciplines. Lecturers at UWK are educating students with professional experience from a diverse range of industries or job positions and bring a wealth of long-term practice where they face the new complex challenges directly. Pursuing continuing education, these front-line professionals are seeking to acquire competences to adapt and cope with the growing number of complex real-world problems already impacting their working tasks. Therefore, lecturers in continuing education have a significant role in supporting students to be able to deal with the new demands and challenges in their working life. These professionals are one of the most important stakeholders for the university to implement the SDGs in the teaching, but also one of the most important experts to know which competences graduates need to acquire to succeed in their professional life (Leal et al., 2024). At the same time, lecturers are under increasing pressure to deliver new content and new methods including interdisciplinary teaching. Accordingly, having a common understanding of competences is an important requirement of teaching. Hence, addressing lecturers and data gained from these lecturers provides the basis for this study resulting in the development of a scale of meta-competences for interdisciplinary teaching future graduates in the context of the SDGs.

UWK specializes in developing the competences of students for their professional future life. Three faculties (Education, Arts and Architecture; Business and Globalization; Health and Medicine) offer postgraduate courses. In the winter term 2023/24, 36% of the students had more than 15 years of professional experience at the beginning of their studies at UWK (UWK, 2024). UWK’s mission strives to enhance students’ competences to deal with complex real-world problems and to apply inter- and transdisciplinary methods in teaching and research. Furthermore, the SDGs shall be addressed in all existing and future courses (UWK, 2021).

In preceding research, a systematic literature review (Bates et al., 2022) across disciplines was undertaken to identify competences for tackling complex real-world problems and frame meta-competences supporting curricula development in HEIs in the context of the SDGs. As a result, it identified scholarly contributions for tackling complex real-world problems through a variety of contexts and disciplines. Building on Scholz (2020) and Bates et al. (2022), point out that due to the extent and complexity of grand challenges, higher education institutions must acknowledge the need to foster academic excellence through transdisciplinary processes, including other disciplines and stakeholders. This requires HEIs to adapt their curricula, embedding learning outcomes in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Meta-competences recognized across various disciplines contribute to this process.

This study seeks to provide empirical evidence of the results of this review. Based on a survey conducted at UWK addressing their lecturers, the overall aim of this research is to establish a scale of meta-competences for interdisciplinary teaching. More specifically, our analytical lens will focus on developing meta-competences for interdisciplinary teaching in the context of the SDGs. The result of this study fills the gap as a tool to improve the comparisons of assessments across disciplines (Annelin and Boström, 2023). Furthermore, it should give insights into how characteristics of lectures impact their perceived perceptions of competences considered in this study. The detailed research objectives are:

• to cluster the set of competences to empirically construct meta-competences for interdisciplinary teaching;

• to analyse the relationship between socio-economic characteristics of the respondents (lecturers) and the meta-competences; and

• to analyse the relationship between the incorporation of the SDGs in the lecturers’ latest teaching lesson and the meta-competences.

The systematic literature review (Bates et al., 2022) preceding this study resulted in meta-competences relevant to solving complex real-world problems. The descriptions of individual competences identified in the review are labelled as “items” which feed into the survey of this study and the data analysis. Meta-competences are “overarching” competences that are relevant to a wide range of work settings, and which facilitate adaptation and flexibility on the part of the organization. Meta-competences are usually said to include learning, adapting, anticipating, and creating change. (Heery and Noon, 2017) ^[2]. Authors describe meta-competences in different disciplinary settings including general management (Cheetham and Chivers, 1996), entrepreneurship (Reis et al., 2021; Brown, 1993), conflict management (Coleman, 2018), social work (Bogo et al., 2012; Regehr et al., 2012), sustainability (Engle et al., 2017), vocational psychology (Lo Presti, 2009) or behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy (Campbell-Lee et al., 2024).

