Concepts – Page 9 – Integration and Implementation Insights

A collaborative vision and pathways for transforming academia

January 29, 2025March 8, 2022

By The Care Operative and “Transforming Academia” workshop participants at 2021 International Transdisciplinarity Conference

authors_care-group_workshop-participants_transforming-academia — Author biographies

What do we want academia to be like in 2050? Is academia on the right track? What will it take to agree on and realize a joint vision that can steer life in science towards a more sustainable and agreeable place to work, to learn, to share and to appreciate knowledge?

The issues raised here are based on a workshop with more than 40 participants at the International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2021. The discussion was initiated and hosted by the Careoperative, a leadership collective motivated to explore, embody and pollinate transformational sustainability and transdisciplinary research.

Can cultural hegemony explain resistance to transdisciplinarity?

January 29, 2025March 1, 2022

By Livia Fritz, Ulli Vilsmaier and Dena Fam

author_livia-fritz_ulli-vilsmaier_dena-fam — 1. Livia Fritz (biography)
2. Ulli Vilsmaier (biography)
2. Dena Fam (biography)

What are the reasons for resistance to transdisciplinary research and education? And what insights can Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist party in the early 20^th Century, offer?

We argue that one of the main reasons for resistance is that transdisciplinarity subverts well-established and often unquestioned structures, practices and values in academia. In particular, transdisciplinarity challenges persistent organizational structures, mechanisms of knowledge production and evaluation criteria based on disciplinary models of research and higher education.

Basic steps for dealing with problematic value pluralism

March 4, 2025February 22, 2022

By Bethany Laursen, Stephen Crowley and Chad Gonnerman

authors_bethany-laursen_stephen-crowley_chad-gonnerman — 1. Bethany Laursen (biography)
2. Stephen Crowley (biography)
3. Chad Gonnerman (biography)

Have you ever been part of a team confronting a moral dilemma? Or trying to manage deep disagreements? For that matter, on a more down-to-earth level, how many times has your team tried to settle an agreed file naming convention? Many team troubles arise from value pluralism—members having different values or holding the same values in different ways. Below, we describe problematic value pluralism and suggest steps for dealing with it.

What are values, and how do they cause problems?

Here, we’re talking about a “value” as a desire (conscious or unconscious) that directs a person’s actions.

Enhancing mutual learning in developing a cross-disciplinary team

July 8, 2025February 1, 2022

By Eric Schearer and Gemma Jiang

authors_eric-schearer_gemma-jiang — 1. Eric Schearer (biography)
2. Gemma Jiang (biography)

How can newly forming cross-disciplinary teams develop effective strategies for working together?

We provide lessons from our experience preparing a cross-disciplinary research proposal for which we leant heavily on the mutual learning mindsets and norms which are the central elements for the Team Effectiveness Model for Science (Schwarz and Bennett, 2021). The principal investigator (Schearer) enlisted the help of a leadership consultant (Jiang).

Mutual learning mindsets and norms

As shown in the figure below, mutual learning comprises a mindset, composed of core values and assumptions,

Understanding researcher positionality using the insider-outsider continuum

October 16, 2024December 14, 2021

By Rebecca Laycock Pedersen and Varvara Nikulina

authors_rebecca-laycock-pedersen_varvara-nikulina — 1. Rebecca Laycock Pedersen (biography)
2. Varvara Nikulina (biography)

How can researchers express their positionality? What does positionality mean?

In working at the interface of science and society, researchers play many different roles, even within a single project, as, for example:

bridge builders (as described by Rod Lawrence in his blog post),
policy advisers (as described by Karin Ingold), and
activists (as described by Dorothy Broom).

As researchers, our role within a project is a part of our ‘positionality,’ or our social position. Positionality as defined by Agar (1996) is whether one sees oneself as an outsider, a ‘neutral’ investigator, or something else. Because of the many hats researchers often wear, scrutinising “aspects usually taken for granted and […] [being] aware of the role of a scientist as an intervener” (Fazey et al., 2018, p. 57) is vital.

Leadership and the hidden politics of co-produced research

December 21, 2021December 7, 2021

By Catherine Durose, Beth Perry, Liz Richardson and Rikki Dean

authors_catherine-durose_beth-perry_liz-richardson_rikki-dean — 1. Catherine Durose (biography)
2. Beth Perry (biography)
3. Liz Richardson (biography)
4. Rikki Dean (biography)

What are the hidden politics of seeking to co-produce research with stakeholders? What kinds of leadership are common in co-produced research? What trade-offs does each kind of leadership make in addressing issues such as being directive, inclusive, innovative, accountable, open to what emerges and sharing power?

