What Matters for Sustainability? A Multidisciplinary Delphi Study on Curriculum Design for Non-Specialist Students

Sustainability Education (SE) is a complex pedagogical challenge that involves multiple disciplines and requires consensus on the content to be prioritized for citizenship education. Consensus-building on such complex issues can be effectively achieved through the Delphi technique, which relies on an anonymous panel of experts providing assessments through an iterative process. This study employed a modified Delphi method to develop a core curriculum for SE, tailored for non-specialist students at the pre-university or undergraduate level. The process involved two stages: first, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 experts to generate a list of key topics; subsequently, a questionnaire was administered using a ten-point Likert scale covering 59 key concepts, organized by conceptual area. The second panel, consisting of 40 professors from 10 departments at the University of Trento, evaluated and selected the topics for the curriculum. A consensus value was calculated for each item, and concepts were ranked according to their perceived importance and level of agreement. This research aims to arrive at a collective assessment that goes beyond individual disciplinary perspectives. The results demonstrate a strong multidisciplinary consensus on foundational and action-oriented dimensions, with the highest priority assigned to environmental sustainability and systemic interdependence (mean score of 9.3 on a 10-point scale), social equity (9.1), and operational energy efficiency (8.8). Conversely, highly specialized tools, such as carbon markets (7.2) and climate psychology (7.0), were deemed less central for general education. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that experts’ disciplinary backgrounds profoundly influenced their priorities, underscoring the necessity of a truly transdisciplinary approach. The results provide a systematic foundation for the development of interdisciplinary educational programs.