For instance, Brown (1993, p. 32) describes meta-competences as “higher-order abilities which have to do with being able to learn, adapt, anticipate and create, rather than with being able to demonstrate that one has the ability to do”. In this sense, meta-competences are over-arching competences that can be applied to a range of different working contexts. Similarly, Regehr et al. (2012) specify self-awareness and flexibility, engagement, respect, and empathy, being able to self-direct and take risks, conceptualizing political and systemic issues, thinking quickly, and committing to social justice as meta-competences in the field of social work. Bogo et al. (2012) describe meta-competences in which individuals integrate insights from reflection into practice, meaning reflection has direct impact on action taken in practice. Therefore, it appears to be important to understand what hinders the development of emotional self-regulation pouring into the ability to apply meta-competence and that educators link concepts and practice with appropriate methods (Bogo et al., 2012). Cheetham and Chivers (1996) describe them as those developing other competences or being able to enhance or mediate competence in any or all the component categories. Again, they suggest that meta-competences are relevant across professions as they are “fundamental as well as transferable between different situations and tasks” (Cheetham and Chivers, 1996, p. 24). More specifically, they include communication, self-development, creativity, analysis and problem-solving as meta – competences. Reis et al. (2021) reveal four types of meta-competences including:

1. personal and behaviour;

2. functional;

3. knowledge and cognitive; and

4. values and ethics.

Engle et al. (2017) describe as resulting sustainability meta-competences such as systems thinking, temporal thinking, interpersonal literacy, ethical literacy, creativity/imagination, and foundational competences. Coleman (2018, p. 30) refers to two distinct categories of conflict resolution meta-competences: “conflict intelligence” and “systemic wisdom” with the goal of expanding and enhancing one’s capacities to manage and transform conflicts more effectively. Lo Presti (2009) concludes two meta-competences as identity growth and increased adaptability to cope with learning demands imposed by the changing environment in the career development. In respect to cognitive and behavioural therapists, “meta-competences govern the application of other competences, and allow therapists to know why, and when, particular skills are necessary to apply interventions in ways that address individual client needs” (Campbell-Lee et al., 2024, p. 2) ^[3]. Meta-competences have been described in various disciplinary settings. In this study, however, we aim to develop meta-competences for interdisciplinary teaching in the context of the SDGs.

We have built our study upon a survey of lecturers across teaching disciplines at UWK in the summer semester 2022. At this university, front-line professionals seek to acquire new competences to adapt to and cope with the growing number of complex real-world problems that are already impacting their work. Hence, part-time lecturers with a practitioner background are often employed in this setting to help students deal successfully with the new demands and challenges they will face in their working lives. In reference to the literature review (Bates et al., 2022), this survey was constructed based on 272 descriptions of competences, identifying nine competences: interpersonal, normative, domain-specific, intrapersonal, transformative, functional, advanced methods, and interpersonal competence ( Appendix 2). Descriptions of competences were initially excluded due to repetition or poor formulation, reducing these to a number of 100. This reduced number of descriptions were reviewed for comprehension, clarity and interpretation by obtaining feedback from five academic lecturers and researchers at UWK. The five experts rated each description in relation to the nine competences on a five-point rating from 1 = does not correspond at all to the definition to 5 = corresponds completely. With this feedback from the experts the number of the items the number of descriptions was reduced to 75 and included as items in the lecturers’ survey at UWK. The survey was conducted online via Qualtrics to collect data. The lecturers’ responses revealed their perceptions of the importance of these descriptions for addressing complex real-world problems in their teaching disciplines.

The following steps were taken for the survey and the consequent development of the scale for meta-competences adapted to Hinkin (1998):

• item generation (descriptions of the competences resulting from the review);

• item content validation (75 items incorporated in the survey);

• questionnaire administration;

• item reduction (explorative factor analysis);

• validation of the constructs (confirmatory factor analysis); and

• testing of reliability and construct validity.

