Frameworks – Integration and Implementation Insights

Writing confidentiality and anonymity into collaboration agreements

November 21, 2023

By Edgar Cardenas, L. Michelle Bennett, and Michael O’Rourke

authors_edgar-cardenas_l-michelle-bennett_michael-orourke — 1. Edgar Cardenas (biography)
2. L. Michelle Bennett (biography)
3. Michael O’Rourke (biography)

How might teams create norms to scaffold the use of confidentiality and anonymity in team settings? How could a team integrate language about confidentiality and anonymity into their collaboration agreement? How can teams use these approaches and simultaneously build psychological safety and trust?

In an earlier i2Insights contribution, we provided a collaboration agreement template to help teams improve their chances of collaboration success by facilitating dialogue about shared values, norms, and processes of collaboration. This template is designed around three central dimensions of collaborative research: team management, team dynamics, and team communication.

In a companion i2Insights contribution we addressed issues concerning confidentiality and anonymity in teamwork, and in this post we provide an example of one possible approach to integrating language about confidentiality and anonymity into a collaboration agreement—specifically, into the “Team Communication” part of a collaboration agreement built using our template.

Achieving change by transforming engagement

November 14, 2023November 14, 2023

By Katja Jäger

How can civil society organisations, which rely on volunteer efforts, contribute more effectively to societal change? How can they position engagement with volunteers in a forward-looking way, so as to unleash the potential of committed people? What lessons does this have for researchers interested in social change efforts and in stakeholder engagement?

As a leader of a civil society organisation which works in the field of volunteer support, I am interested in how organisational engagement with volunteers can be most effective in supporting change efforts. Here I share a framework that we have found useful, along with four sets of questions for civil society organisations to reflect on in cooperation with their volunteers.

This work also aims to give researchers interested in social change insight into how they might effectively partner with civil society organisations, as well as how they might expand their thinking about engagement.

As a starting point, I have used the AQAL (All Quadrants All Levels) model shown in the figure below, which was developed by Ken Wilbur (1995) in his framework of integral theory.

The Strategic Choice Approach in shaping public policies

November 21, 2023October 31, 2023

By Catherine Hobbs

catherine-hobbs_2021 — Catherine Hobbs (biography)

How can we be inspired, rather than overwhelmed, by differing perspectives in the inter-organisational planning required to more effectively address cross-cutting issues, or interacting areas of policy? How can we learn from the achievements of public policy action research, in the light of the local and global uncertainties of the 2020s?

Strategic Choice Approach was developed by John Friend with Allen Hickling, originating during the 1960s and 1970s. It emerged through a series of collaborative action research projects applied to public policy challenges in a number of countries, so that its origins are empirical rather than theoretical.

Friend described Strategic Choice Approach as being helpful as a practical approach to planning under pressure where “people of different outlooks and allegiances are working together with a shared concern to move rapidly towards commitments to action or to changes of policy on difficult issues of shared concern” (Friend, no date).

Systemic interventions for complex problems: The Intervention Design Process / Para problemas complejos, intervenciones sistémicas: el Proceso de Diseño de Intervención

October 31, 2023October 24, 2023

By Daniel Marín Vanegas

A Spanish version of this post is available.

What is a useful systemic process for tackling complex societal and environmental problems?

The Intervention Design Process (IDP) is a non-linear approach that integrates different models, methods, techniques, and tools in a set of four iterative stages that are both systematic and systemic (Marín-Vanegas, 2023). The four phases – captured in the acronym IDP-3DC – are:

Diagnosis
Dialogue
Decision
Change.

Towards a taxonomy of synthesizing

October 17, 2023September 19, 2023

By Howard Gardner

“Synthesis” seems to be in the atmosphere. The capacity to synthesize, the need for syntheses, and improvement of the quality of syntheses—these are seemingly of interest to many.

A preliminary working definition:

A synthesis is an attempt to bring together various ideas, strands, concepts, and materials. A good synthesis enhances one’s understanding of a question, puzzle, phenomenon (or multiples of these). Familiar examples are school term papers, doctoral dissertations, position papers, landscape analyses, executive summaries, and textbooks. But one can easily extend the list beyond the verbal—to chemical syntheses, equations in physics or mathematics, works of art (poems, paintings, dioramas)—indeed any creation or invention that brings together disparate elements in a satisfying and illuminating way.

