Advanced search

Results from your search will be shown on this page below the search form – you may need to scroll down to the results if the page does not automatically take you there after you submit your search.

  • Select main topics and/or resource types (categories):

  • Select tags:

  • Select authors (author-tags):

  • Reset to clear all the above fields:

Instructions:

  • All blog posts are searched (pages from the menu are not searched)
  • Search outputs are weighted by relevance.
  • If searching with two or more words, the system uses an AND operator.
  • Selecting a tag, author tag and/or category binds the search to only those posts which have those taxonomy term/s.
  • A search output can be obtained by filling out any one field (ie., the search box; or, categories; or, tags; or, authors; or, date). If all fields are left blank, then the search returns the blog scroll.
  • Exact word combinations can be searched for by using quotation marks (eg., “transdisciplinary learning”).
  • Keyword matching is on partial words.
  • The reset button (beneath the ‘Submit search’ button) will clear all entries in the search form, as will clicking on the ‘Advanced search…’ link in the top of the right sidebar.
  • For more information on how advanced search works, see the ‘in-detail’ instructions below.

The search function checks all blog posts but not pages (ie., it does not check the  ‘About’, ‘Index’ and other pages listed in the main menu).

For posts, search checks within titles, body text, category and tag text, and comments.

Searches are weighted by relevance, with affects the order in which posts appear, with titles and content getting the most weighting, tags and categories lesser weighting, and comments the least weighting.

Increasing the number of search terms and selections generally focuses the search output (ie., decreases the number of outputs).

Keyword matching is based on partial word/s, ie., the search will find any word containing the term you are searching on, provided the word begins or ends with the search term (eg., searching for ‘ion’ will not only find the word ‘ion’ but will also find ‘caution’ or ‘ionized’, but not “cautionary’).

If you enter two or more words into the search box, the relationship between the words is based on an AND operator (meaning the more words you add, the tighter (less content is returned in) the search output).

  • For example, entering transdisciplinary learning into the search box would provide an output that lists all posts with both the word transdisciplinary and the word learning anywhere in the text, Posts with only transdisciplinary in the text or posts with only learning in the text would not be included in the output.

To find a specific word combination (eg., critical systems), wrap in quotation marks (ie., “critical systems“).

When you open a post that was found by your search, you can find where your specific word or word combination appears by using your computer’s search function (eg., on a computer running Microsoft Windows, Control ‘F’ will allow you to search the post (as well as anything else in the active screen)).

Restrict searches to particular tags, categories and/or author tags by using the dropdown selectors.

  • Eg., if you choose the tag Advocacy, the search will only be conducted within posts that have that tag assigned to them.
  • If you added the category Cases to that search, then only posts that had both the tag Advocacy and the category Cases assigned to them would be searched.

An alternative to selecting categories, tags or authors from their respective long drop-down list is to type the term or author name you are looking for in the relevant selector field. Typing one letter will jump to the lead word in the alphabetical listing (ie, typing ‘s’ takes you to the first tag or category in the list of those starting with ‘s’). Further addition of letters will home in on a tag, category or author until it is found or until the choice of letters exhausts the possible set of tags, categories or authors (in which case that tag, category or author is not in our list). NOTE: all authors are also available in reverse name order under ‘Authors‘ in the menu bar.

In the category, tag and author dropdown list, the number in brackets after each entry indicates the number of posts with that category, tag or author assigned to them.

Tags or authors with a zero in brackets “(0)”, placed after the tag or author text, are not currently linked to any blog posts. In the case of tags, most of these tags identify alternative tags, which, if searched, will yield a result. For example, “Assumptions – see ‘Mental models’ tag (0)” signifies that blog posts about ‘assumptions’ are tagged with ‘mental models’ and not ‘assumptions.’ Occasionally there will be a tag (or author tag) with “(0)” which refers to a new tag (or author tag) on a blog post which has not yet been made public. This tag (or author tag) will be searchable once the blog post is public (usually within a week).

For the category selector, choosing one of the two parent categories (main topics or resource types) searches all blog posts, as all blog posts are assigned a main topic and a resource type.

