Competencies

Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) 3.0: An updated framework to foster expertise for tackling complex problems

By Gabriele Bammer

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Gabriele Bammer (biography)

How can researchers interested in tackling complex societal and environmental problems easily find and draw on what they need from inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science and a range of other ways of combining disciplinary and stakeholder perspectives in order to bring about improvements? How can the necessary expertise be fostered and supported in a systematic way?

These are the questions that I have been addressing for more than 20 years in considering whether a new discipline – Integration and Implementation Sciences or i2S – could provide a way forward. i2S 3.0 is the third conceptualization of this discipline and the current version is summarised in the figure below.

At this stage in its development, i2S is focused on providing a framework and conduit for sharing concepts, methods, processes and other tools that are currently fragmented across inter- and transdisciplinarity, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science and other approaches.

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Change planning: Dreamer, realist, critic

Edited by Gabriele Bammer

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How can change be planned for in an effective way that creatively develops new ideas, plans the practicalities of their implementation and assesses risks?

The process described here is also referred to as Walt Disney circle, Disney creative strategy, and Disney brainstorming method, and is adapted from Nauheimer (1997).

Planning change involves four phases. The first three phases, in turn, are to 1) create new ideas, 2) plan the practicalities of their implementation and 3) assess the risks. Phase 4 is an iterative phase that reviews further input needed in each of the first three phases.

The process is conceived as involving three roles: dreamer, realist and critic. The idea of separating the process into these three roles is to ensure that each is fully considered without interference from the others. For instance the aim is to allow the creative ideas to be fully developed, without being stymied by criticism. One person or a group could take all three roles in turn or different people could take different roles. What is important is that all three roles are fully brought into play.

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Competencies for systems thinking practitioners. Part 2: Skills and behaviours

Edited by Gabriele Bammer

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What skills and behaviours are required by those seeking to provide expert systemic analysis, advice and facilitation to support decision-makers in understanding and addressing complex problems?

This is the second of two blog posts presenting the systems thinking competencies provided by the UK Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (no date) and completes an overview of what decision makers should be able to expect from systems thinking practitioners, along with the knowledge, skills and behaviour competencies such systems thinking practitioners should have. The first blog post provided overall expectations of what systems thinking practitioners should be able to do and knowledge competencies.

Skills competencies

Skills in 11 areas are required for a systems thinking practitioner.

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Competencies for systems thinking practitioners. Part 1: Overall expectations and knowledge

Edited by Gabriele Bammer

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What knowledge, skills and behaviours are required by those seeking to provide expert systemic analysis, advice and facilitation to support decision-makers in understanding and addressing complex problems, ie., problems that have no single ‘owner’ or cause, and no simple solution? What should decision makers be able to expect from the systems thinking practitioners they engage with?

The UK Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (no date) provides competencies in knowledge, skills and behaviours and these are reproduced here (knowledge competencies), and in a companion blog post (skills and behaviour competencies). This list of competencies provides a very useful way of getting an overview of systems thinking and the skills required.

What should systems thinking practitioners be able to do?

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How science thought leadership enhances knowledge exchange

By Stefan Kaufman and Anthony Boxshall

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1. Stefan Kaufman (biography)
2. Anthony Boxshall (biography)

What is science thought leadership? What characterises science thought leadership and leaders? How does science thought leadership offer opportunities for researchers to participate in knowledge exchange?

Most examinations of knowledge exchange focus on the researchers and/or the decision makers, while the role of experts and intermediaries who are internal to the decision making process, but not the decision makers themselves, has largely been ignored. It is these internal experts and intermediaries that we refer to as science thought leaders.

Specifically, for us “science thought leadership” is “when people using, brokering or providing evidence are (simultaneously): influential, credible and valued in supporting decision making in their organization and its context” (Kaufman and Boxshall, 2023).

We found that science thought leadership has the following 11 characteristics, grouped into four categories:

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Interdisciplinary teamwork: Expert and non-expert at the same time

By Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

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1. Annemarie Horn (biography)
2. Eduardo Urias (biography)

How do teams engage in interdisciplinary knowledge integration and how can they be supported in doing so? Why does simple sharing and questioning of knowledge not necessarily lead to interdisciplinary knowledge integration? And what does it mean to act as both an expert and a non-expert in interdisciplinary teamwork, and why is it hard?

In a five month course, we supervised a team of eight master students in the integration of insights and concepts from their individual, discipline-based projects into a joint work about circular economy. Based on our earlier research, described in our i2Insights contribution on four typical behaviours in interdisciplinary knowledge integration, we expected that if we helped the students to share their own knowledge and to engage with each other’s knowledge, that integration would emerge. We therefore had students prepare and give presentations about their individual projects, background, and conceptual underpinnings to share their knowledge.