In respect to the number of factors resulting from the factor analysis the cut-offline in the scree plot had been applied, as it is understood to be more accurate than the eigenvalue rule. The next step was to conduct a regression analysis to investigate the relationship between socio-economic characteristics of the respondents (lecturers) and the meta-competences and a correlation analysis to analyse the relationship between the incorporation of the SDGs in the lecturers’ latest teaching lesson and the meta-competences.

The data for the study was collected at UWK by contacting 1,204 lecturers of whom 61% were male and 39% female. All lecturers were contacted via e-mail and two reminders were sent after a period of four weeks, respectively. A total of 228 lecturers responded, of which six were excluded due to lack of completion of the survey, response time and response bias, resulting in a sample of 222 respondents. The sample of respondents consists of 32.4% female and 67.1% male (Table 1).

Table 2 describes the socio-economic characteristics of the sample. The highest shares of the sample were achieved by lecturers teaching Business (31.5%) and Human Medicine (18.5%) at UWK. The biggest share of lecturers’ most recent teaching contribution was within MSc programmes (39.6%), and 32.4% of lecturers had more than 10 years of teaching experience. The portfolio of teaching at UWK requires input by external lecturers with professional background from industries and organizations. Hence, the sample consists of 93.2% of respondents pursuing other professional activities in addition to teaching at UWK, of which 26% in business and approximately 24% in consulting or research. 77.9% of the respondents are non-tenure track lecturers.

Item reduction and validation tests were conducted by means of an explorative factor analysis (EFA) to ensure that a reasonable number of items represent the resulting competences and provide construct validity. The explorative factor analysis was undertaken seeking to identify latent variables from the manifest variables using principal axis factoring (PAF) which is recommended for small sample sizes and if normality is violated (Carpenter, 2018, p. 36). Items with communalities of less than 0.4, and/or a factor loading of less than 0.5, and/or a strong cross-factor loading of less than 0.2 were withdrawn from the analysis. Consequently, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis to test the model fit, factor structure, reliability, and validity. We analysed the data using IBM SPSS Amos, which can perform CFA. We used maximum likelihood robust extraction as the estimator, which is recommended for non-normally distributed data.

To evaluate the model, we used the following indices: χ²/df values of 2 or less (Byrne, 1989, p. 55), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) less than or equal to 0.08 (Hu and Bentler, 1999, p. 27), Normed Fit Index (NFI) values greater than 0.9 indicating usually an acceptable fit (Arbuckle, 2012, p. 610), Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI) values ranging between 0 and 1 with values greater than 0. 95 indicating a good fit (Hu and Bentler, 1999, p. 27), Comparative Fit Index (CFI) values ranging between 0 and 1 with values greater than or equal to 0.90 representing a good fit (Homburg and Baumgartner, 1995, p. 172), while Root mean square error of Approximation (RMSEA) should be equal to or less than 0.05 (Browne and Cudeck, 1993) indicating a good fit of the model. We determined the reliability and validity of the resulting factors using the following measures: Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR), average variance extracted (AVE) and heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT).

Convergent validity determines how well the selected items measure the construct. The average variance extracted (AVE) should be ≥ 0.5 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Hair et al., 1998).

Construct reliability indicates the extent to which the set of variables is consistent in what it is intended to measure. Composite reliability (CR) should be ≥ 0.7 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Hair et al., 1998) and Cronbach’s alpha < 1 and > 0.7 (DeVellis, 2017, p. 202).

Discriminant validity determines the extent to which constructs are discriminated from each other. In this case, two values were considered. The square root AVE should be greater than the correlation of the latent variables (Fornell and Larcker, 1981) and the Heterotrait Monotrait Ratio (HTMT) should be less than 0.85 to show that discriminant validity has been established between two reflective constructs (Clark and Watson, 1995).

