Interdisciplinary industrial ecology education: recommendations for an inclusive pedagogical model

Industrial ecology education is being developed and delivered predominantly within the domains of engineering and management. Such an approach could prove somewhat limiting to the broader goal developing the industrial ecology as an integrated knowledge base inclusive of diverse disciplines in contributing to sustainable development. This paper hypothesizes that industrial ecology could be optimally delivered across broader disciplines if it were to be delivered as a supplemental knowledge among disciplines that engage with sustainable development education. Based on this hypothesis, a pedagogical experiment is devised and presented here. The paper is descriptive, reflective and exploratory in approach; the challenges embedded in interdisciplinary delivery of industrial ecology knowledge towards the aim of sustainable development are projected and addressed through recommendations on an inclusive pedagogical model. The intention is binary of contributing towards advancement of industrial ecology as an integrated body of knowledge, and, of introducing the concept of industrial ecology to the discipline of landscape architecture.