Search results

Participatory scenario planning

authors_maike-hamann_tanja-hichert_nadia-sitas
1. Maike Hamann (biography)
2. Tanja Hichert (biography)
3. Nadia Sitas (biography)

By Maike Hamann, Tanja Hichert and Nadia Sitas

Within the many different ways of developing scenarios, what are useful general procedures for participatory processes? What resources are required? What are the strengths and weaknesses of involving stakeholders?

Scenarios are vignettes or narratives of possible futures, and when used in a set, usually depict purposefully divergent visions of what the future may hold. The point of scenario planning is not to predict the future, but to explore its uncertainties. Scenario development has a long history in corporate and military strategic planning, and is also commonly used in global environmental assessments to link current decision-making to future impacts. Participatory scenario planning extends scenario development into the realm of stakeholder-engaged research.

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A responsible approach to intersectionality

By Ellen Lewis and Anne Stephens

authors_ellen-lewis_anne-stephens
1. Ellen Lewis (biography)
2. Anne Stephens (biography)

What is intersectionality? How can it be used systemically and responsibly?

When you google the term over 66,400,000 results are returned. It is a term used by government and businesses, as well as change agents. But is it helpful and are there ways that we should be thinking about intersectionality and its inclusion in our everyday lives?

After describing intersectionality, we introduce a framework for systemic intersectionality that brings together issues that arise within three social dimensions: gender equality, environments and marginalised voices. We refer to this as the GEMs framework.

What is Intersectionality?

Intersectionality is a term first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. It is a prevalent way to understand the effect of more than one type of discrimination.

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Improving cross-disciplinary collaboration with strategy knotworking and ecocycle planning

By Nancy White

nancy-white
Nancy White (biography)

How can cross-disciplinary teams improve their project results and cross-team learning, especially when they are part of a portfolio of funded projects?

I have worked with cross disciplinary teams in international agriculture development, ecosystems management and mental health. For the most part, these are externally funded initiatives and have requirements both for results (application of the work) and for cross-team learning. Often there is not useful clarity about how funder and grantee agendas work in sync. And there is rarely opportunity or support for shared optimization and exploration across different portfolios of funded work.

I have used the six knotworking questions plus ecocycle planning from Liberating Structures to make it possible for a group to look back critically, assess the current state, and prospectively generate options to move forward.

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Dealing with differences in interests through principled negotiation

By Gabriele Bammer

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021
Gabriele Bammer (biography)

How can the interests of a diverse group of researchers and stakeholders tackling a complex societal problem be understood and managed?

Interests arise when a person has a stake in something and stands to gain or lose depending on what happens to that something:

  • researchers commonly have a stake in advancing their work and careers,
  • stakeholders affected by a societal problem generally have a stake in improving the problem, and
  • stakeholders in a position to do something about a problem generally have a stake in improving outcomes for the problem through their sphere of influence.

Interests relate not only to personal conditions or stakes (self-interest), but also to principles such as reducing inequities and promoting justice.

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Creative destruction

By Keith McCandless

author_keith-mccandless
Keith McCandless (biography)

My favorite part of working with groups is helping people notice and stop counterproductive behavior. We all have self-limiting individual and group behaviors. Of course, they are easier to spot in others than in ourselves. So, finding seriously fun ways to help people discover for themselves what they can stop doing is important.

I use an activity called TRIZ from Liberating Structures. The purpose of TRIZ is to:

  • Make it possible to speak the unspeakable and get skeletons out of the closet
  • Make space for innovation
  • Lay the ground for creative destruction by doing the hard work in a fun way
  • TRIZ may be used before or in place of visioning sessions
  • Build trust by acting all together to remove barriers.

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Why complex problems need abductive reasoning

By Mariana Zafeirakopoulos

mariana-zafeirakopoulos
Mariana Zafeirakopoulos (biography)

How does the way we approach complex problems differ from how we approach problems that are familiar or obvious?

In this i2Insights contribution, I explore four kinds of reasoning:

  • Deduction
  • Induction
  • Abduction
  • Design abduction.

Design abduction is the brain-child of Professor Kees Dorst (2015). In simplified terms, these different kinds of reasoning can be compared as follows (Watson and Dorst, 2022, p. 3; taken from Dorst, 2015, pp. 46-49):

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