The suitability of the data for factor analysis was proven by the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test. The KMO test confirmed that the sample was suitable for EFA with a coefficient value of 0.893. Bartlett’s test of sphericity also proved suitability with a significance of <0.001, allowing factor analysis to proceed (Kaiser and Rice, 1974; Dziuban and Shirkey, 1974). In respect to the number of factors resulting from the factor analysis the cut-offline in the scree plot had been applied, which determines “when the line elbows off from a somewhat subjectively straight dotted line” as it is understood to be more accurate than the eigenvalue rule (Carpenter, 2018, p. 36). According to the scree plot a six-factor solution was extracted in the explorative factor analysis (Figure 1) explaining 62.3% of the total variance.

The factor analysis resulted in six factors representing six meta-competences including inter-relation, normative, domain-specific, intrapersonal, nature and life and systemic meta-competence, with a total of 23 items (from two to eight items per factor) as shown in Table 3.

Modification Indexes (MI) were investigated to increase the goodness of the fit indices and within-factor error covariance between items were included, resulting in a good fit of the model. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) indicates a good fit (0.05) and p of Close Fit (PCLOSE) achieves a value of 0.33, well above 0.05 reaffirming the fit of the model. The Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) range between 0 and 1 (0.96 and 0.95) and therefore, indicating a good fit of the model. χ²/df achieves a value of less than 2 (1.61) and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) less than 0.08 (0.05). According to these results, the model fit of the six constructs with the 23 items was confirmed to be appropriate, which indicates that the factor structure model of the proposed measurement scales is valid.

We determined the reliability and validity of the six meta-competences using the following measures: Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR), average variance extracted (AVE) and heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT). Table 4 shows the results of the convergent and discriminant validity (AVE should be ≥ 0.5) and the construct reliability measures (CR should be ≥ 0.7 and Cronbach’s alpha < 1 and > 0.7) demonstrate that the constructs of the six meta-competences are in line with the recommended thresholds. The HTMT ratios (should be less than 0.85) prove that discriminant validity has been established.

As a next step, we conducted a multiple regression analysis to investigate whether there is a relation between characteristics of the lecturers and the meta-competences. The characteristics include the variables: age, gender, discipline, course taught within, years of teaching experience, area of working experience in addition to teaching at UWK, years of work experience in professional activity, and perceived relevance of the SDGs in their discipline. Table 5 presents the results of the regression analysis with the six meta-competences being the dependent variables. Female lecturers have a significant positive relation with intrapersonal meta-competence (p < 0.01). Lecturers teaching in Social Sciences or Humanities provide significant association with systemic meta-competence (p < 0.01) and inter-relation meta-competence (p < 0.05). Those lecturers teaching in an MBA programme provide significant positive association with systemic meta-competence (p < 0.05) and those teaching in MA programmes with intrapersonal meta-competence (p < 0.01). Lecturers pursuing a further professional activity in business have a significant negative association with normative meta-competence (p < 0.05), while those who work in consultancy associate systemic meta-competence positively (p < 0.05) and those working in research beyond their professional activity at UKW associate intrapersonal meta-competence (p < 0.01) and nature and life meta-competence positively. By asking the lecturers about the relevance of the SDGs in their disciplines on a five-point rating scale from 1 (not relevant at all) to 5 (extremely relevant), a mean value of 3.08 was calculated. Those lecturers who consider the SDGs to be relevant in their discipline positively associate them with four meta-competences: normative meta-competence (p < 0.01), systemic meta-competence (p < 0.01), intrapersonal meta-competence (p < 0.05) and nature and life competence (p < 0.01).

