Integrating education for sustainable development into a sustainable-smart transdisciplinary learning framework

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been gaining traction as a promising approach for addressing social challenges and driving positive change within society. The purpose of this article is to explore how ESD can be foregrounded to reframe and enrich an existing learning framework called the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Online Learning Framework (ICoL). The ICoL framework has been developed since 2020 using a Design-based Research methodology. Literature on ESD lacks exploration of practical implementation for interdisciplinary collaborative projects within communities. This article interrogates the question of how to integrate ESD within the ICoL learning framework. This study is explorative, and data are drawn from a review of the literature and student reflections. A qualitative, themed analysis of the data revealed a fifth learning design principle and a fourth structuring element towards a new learning framework, called the Sustainable-Smart Transdisciplinary Learning Framework.