In collaboration with African partners, this project aims to: (i) identify essential learning goals and teaching methods for students in higher education to learn to effectively engage with complex, interdisciplinary, 'wicked' problems; and (ii) explore realistic ways to integrate these goals and methods into educational curricula. The outputs include a systematic review of necessary skills and content goals, a best practices overview for teaching these objectives, and practical recommendations for curriculum integration at Leiden and partner institutions.

The systematic literature review will be conducted by student assistants and focus on the state-of-the-art best practices for teaching students to engage with wicked problems. The discussion sessions will involve a working group of stakeholders from Leiden and African partner universities. Three key working group meetings will guide the project: an initial meeting to refine methods for the review, an interim meeting to discuss preliminary findings, and a final meeting to present results and discuss implementation and follow-up activities (including further grant proposals). Additional funding is sought to hold the interim or final meeting at an African partner university. The timeline spans from September 2024 to the summer of 2025, covering research design, data collection, analysis, and reporting/publication.

• students
• teaching innovation
• wicked problems