In this survey, lecturers were asked to what extent did they incorporated the SDGs in their last teaching contribution on a five-point rating scale ranging from not at all (1) to extensively (5). Across all SDGs a mean of 2.1 has been identified indicating a low level of teaching activity to address the SDGs ( Appendix 3). More specifically, in the context of the individual SDG, those SDGs being at least addressed included SDG 14 (life below water) with a mean of 1.22, SDG 2 (hunger) with 1.36 and SDG 15 (life on land) with 1.51. On the other hand, the SDGs most incorporated in the last teaching session ranged from SDG 4 (high quality education) with a mean of 3.01, SDG 9 (industry, innovation, infrastructure) with 2.85 and SDG 3 (good health and well-being) with 2.76. The correlations between the incorporation of the SDGs in the latest teaching lesson and the lecturers’ perceptions regarding the importance of meta-competences for graduates in their discipline to tackle complex real-world problems is presented in Table 6. Systemic meta-competence correlates positively with the incorporation of fifteen SDGs in the latest teaching session – except SDG13 (climate action) and SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities). Nature and life, intrapersonal and normative meta-competence correlate with eleven SDGs, followed by inter-relation meta-competence with eight SDGs. Domain-specific meta-competence correlates with only one SDG (SDG 1 – no poverty). Five meta-competences, excluding nature and life meta-competence, correlate with SDG1 (no poverty), but also with SDG 10 (reduced equality).

As a result of the survey, six meta-competences (inter-relation, normative, domain-specific, nature and life, intrapersonal and systemic meta-competence) have been identified and can be applied to a range of different working areas across disciplines in the context of aiming for the achievements of the SDGs (Engle et al., 2017, p. 290).

In addition, the study finds relationships between these six meta-competences and lecturer characteristics. It highlights relations of the perceived relevance of the SDGs in lecturers’ disciplines and their actual incorporation in their most recent teaching activity. The most important results are the following.

Firstly, relationships were revealed between the socio-economic characteristics of the lecturers and meta-competences considered important. Lecturers pursuing a further professional activity in business have a negative association with normative meta-competence. This result controverts the demand for business schools to draw on ethics (Bagley et al., 2020; PRME, 2024) and shows that ethical principles in the business sector are not yet as advanced as in other employment sectors.

Lecturers pursuing a career in consulting perceive systemic meta-competence as more important than lecturers with other professional backgrounds. Consultants need to be flexible and creative in their approach to situations, problem- solving, data collection and interpretation. Furthermore, due to the complexity of the problems, systems consultants are employed who use systems methodologies in their advisory practice (Chowdhury, 2023). Hence, professional practice in consultancy leads to the need to recognize and observe the connections between variables and interdependencies while simultaneously recognizing the central dynamics (Murthy, 1994; Hamann, 2012). Consultants experience and apply systemic meta-competence in their profession, which raises the question of how their practical experience can be best integrated in the classroom as well as in developing methodologies to train this meta-competence.

Lecturers with a professional background in research acknowledge nature and life meta-competence as being more relevant for future graduates than other lecturers. Scientists’ understanding of long-term environmental and social risks is deeply embedded in scientific knowledge, which underpins the awareness of the importance of this meta-competence (Dablander et al., 2024). In their work, Dablander et al. (2024) reveal that, while scientists widely believe that fundamental changes to social, political and economic systems are needed to tackle climate change, they are falling behind in terms of climate change advocacy. Hence, lecturers with a scientific understanding about the state of our planet could engage with other disciplines and thereby further enhance this meta-competence among students. As an example, consideration should be given to an interdisciplinary approach in which natural science could be considered in business curricula, which will be valuable and possibly even necessary for the acquisition of competences for tackling the SDGs.

In respect to gender, female lecturers perceive intrapersonal meta-competence as significantly more important than their male counterpart. As intrapersonal competence plays a crucial role in education for sustainable development (ESD) (Brundiers et al., 2021; Ayers et al., 2023), the question arises as to whether HEIs should evaluate their teaching approaches with regard to this meta-competence, particularly in relation to male students.

