Skilful conversations for integration

November 6, 2018November 20, 2018 Community Member Methods Advocacy, Author - Liz Clarke, Author - Rebecca Freeth, Best practice, Collaboration, Communication, Dialogue, Facilitation, Integration, Interdisciplinarity, Knowledge synthesis, Mutual learning, Participation, Productive disagreement, Transformation

Community member post by Rebecca Freeth and Liz Clarke

Interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle complex problems is challenging! In particular, interdisciplinary communication can be very difficult – how do we bridge the gulf of mutual incomprehension when we are working with people who think and talk so very differently from us? What skills are required when mutual incomprehension escalates into conflict, or thwarts decision making on important issues?

It is often at this point that collaborations lose momentum. In the absence of constructive or productive exchange, working relationships stagnate and people retreat to the places where they feel safest: Continue reading →

Six strategies to ensure policies are backed by evidence

October 30, 2018November 13, 2018 Community Member Processes Author - Danielle Campbell, Author - Gabriel Moore, Communication, Embedding, Knowledge synthesis, Policymaking, Research implementation

Community member post by Danielle Campbell and Gabriel Moore

What is the best way to ensure that policies are informed by the most relevant research evidence?

Six promising strategies emerged from a rapid review of the literature (Campbell and Moore 2018). Although our focus was on health policies, the findings are likely to be more broadly applicable. An important caveat is that the number of studies to investigate these issues is small and most are descriptive rather than testing strategies. Continue reading →

A checklist for documenting knowledge synthesis

July 31, 2018August 14, 2018 Community Member Institutionalisation, Processes Author - Gabriele Bammer, Authorisation, Best practice, Boundaries, Collaboration, Common metric, Complexity, Context, Dialogue, Integration and Implementation Sciences, Knowledge synthesis, Modelling, Problem definition, Research design, Scoping, Stakeholders, Values

Community member post by Gabriele Bammer

How do you write-up the methods section for research synthesizing knowledge from different disciplines and stakeholders to improve understanding about a complex societal or environmental problem?

In research on complex real-world problems, the methods section is often incomplete. An agreed protocol is needed to ensure systematic recording of what was undertaken. Here I use a checklist to provide a first pass at developing such a protocol specifically addressing how knowledge from a range of disciplines and stakeholders is brought together.

KNOWLEDGE SYNTHESIS CHECKLIST

1. What did the synthesis of disciplinary and stakeholder knowledge aim to achieve, which knowledge was included and how were decisions made? Continue reading →

Synthesis of knowledge about participatory modeling: How a group’s perceptions changed over time

July 3, 2018November 20, 2018 Community Member Case study, Processes Author - Rebecca Jordan, Conceptual models, Knowledge synthesis, Mental models, Mutual learning, Participatory modelling, Synthesis, Visualisation

Community member post by Rebecca Jordan

How do a group’s perceptions change over time, when members across a range of institutions are brought together at regular intervals to synthesize ideas? Synthesis centers have been established to catalyze more effective cross-disciplinary research on complex problems, as described in the blog post ‘Synthesis centers as critical research infrastructure‘, by Andrew Campbell.

I co-led a group synthesizing ideas about participatory modeling as one of the activities at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). We met in Annapolis, Maryland, USA, four times over three years for 3-4 days per meeting. Our task was to synthesize what is known about participatory modeling tools, processes, and outcomes, especially in environmental and natural resources management contexts. Continue reading →

Two types of interdisciplinary scholarship

February 6, 2018December 17, 2018 Community Member Concepts Author - Andi Hess, Collaboration, Incommensurability, Interdisciplinarity, Knowledge synthesis, Science of team science, Teams, Terminology

Community member post by Andi Hess

Would it be helpful to identify two distinct forms of interdisciplinary scholarship ― 1) individual interdisciplinarity and 2) interdisciplinary dialogue and team science ― and to make this distinction explicit in the literature? What are the benefits and challenges of each? Are a different set of resources and methods required to achieve effective interdisciplinary scholarship?

As integration scientists are aware, there are many analyses of appropriate methods for conducting interdisciplinary work. Each has its own benefits and challenges, and each requires a different set of resources and methods for achieving effective interdisciplinary scholarship. Continue reading →

Recognising interdisciplinary expertise

December 5, 2017December 19, 2017 Community Member Institutionalisation Action research, Author - Gabriele Bammer, Complexity, Fragmentation, Integration, Integration and Implementation Sciences, Interdisciplinarity, Knowledge synthesis, Research implementation, Systems thinking, T-shaped researcher, Transdisciplinarity, Unknowns

Community member post by Gabriele Bammer

Could we overcome the challenges of embedding interdisciplinarity in the academic mainstream if relevant expertise were defined and recognized as a new discipline? What is this relevant expertise?

Here I consider team-based interdisciplinarity addressing complex societal and environmental problems and argue that it needs specific expertise over and above that contributed by disciplines. This set of knowledge and skills is currently poorly defined and recognized.

If contributing such know-how was an established role, it could provide a way of more adequately integrating interdisciplinary researchers into academic institutions. Furthermore, the time is ripe to codify that expertise by pulling together lessons from decades of experience. Continue reading →

Integration and Implementation Insights

Research resources for understanding and acting on complex real-world problems

Knowledge synthesis

Skilful conversations for integration

Six strategies to ensure policies are backed by evidence

A checklist for documenting knowledge synthesis

KNOWLEDGE SYNTHESIS CHECKLIST

Synthesis of knowledge about participatory modeling: How a group’s perceptions changed over time

Two types of interdisciplinary scholarship

Recognising interdisciplinary expertise

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KNOWLEDGE SYNTHESIS CHECKLIST

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