Of course, it’s important to avoid the situation where just about everything qualifies as a synthesis.

A framework for building transdisciplinary expertise

August 15, 2023August 8, 2023

By ANU Transdisciplinarity Working Group

mosaic_authors_anu-transdisciplinarity-working-group — 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.”

A practical framework for transforming academia through inter- and transdisciplinarity / Un marco práctico para transformar el mundo académico mediante la interdisciplinariedad y la transdisciplinariedad

August 15, 2023July 18, 2023

By Bianca Vienni Baptista and Danilo Streck

authors_bianca-vienni-baptista_danilo-streck — 1. Bianca Vienni Baptista (biography)
2. Danilo Streck (biography)

A Spanish version of this post is available.

How can the role of inter- and transdisciplinarity be re-imagined at higher education institutions?

This i2Insights contribution presents a practical framework developed with Julie Thompson Klein and based on fifteen case studies from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America that described how inter- and transdisciplinarity have been institutionalised in higher education.

An analytical framework for knowledge co-production

September 5, 2023May 30, 2023

By Marianne Penker

How can students and academics starting out in transdisciplinary research begin to come to grips with knowledge co-production?

Colleagues and I developed a useful analytical framework comprising the following four elements:

typology of actor roles (who?)
research phases (when?)
objectives and forms of actor integration (why?)
types of knowledge (what?).

These four elements are illustrated in the figure below.

The development of the framework was based on the literature and our experiences in running a doctoral school on transdisciplinary sustainability research (see Enengel et al. 2012).

A responsible approach to intersectionality

December 13, 2022November 29, 2022

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.

Extending the DPSIR (Driving forces, Pressures, States, Impacts, Responses) framework

August 3, 2023October 25, 2022

By Will Allen

What is the DPSIR framework? How can it be extended to improve the ability to describe the interactions between society and the environment?

DPSIR (Driving forces, Pressures, States, Impacts, Responses) is a framework for describing and analysing the important and interlinked relationships between social and environmental factors (see the first figure below).

Different groups use these terms in slightly different ways, dependent on their disciplinary backgrounds – and given the diverse range of uses that the framework is put to, it probably does not make sense to attempt to create rigid definitions. What is important is that those stakeholders involved in any particular situation use the development of the model to clarify their understanding of the terms, and it is equally important to develop an integrative and shared understanding and communication of the causal links and mechanisms involved.

Collaboration agreement template

June 21, 2023July 19, 2022

By L. Michelle Bennett, Edgar Cardenas and Michael O’Rourke

1. L. Michelle Bennett (biography)
2. Edgar Cardenas (biography)
2. Michael O’Rourke (biography)

As scientific research continues to move towards collaborative knowledge production, scientists must become more adept at working in teams. How can teams improve their chances of collaboration success? What is a good way to facilitate dialogue about shared values, norms and processes of collaboration? Are there ways of anticipating, identifying, and addressing obstacles as they arise?

We have designed a collaboration agreement template to assist teams in:

Making explicit and therefore transparent important aspects of their approach to collaboration
Ensuring they have a shared vision for their work together
Recognizing that their working relationships are dynamic, individually and as a team, and will require flexibility and a willingness to adapt over time
Establishing expectations for working together, including what they do and say
Preparing for disagreements and even conflicts, especially in the early stages and along the way when there are changes in team composition.
Read more

Ignorance: Vocabulary and taxonomy

October 25, 2022June 28, 2022

By Michael Smithson

How can we better understand ignorance? In the 1980s I proposed the view that ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge, but is socially constructed and comes in different kinds (Smithson, 1989). Here I present a brief overview of that work, along with some key subsequent developments.

Defining ignorance

Let’s begin with a workable definition of ignorance and then work from there to a taxonomy of types of ignorance. Our definition will have to deal both with simple lack of knowledge but also incorrect ideas. It will also have to deal with the fact that if one is attributing ignorance to someone, the ignoramus may be a different person or oneself.