Secondly, respondents who consider the SDGs to be more relevant in their disciplines consider four meta-competences as important: systemic, intrapersonal, nature and life and normative meta-competence:

Nature and life meta-competence demands a common understanding across disciplines regarding the planet and people, and the impact of one’s actions. Preceding Regehr et al. (2012, p. 316) refer to meta-competence as “the ability to conceptualize political issues”. More broadly, this meta-competence paves the way for the demand for the decolonization of our mindsets and the recognition of other nations, cultures, but also nature as an equal agent to be protected (Gangatharan and Wihba, 2023). Addressing complex real-world problems places demands upon us to achieve successful sustainable job performances that are ethically well-rounded solutions for all stakeholders, including nature. Nisbet et al. (2009) even demand to re-connect with nature and to promote human nature relatedness, which describes individual levels of connectedness with the natural world impacting on environmental concern and behaviour. In the European Sustainability Competence Framework Bianchi et al. (2022) refer to “acting for sustainability” as a competence acknowledging the importance of nature and life meta-competence. Recognizing the planetary boundaries through an understanding of environmental and social issues surrounding and emerging from one’s professional context could be the first step to build competence in saving our planet.

With respect to systemic meta-competence, Regehr et al. (2012, p. 316) mention “the ability to conceptualize systemic issues”. Wamsler et al. (2020, p. 231) intertwine nature and life and systemic competence as the ability “to see and understand broader and deeper patterns, and our own role in the world”. Societal and planetary challenges demand individuals with an active scrutinizing and constantly updating mental model of the problem structures, who need to think multidimensional and holistically and to understand systems in their systemic interdependence (Amelung and Funke, 2013).

Normative meta-competence results from the increasing challenge to deal with ethical dilemmas combined with fast decision-making, based on the need “to be able to engage ethically, be reflective of values and one’s sense of purpose” (Wamsler et al., 2020, p. 231). The ability to reflect on values is based on intrapersonal meta-competence.

The importance of intrapersonal meta-competence has been emphasized by authors in recent years as a fluid process related to personal development (Campbell-Lee et al., 2024; Cheetham and Chivers, 1996), but also to sustainability (Brundiers et al, 2021; Ayers et al., 2023). Erpenbeck and Sauter (2016) postulated a new form of learning deriving from the growing complexity of decision and development processes. They argue for competences that flourish in self-organized social behaviour. Regehr et al. (2012, p. 316) comparably outline “self-awareness and flexibility, engagement, respect, and empathy or being able to self-direct” and Wamsler et al. (2020) to openness, self-awareness, and reflection. The question arises whether intrapersonal meta-competence essentially sustains and enables all other meta-competences. This argument is underpinned by the ability of this meta-competence to support the “motivational and attitudinal” components of other meta-competences or helping to moderate between them (Ayers et al., 2023). This is determined by ones’ ability to self-reflection and raises questions about how to integrate this in future curricula.

It is striking that domain-specific meta-competence does not qualify as a meta-competence for those who find the SDGs more relevant to their own discipline. Aversively to other conclusions, Howlett et al. (2016) argue that interdisciplinary approaches require a basic knowledge of concepts and approaches in one’s discipline. The result of this study confirms this argument to a certain extent. While students need domain-specific meta-competence to tackle complex real-world problems, this meta-competence is less important the more relevant the SDGs are perceived in one’s disciplines. Therefore, further exploration, as in which context or circumstances domain-specific meta-competences becomes less important should be pursued. Furthermore, this result is confirmed by the lecturers who incorporated the SDGs in their last teaching unit. Specifically, systemic meta-competence correlates positively with the highest number of SDGs followed by nature and life meta-competence. By contrast, domain-specific meta-competence only correlates with one SDG. Therefore, it is constrained by the individual’s context, which implies the need for other meta-competences that emerge from this study to enable individuals to apply their expertise outside their normal activity.

