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.
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.
Ten dimensions of integration: Guidelines for modellers
By Serena Hamilton and Tony Jakeman
2. Tony Jakeman (biography)
Why Integrated Assessment and Integrated Modelling? In our highly connected world environmental problems have social or economic causes and consequences, and decisions to assist one segment of a population can have negative repercussions on other parts of the population. It is broadly accepted that we require integrated, rather than piecemeal approaches to resolve environmental or other complex problems.
Integrated Assessment and its inherent platform, Integrated Modelling, bring together diverse knowledge, data, methods and perspectives into one coherent and comprehensive framework. This process of organizing and synthesizing multiple forms of information across disciplinary and conceptual boundaries allows us to explore linkages and feedbacks between different parts of the system, as well as the trade-offs involved with alternative management interventions on different socioeconomic and environmental criteria.
Why participatory models need to include cultural models
By Michael Paolisso
Participatory modeling has at its heart the goal of engaging and involving community stakeholders. It aims to connect academic environments and the communities we want to understand and/or help. Participatory modelling approaches include: use facilitators, provide hands-on experiences, allow open conversation, open up the modeling “black box,” look for areas of consensus, and “engage stakeholders” for their input.
One approach that has not been used to help translate and disseminate participatory models to non-modelers and non-scientists is something psychologists and anthropologists call “cultural models.” Cultural models are presupposed, taken-for-granted understandings of the world that are shared by a group of people.
Cognitive anthropologists, including those who focus on human and environment interactions, developed the theory and method of cultural modeling in order to understand the cultural knowledge and values that individuals use to “make sense,” understand, and evaluate the world around them.
Do we need to discipline interdisciplinarity?
By Gabriele Bammer
Imagine a team of researchers tackling global health inequalities, with a focus on sanitation. The team comprises epidemiologists and biostatisticians interested both in measuring the extent of the problem and designing intervention trials, engineers investigating a range of sanitation options, anthropologists examining the cultural aspects of sanitation, economists and political scientists documenting the economic benefits and looking for policy levers to assist in making change happen.
The team is working at national policy levels and with a range of target communities seeking to engender small business interest in promoting new sanitation options, as well as individual and community behaviour change. There is collaboration with major international donors and non-government organisations. The team has a talented and charismatic leader.What the team does not have is access to the full array of theory and methods for synthesising the input of the different disciplines, along with all the relevant stakeholder knowledge. Nor does it have the ability to bring to bear all the different ways of teasing out and taking into account the knowledge gaps – the unknowns. Finally the team cannot tap into the wealth of information about how to provide effective integrated research support for policy and practice change.
Fire together, wire together: The role of funding bodies in supporting interdisciplinary research
By Mohammad Momenian
Our brain is comprised of neural networks. The repeated occurrence of an action or experience creates established networks in the brain. Some synapses in these networks are connected to each other more strongly than others. In other words, the more neurons fire together, the stronger they wire together. This neuroscience principle can be used as a metaphor to call attention to the role of funding bodies in supporting new interdisciplinary research.
At the turn of the last century, we witnessed the emergence of new interdisciplinary fields (Rosenfield, 1992), and only recently a Nature special issue was devoted to interdisciplinarity. In that special issue, Richard Van Noorden’s (2015) paper reports that interdisciplinary research is on the rise and some fields seem to have ‘fired and wired together’ more frequently than others.
From an evolutionary perspective, those fields which have established the strongest linkages survive and get the lion’s share of funding, while those with the thinnest connections get only a negligible amount of funding and are doomed to extinction sometime in the future.
What is the role of theory in transdisciplinary research?
By Workshop Group on Theory at 2015 Basel International Transdisciplinary Conference
Theory makes clear what transdisciplinary researchers value and stand for; we therefore have a responsibility to build and articulate it.
If we think about transdisciplinary research as a space situated between different epistemic cultures and practices, as well as being culturally contextualised, we can expect different theories of transdisciplinary research, as well as different significance and functions of theory, and different ways of working with theories, in transdisciplinary research.
Theory can contribute to the identity and development of transdisciplinary research. Theory or conceptual models can provide practical guidance to the challenging problems transdisciplinary research tackles. These can help guide the transdisciplinary research process.
Theory can make certain research fields visible, giving them a place in the landscape of knowledge.
Let’s play: Co-creating award courses for designing, teaching, researching, and facilitating transdisciplinarity – Transacademic Interface Managers as an example
By Katja Brundiers and Arnim Wiek
Tanja Golja and Dena Fam concluded their article ‘Supporting academics learning to design, teach and research td-programs in higher education‘ with an invitation to other higher education and research institutions to share the state of play and their opportunities for collaboration. We are excited to respond to this call.
At Arizona State University (U.S.) various programs exist – across its schools and colleges – that allow students to work in transdisciplinary settings. These programs are avant-garde in many respects, e.g., pedagogical design, students’ learning outcomes, relationships with practice partners, implementation with real-world impact. Our experience with building a transdisciplinary and solution-oriented learning program at the School of Sustainability is documented in the article ‘Integrating Problem-and Project-based Learning into Sustainability Programs‘.