Expertise – Integration and Implementation Insights

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

April 16, 2024

By Gabriele Bammer

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021 — 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. To do this, i2S is building a curated repository, which, over time, aims to provide the basis for a full discipline.

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

March 19, 2024March 12, 2024

Edited by Gabriele Bammer

editors-addition_systems

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.

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

March 19, 2024March 12, 2024

Edited by Gabriele Bammer

editors-addition_systems

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?

Generating evidence using the Delphi method

November 14, 2023October 17, 2023

By Dmitry Khodyakov

What is Delphi? How has the Delphi method stood up over time? How can the best of Delphi be adapted to new circumstances and problems?

The Delphi method is a group-based process for eliciting and aggregating opinion on a topic with a goal of exploring the existence of consensus among a diverse group of handpicked experts. The Delphi method was developed at the RAND Corporation in the early 1950s to obtain a reliable expert consensus, which is often used as a substitute for empirical evidence when it does not exist.

The four key characteristics of the Delphi method are:

anonymity,
iterative data collection,
participant feedback, and
statistical determination of group response.

As a result, Delphi has become best practice for quantifying the results of group elicitation processes.

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.

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

September 19, 2023August 22, 2023

By Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

authors_annemarie-horn_eduardo-urias — 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.

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.”

Towards a theory of change to institutionalise integration experts and expertise

December 11, 2023June 6, 2023

By The Aeschiried Integrators

authors_the-aeschiried-integrators — 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:

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

April 11, 2023April 11, 2023

By Guido Caniglia and Rebecca Freeth

authors_guido-caniglia_rebecca-freeth — 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.

How can expertise in research integration and implementation help tackle complex problems?

October 11, 2021March 10, 2020

By Gabriele Bammer

author - gabriele bammer — Gabriele Bammer (biography)

What is expertise in research integration and implementation? What is its role in helping tackle complex societal and environmental problems, especially those dimensions that define complexity?

Expertise in research integration and implementation

Addressing complex societal and environmental problems requires specific expertise over and above that contributed by existing disciplines, but there is little formal recognition of what that expertise is or reward for contributing it to a research team’s efforts. In brief, such expertise includes the ability to:

identify relevant disciplinary and stakeholder inputs
effectively integrate them for a more comprehensive understanding of the problem
support more effective actions to ameliorate the problem.

Metacognition as a prerequisite for interdisciplinary integration

January 5, 2023February 5, 2019

By Machiel Keestra

What’s needed to enable the integration of concepts, theories, methods, and results across disciplines? Why is communication among experts important, but not sufficient? Interdisciplinary experts must also meta-cognize: both individually and as a team they must monitor, evaluate and regulate their cognitive processes and mental representations. Without this, expertise will function suboptimally both for individuals and teams. Metacognition is not an easy task, though, and deserves more attention in both training and collaboration processes than it usually gets. Why is metacognition so challenging and how can it be facilitated?

What makes a translational ecologist? Part 2: Skills

December 31, 2021June 28, 2016

By the Translational Ecology Group

This is the second blog post considering competencies that underpin a new discipline of translational ecology, and which make ecologists more effective in informing and supporting policy and practice change (see the right sidebar for links to all four related blog posts on translational ecology). In each blog post we examine three major areas:

Socio-ecological systems
Communication across boundaries, with beneficiaries, stakeholders and other scientists
Engagement with beneficiaries, stakeholders and other scientists.

Here we engage with these three areas to examine the skills required for translational ecologists.