Storytelling ethnography as a way of doing transdisciplinary research

By Jane Palmer

jane-palmer
Jane Palmer (biography)

Storytelling ethnography is a valuable tool if your research traverses several disciplines and aims for insights that transcend all of them. Stories not only integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines, but can also “change the way people act, the way they use available knowledge” (Griffiths 2007).

The special qualities of transdisciplinarity are:

  • its potential for integrative inquiry and emergent solutions,
  • its engagement with community and other non-academic knowledges, and
  • the breadth of its outcomes for researchers, participants and the wider community.

These are also qualities of what I call storytelling ethnography.

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Problem framing and co-creation

By Graeme Nicholas

graeme-nicholas
Graeme Nicholas (biography)

How can people with quite different ways of ‘seeing’ and thinking about a problem discover and negotiate these differences?

A key element of co-creation is joint problem definition. However, problem definition is likely to be a matter of perspective, or a matter of how each person involved ‘frames’ the problem. Differing frames are inevitable when participants bring their differing expertise and experience to a problem. Methods and processes to support co-creation, then, need to manage the coming together of people with differing ways of framing the problem, so participants can contribute to joint problem definition.

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Key readings about interdisciplinarity / Lecturas clave sobre interdisciplina

By Bianca Vienni

bianca-vienni
Bianca Vienni (biography)

An English version of this post is available

Si ud tuviera que elegir un conjunto de textos clave sobre la interdisciplina para traducir a otro idioma y utilizarlos en un grupo de discusión, ¿cuáles serían? Esa fue la tarea que nos propusimos en el Espacio Interdisciplinario de la Universidad de la República (UdelaR) en Uruguay.

Elegimos once textos que capturan la diversidad de enfoques sobre la interdisciplina y que también constituyen un punto de referencia para la producción académica.

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Improving health care services through Experience-based Co-design

By Glenn Robert and Annette Boaz

authors_glenn-robert_annette-boaz
1. Glenn Robert (biography)
2. Annette Boaz (biography)

There is lots of talk about the potential of co-creation as an approach to improving public services, but what does it actually look like (and do) in practice?

We describe one specific approach that has been used extensively for improving the quality of health care services: Experience-based Co-design.

Key Features and Stages

Experience-based Co-design draws on elements of participatory action research, user-centred design, learning theory and narrative-based approaches to change.

The key features of Experience-based Co-design are that it:

  1. places patients at the heart of a quality improvement effort working alongside staff to improve services
  2. maintains a focus on designing experiences (not just systems or processes).

It has six stages.

Stage 1 involves establishing the governance and project management arrangements.

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Creating a pragmatic complexity culture / La creación de una cultura pragmática de la complejidad

By Cristina Zurbriggen

cristina-zurbriggen
Cristina Zurbriggen (biography)

An English version of this post is available

¿Cómo pueden los gobiernos, las comunidades y el sector privado efectivamente trabajar juntos para lograr un cambio social hacia el desarrollo sostenible?

En este blog describo los procesos claves que permitieron a Uruguay lograr uno de los regímenes más avanzados de protección del suelo de tierras de cultivo de secano en el mundo. Una explicación del proceso es la creación de una cultura pragmática de la complejidad, una cultura inclusiva, deliberativa que reconoce la naturaleza compleja del problema y abraza el potencial de lo posible.

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Five principles for achieving impact

By Mark Reed

Mark Reed (biography)

What key actions can help research have impact? Interviews with 32 researchers and stakeholders across 13 environmental management research projects lead to the five principles and key issues described below (Reed et al., 2014).

1. Design:

   • Understand what everyone wants. This can help in managing expectations of different stakeholders and project members and identifying potential issues/problems early on.
   • Understand the context of the project. Use local characteristics, traditions, norms and past experiences as a starting point for planning the project.
   • Take your time. Knowledge exchange is time consuming if done properly.
   • Design your knowledge exchange activities carefully. Spend time researching the context, the stakeholders, and possible approaches. Design for flexibility, get feedback, and adapt your plans to suit changing circumstances.

