Boundary crossing as modus operandi

Deepen and consolidate Boundary crossing in education

Boundary crossing (BC) is the competence to learn from and co-create with others outside one’s own scientific domain, institute, culture, or context. WUR’s focus on life sciences and on contributing to addressing complex global challenges invites BC, both in education and research. WUR builds on a long history and established position in BC but feels the need to deepen and consolidate it. Starting from this position with a high, but largely untapped BC potential, the innovative and challenging next step is to utilize this potential by developing comprehensive, tangible and aligned BC practices throughout the university.

Boundary crossing developed and embedded

The project started from a review study that applied the BC-concept to education. The project followed typical phases of design-based research: 

• mapping and valorisation of current BC good practices and their application;
• a BC-frame consisting of sub competencies, attainment levels, context and learning environment factors, allowing for the creation of BC profiles, building blocks of BC-learning activities, and a prototype curricular learning pathway;
• implementation into a selection of study programs by making use of a to be developed implementation guideline that allowed to fine-tune program-specific BC-learning pathways;
• systematically monitor during one academic year the intended versus attained learning pathway, and its effectiveness. This phase has not yet been fully completed mainly due to Covid-19 measures. 

All phases were characterized by an action research approach to create ownership by the programs and their teachers, to explicate what was implicit in study programs, to develop a shared vocabulary, to stimulate on-the-job professional development of staff, and as a result making this a sustainable innovation. 

Evaluation and suggestions for implementation Boundary crossing

The core team conducted interviews with all program-directors and PC chairs of the pilot programs involved. The logic of Appreciative Inquiry was used to structure and guide the interviews, focusing on inspirational developments and suggestions on how to enhance BC learning at WUR even more. Next, course coordinators of BC-based (re)designed courses in the pilot programs were asked to fill in an evaluation form. Main conclusions: 

• BC is an important and relevant contribution to WUR education in all domains;
• New (BC) learning outcomes are not always necessary, often the existing learning outcomes provide ample possibilities or incentives for BC learning by just slightly rephrasing them. 
• Implementing or innovating BC learning in courses and curricula takes time, and effort, also in the long-run of both BC core team, PC/PDs and teachers/course coordinators. Time should thus be made available permanently for all indicated. 
• BC@WUR is only one of the many (education) assignments programs and lecturers experience. High ‘regular’ workload, COVID-challenges, full-loaded curricula and the feeling that education innovations/changes succeed each other at high speed, hamper swift implementation.

Suggestions for other institutions that would want to implement more Boundary Crossing Competence: 

• Support of a core project team is highly valued. Suggested composition of the core team: educational researchers, lecturers from various disciplinary backgrounds and educational managers, policy advisers; 
• Stimulate peer-learning amongst programs/teachers and take care to really co-create with program staff rather than execute all duties with the core project team; 
• Availability of more teaching tools and learning materials (e.g. via de Edusources BC Toolbox); 
• When BC learning is seen as an important aspect of the program, time should be made available (and compensated) to secure implementation; 
• Make room for evaluation of impact on education and students or graduates. Impact evaluation is often planned for the closing phase of a project, then tends to become a ‘terminal station’ and as such sensitive for time pressure.

The results of this project will be used sustainably and more broadly in WUR ; the project core team has been granted to continue working to further implement BC into the university. The BC concept is now gaining traction in different corners of the university. Many programs and individual teachers start to incorporate BC into their programs, courses and e.g. student challenges. 

Relevante publicaties 

Akkerman, S. F., & Bakker, A. (2011). Boundary crossing and boundary objects. Review of educational research, 81(2), 132-169.

Andriessen, D. G. (2008). Combining design-based research and action research to test management solutions. In B. Boog B, M. Slagter, J. Zeelen, J and J. Preece (Eds.), Towards quality improvement of Action research: Developing ethics and standards (pp. 125-134). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Fortuin, K.P.J., & Bush, S. R. (2010). Educating students to cross boundaries between disciplines and cultures and between theory and practice. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 11(1), 19-35.

Gulikers, J., & Oonk, C. (2019). Towards a rubric for stimulating and evaluating sustainable learning. Sustainability, 11(4), 969.

Oonk, C., Gulikers, J., den Brok, P., & Mulder, M. (2022). Stimulating boundary crossing learning in a multi-stakeholder learning environment for sustainable development. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 23(8), 21-40.

Producten van dit project

Edusources boundary crossing - open source materialen over boundary crossing
Project website: Boundary Crossing @ WUR - WUR

Presentaties over dit project 

ORD 2018 Nijmegen June, 2018
ORD 2021 Online June, 2021
Comenius Festival 2019 Utrecht June 6, 2019
Masterclass for Educational Leadership (UU) October, 2019
Various workshops at MBO schools (e.g. ROC Midden NL; Clusius; AOC Terra) 2018-2021
Professional performance across boundaries (UU; working conference) 2017
NIE 2017 (Amsterdam) February, 2017
NIE 2018 (Eindhoven) January, 2018
NIE 2019 (Utrecht) January, 2019
Honours programme UU March, 2022

International conferences and workshops 

Earli 2019 Aken August, 2019
Earli 2021 online August, 2021
ITD 2017 Leuphana September, 2017
ITD 2021 Online September, 2021
AIS 2019 Amsterdam October, 2019
SEFI 2020 online February, 2020
Hasselt University (teacher day) December, 2021