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A framework for building transdisciplinary expertise

By ANU Transdisciplinarity Working Group

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Author biographies

What expertise should everyone have in order to effectively play their role in tackling complex societal and environmental problems? Is there a framework that can help everyone develop rudimentary skills and provide a pathway to enhancing them as and when necessary?

We were charged with addressing these questions, not for everyone, but for all undergraduates at our university, The Australian National University (ANU). In particular, we were asked to ensure that all ANU graduates would be able to work with others to understand and creatively address amorphous and complex problems. More formally, this was described as proposing how undergraduates could develop the “Capability to Employ Discipline-based Knowledge in Transdisciplinary Problem Solving.”

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Towards a theory of change to institutionalise integration experts and expertise

By The Aeschiried Integrators

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Author biographies

Integration experts and expertise are crucial for realising the full potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research. However, the expertise of those who lead integration is poorly recognized in the current academic system and these academics often experience a range of impediments to their careers. What can be done to recognise integration experts and expertise and to support the careers of such experts?

We define integration experts as specialists “who lead, administer, manage, monitor, assess, accompany, and/or advise others on integration” in order to achieve the full potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research (Hoffmann et al. 2022).

This i2Insights contribution presents the results of a pilot workshop held in Aeschiried, a mountain village in Switzerland, in February 2023 to develop a theory of change focused on Germany and Switzerland to achieve the following:

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Decolonising your writing

By kate harriden

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kate harriden’s biography

As an Indigenous person, it is draining, infuriating and tedious to consistently encounter recently written academic material that invokes, seemingly uncritically, colonial tropes. Paired with these tropes is usually a mix of arrogance, condescension and ignorance on which notions of ‘western’ superiority are based. I am Totally. Over. It. Not only are these tropes inaccurate and offensive, they allow the colonized researcher to avoid critiquing the impacts of colonization and (un)conscious biases in their work.

If you don’t understand ‘the problem’, chances are you are part of it, so sit down and open your mind as we go through this together. Hopefully the tips provided on how to decolonize your academic writing will start your journey into decolonizing writing.

Learning to recognize colonial writing

Undoubtedly you have read substantially more academic material imbued with colonial values and assumptions than decolonial academic material.

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Five core competency areas for participatory modeling

By Sondoss Elsawah, Elena Bakhanova, Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Alexey Voinov

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1. Sondoss Elsawah (biography)
2. Elena Bakhanova (biography)
3. Raimo P. Hämäläinen (biography)
4. Alexey Voinov (biography)

What knowledge and skills do individuals and teams need to be effective at participatory modeling?

We suggest that five core competency areas are essential for participatory modeling:

  1. systems thinking
  2. modeling
  3. group facilitation
  4. project management and leadership
  5. operating in the virtual space.

These are illustrated in the figure below.

These competency areas have naturally overlapping elements and should therefore be seen as a holistic and interdependent set. Further, while certain competencies such as modeling skills can be addressed by individual members of a participatory modeling team, the entire process is a team effort and it is necessary to also consider the competencies as a group skill.

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Wisely navigating knowledge co-production: Towards an ethics that builds capacities

By Guido Caniglia and Rebecca Freeth

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1. Guido Caniglia (biography)
2. Rebecca Freeth (biography)

How can I ensure that marginalized voices are heard in this project? Whom do I call on to offer the next perspective in this workshop and why? How can I intervene in this particular disagreement in a productive way? These are typical questions that researchers and practitioners involved in knowledge co-production processes ask themselves. They express deep ethical concerns, which also have epistemological and political implications, as they address the question: What should I do in this situation? What is right and wrong for me to do here?

We suggest that a perspective based on the ancient virtue of practical wisdom may help researchers and practitioners alike working in knowledge co-production to navigate the complexities of these questions.

Practical wisdom: An ancient virtue for wise navigation

Our answers to the deep ethical questions that emerge in collaborative and participatory research will vary depending on the specifics of the situation we are in, who is involved, as well as our own positionality and role in research projects or academic institutions. There is no formula to follow. 

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Three lessons for community engagement in international research

By Aysha Fleming

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Aysha Fleming (biography)

What’s required for researchers to effectively engage with local communities in international research tackling complex socio-ecological problems?

In a project involving Indonesian and Australian researchers working with local communities to restore peatlands in Indonesia, we identified three key elements for international collaboration with stakeholders:

  1. project design
  2. individual and collective skills and competencies
  3. processes to support knowledge integration.

Project design

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