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Participatory processes and participatory modelling: The sustainable procedure framework

By Beatrice Hedelin

beatrice-hedelin
Beatrice Hedelin (biography)

How can we resolve debates about participatory processes between proponents and skeptics? What role can participatory modelling play in improving participatory processes?

Proponents argue for the merits of participatory processes, which include learning; co-production of knowledge; development of shared understanding of a problem and shared goals; creation of trust; and local power and ownership of a problem.

Sceptics point to evidence of inefficient, time-consuming, participatory processes that escalate conflict and mistrust. They also highlight democratic problems; lack of transparency; and powerful actors that benefit in relation to weaker ones such as the unorganized, poor, and uneducated.

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Where are the stakeholders in implementation science?

By Allison Metz and Annette Boaz

authors_allison-metz_annette-boaz
1. Allison Metz (biography)
2. Annette Boaz (biography)

Should implementation science make more room for consultation, collaboration and co-creation with stakeholders? Would finding more active roles for stakeholders in implementation science be a promising approach to increasing the use of research evidence for improvements in policy and services?

The goal of implementation science is to promote the sustainable implementation of research evidence at scale to improve population outcomes, especially in health and human services. Nevertheless, the mobilization of research evidence on the frontlines of health and human services has been quite limited, especially in public agencies serving the vast majority of consumers.

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Who sets the rules around co-creation?

By Lorrae van Kerkhoff

lorrae-van-kerkhoff
Lorrae van Kerkhoff (biography)

When we talk about co-creation, co-production, and co-design as exciting and productive alternative ways of approaching collaboration, it often doesn’t take too long for the conversation to turn to the challenges. Barriers, roadblocks, and disincentives appear and are lamented, or perhaps we celebrate that they have been overcome in a research-practice equivalent of the triumph of good over evil.

For every project the triumph may look a bit different – from the support an innovative funding agency, to a policy-maker or practitioner who understood the value of research, to the dedication, energy and sheer persistence of people who enjoy working together – the solutions are many and multi-faceted. These achievements should indeed be celebrated, and the lessons from them should be harvested.

But is there more to this story?

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Is co-creation more than participation?

Katrin Prager
Katrin Prager (biography)

By Katrin Prager

Co-creation, and related terms like co-design, co-production, co-construction and co-innovation, are becoming increasingly popular. Upon closer scrutiny they share many characteristics with participatory processes. Is there a difference between the two – co-creation and participation – and if yes, what is it?

Let us first look at participation. Not all participatory processes are the same. They differ with regard to who is involved, who initiated the process and for what reason, the anticipated outcomes, the duration, the context in which it takes place, and who has control over the process and outcomes.

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Art and participatory modelling

By Hara W. Woltz and Eleanor J. Sterling

authors_mosaic_hara-woltz_eleanor-sterling
1. Hara W. Woltz (biography)
2. Eleanor J. Sterling (biography)

What can art contribute to participatory modelling? Over the past decade, participatory visual and narrative arts have been more frequently and effectively incorporated into scenario planning and visioning workshops.

We use arts-based techniques in three ways:

  1. incorporating arts language into the process of visioning
  2. delineating eco-aesthetic values of the visual and aural landscape in communities
  3. engaging art to articulate challenges and solutions within local communities.

The arts based approaches we use include collage, drawing, visual note taking, map making, storyboarding, photo documentation through shared cameras, mobile story telling, performance in the landscape, drawing as a recording device, and collective mural creation.

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Ten communication tips for translational scientists

By Sunshine Menezes

sunshine-menezes
Sunshine Menezes (biography)

As someone who works with scientists, journalists, advocates, regulators, and other types of communication practitioners, I see the need for translational scientists who can navigate productive, start-to-finish collaborations between such groups on a daily basis.

This translation involves the use of new, more integrated approaches toward scientific work to confront wicked environmental problems society faces.

In spite of this need, cross-boundary communication poses a major stumbling block for many researchers. Science communication requires engagement with potential beneficiaries, not just a one-way transfer of information.

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