Also, inter-relation competence does not qualify as a meta-competence in the context of the SDGs. Collaboration defines the context in which complex real-world problems are addressed most successfully (Bertel et al., 2021). Some authors claim that this meta-competence is the foundation for all other competences (Wiek et al., 2011; Brundiers et al., 2021; Molderez and Fonseca, 2018). We suggest that meta-competences for SDGs require an innate meta-competence as inter-relation meta-competence. Meta-competences across disciplines for tackling the SDGs are most effectively applied in a collaborative setting aiming to solve complex real-world problems. This setting requires the individual and his or her ability to function or even to flourish, aiming for the best in oneself in a collaborative setting. This pushes the discussion about the purpose of meta-competences beyond its original goal – to empower students to perform successfully in their job within their disciplinary- confined setting. Originally, meta-competence refers to an over-arching competence that can be applied to a range of different working contexts. As complex real-world problems deriving from the SDGs are more successfully to be tackled across disciplines and include stakeholder, this concept must be taken further in a collaborative setting in which individuals apply their meta-competences. Through this lens of awareness and understanding inter-relation meta-competence assists individuals to develop their negotiation culture or evolve better forms of communication with internal and external stakeholders, which is nourished through the power of intrapersonal meta-competence.

This study resulted in a validated scale of six meta-competences for interdisciplinary teaching in the context of the SDGs. The items themselves, which describe the six meta-competences, can be used as a tool to improve comparisons of assessments across disciplines. Therefore, this scale enables educators from different disciplines to develop curricula aligned with the topics of sustainable development in education collaboratively. More specifically, based on the items of these six meta-competences, educators are enabled to:

• plan interdisciplinary teaching in the context of the SDGs, addressing complex real-world problems that span across disciplines. Consequently, when planning to address one of these problems, lecturers have a common understanding of which meta-competences they should address in their teaching;

• to implement interdisciplinary teaching. Building on this common understanding, lecturers adapt and apply appropriate teaching and learning methods; and

• to measure learning outcomes of interdisciplinary teaching.

Lecturers define their learning outcomes in alignment with the items developed in this scale. In summary, the results of this study have the potential to contribute further to our understanding of how to train students in interdisciplinary teaching settings in HEIs, but also in organizations, projects, and other collaborative teaching and learning settings.

Our study also reveals information about the relationship between socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and the incorporation of the SDGs in the lecturers’ latest teaching lesson and the meta-competences. More specifically, important findings have been generated:

• Normative meta-competence is perceived as less important by the lecturers in business studies than in other disciplines. Although the importance of ethics has been recognized in academic management discussions, there is a lack of practical necessity. Further investigation is needed to clarify the reasons for these diverse perceptions and how to bridge the gap between them.

• Systemic meta-competence is perceived as more important by lecturers with a consultancy background than others. Consultants are in the field with the mission to tackle clients’ problems and recognize the importance of this meta-competence. Further investigation is therefore needed into how far practice diverges from curricula, the classroom and academic discussions on how to implement and teach this meta-competence.

• Nature and Life meta-competence must be implemented across all disciplines, equipping students with a basic understanding of sustainability boundaries. Courses providing a basic understanding of sustainability and sustainable development should be incorporated into all curricula and disciplines. Only then can we guarantee mutual understanding of the need to implement the SDGs and transformation.

• Intrapersonal meta-competence is more important to female lecturers than their male counterparts, which requires more investigation.

More interestingly, however, it raises the question of whether we fail to deliver this meta-competence to male students somewhere in the education process, resulting in not to recognize their necessity later.

17 United Nation sustainable development goals (SDGs)

1. No poverty

2. Zero hunger

3. Good health and well-being

4. Quality education

5. Gender equality

6. Clean water and sanitation

7. Affordable and clean energy

8. Decent work and economic growth

9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure

10. Reduced inequalities

11. Sustainable cities and communities

12. Responsible consumption and production

13. Climate action

14. Life below water

15. Life on land

16. Peace, justice and strong institutions

17. Partnerships for the goals

Source(s): Table created by the authors based on data from the United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals, available at: Link to sdgsLink to the cited website (accessed 1 July 2025).