The hidden politics of co-production in research

The hidden politics of co-production in research involves tensions and debates about:

1. The purposes of scientific work.
Co-production brings together people, not only with different expertise, but also with different purposes for being involved, which can range from achieving more effective policy and practice outcomes to delivering social justice and empowering those experiencing disadvantage.

Stakeholder engagement primer: 8. Generating ideas and reaching agreement

March 18, 2025December 2, 2021

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_stakeholder-engagement_8

What skills for generating ideas and reaching agreement should every researcher involved in stakeholder engagement seek to cultivate? What key methods and concepts should they be familiar with?

The focus in this blog post is on generating ideas and reaching agreement, as well as recognising the “groan zone” between these two phases in a group process. Researchers will have diverse attributes and not everyone will be well-placed to cultivate the skills described here. Having an understanding of the skills can help in choosing the researchers best placed to undertake the stakeholder engagement.

Generating ideas: Brainstorming

Stakeholder engagement primer: 3. Selecting stakeholders

September 25, 2024October 28, 2021

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_stakeholder-engagement_3

Given that most research projects will not have the funding or time to involve all stakeholders who have been identified as potential contributors, what criteria are useful for selecting those to be invited to participate? How can those identified be assessed against the criteria?

Four criteria for selecting stakeholders are:

their legitimacy
their real and potential power
the urgency they assign to the problem
practical considerations.

Legitimacy

Legitimacy can usefully be examined along the following four dimensions:

A quick guide to post-normal science

April 15, 2022October 19, 2021

By Silvio Funtowicz

Post-normal science comes into play for decision-making on policy issues where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent.

A good example of a problem requiring post-normal science is the actions that need to be taken to mitigate the effects of sea level rise consequent on global climate change. All the causal elements are uncertain in the extreme, at stake is much of the built environment and the settlement patterns of people, what to save and what to sacrifice is in dispute, and the window for decision-making is shrinking. The COVID-19 pandemic is another instance of a post-normal science problem. The behaviour of the current and emerging variants of the virus is uncertain, the values of socially intrusive remedies are in dispute, and obviously stakes are high and decisions urgent.

In such contexts of policy making, normal science (in the Kuhnian sense, see Kuhn 1962) is still necessary, but no longer sufficient.

Stakeholder engagement primer: 1a. Why a primer? 1b. Defining stakeholders

July 31, 2024October 14, 2021

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_stakeholder-engagement_1a_1b

1a. Why a primer?

Do researchers who want to engage with stakeholders need a basic set of skills? Can we define a skillset that will work for many problems and in a variety of contexts?

My starting point for this primer is that the answer to both questions is “yes” and I have set out to provide those basics in nine easy-to-read blog posts. The tenth blog post in the series sketches out selected additional “advanced” skills; these need more interpersonal competences, experience, and knowledge.

The advantages of using a blog over other forms of communication are that it provides a vehicle for input and feedback, as well as being widely accessible.

Communicating across organizational boundaries

June 26, 2024October 5, 2021

By Adrian Wolfberg

What do researchers, stakeholders and end-users need to know about organizational boundaries so that they can communicate effectively when collaborating to build and achieve common goals? What does it mean to communicate effectively? How is shared meaning acquired? Why is it so difficult?

Organizational boundaries are socially constructed distinctions created intentionally to foster specific patterns of behavior by one set of individuals that are different from other sets of individuals. They have a double-edged value: positive and negative. On the positive side, creating boundaries potentially allows us to focus, and thereby deepen and specialize knowledge and activity. The negative side is control, where management and/or culture inflexibility thwarts the agility needed for crossing boundaries.

Boundaries come in many forms. Here I focus on structural and conceptual boundaries, reviewing four types of each as summarized in the figure below. I focus particularly on the implications of these boundaries for language and communication.

Theory of Change in a nutshell

May 22, 2024August 24, 2021

By Heléne Clark

author_helene-clark — Heléne Clark (biography)

How can you plan to make change happen or evaluate the effectiveness of actions you took? How can you link desired long-term goals with all the conditions that must be in place? How can you map out a step-by-step pathway that highlights your assumptions and expectations?

Theory of Change (ToC) is a graphic and narrative explanation of how and why a change process is expected to happen in a particular context.

At its heart, Theory of Change spells out initiative or program logic. It defines long-term goals and then maps backward to identify changes thought to be necessary to the goal that need to happen earlier (preconditions).