Mental models – Integration and Implementation Insights

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.

Improving facilitated modelling

May 23, 2023

By Vincent de Gooyert

Here I explore two outcomes of facilitated modelling – cognitive change and consensus forming – and ask: how can achieving those outcomes be improved?

But first, what is facilitated modelling?

Facilitated modelling is an approach where operational researchers act as facilitators to model an issue collaboratively with stakeholders, usually in a workshop. Operational research, also known as operations research, seeks to improve decision-making by developing and applying analytical methods.

Two central aims of facilitated modelling are to achieve cognitive change and to form consensus.

Cognitive change is the idea that participants of facilitated modelling workshops come in with a certain worldview, and that the intervention leads them to learn about the issue and accordingly change their minds.

Externalizing implicit expectations and assumptions in transdisciplinary research

August 3, 2023January 17, 2023

By Verena Radinger-Peer, Katharina Gugerell and Marianne Penker

authors_verena-radinger-peer_katharina-gugerell_marianne-penker — 1. Verena Radinger-Peer (biography)
2. Katharina Gugerell (biography)
3. Marianne Penker (biography

How can implicit expectations and assumptions of team members in transdisciplinary research collaborations be identified?

We used Q-methodology as a tool to make diverse expectations and perceptions of transdisciplinary research collaborations tangible and thus negotiable.

Q-methodology is an established explorative, semi-quantitative method for investigating distinctive viewpoints of a given population based on inverted factor analysis. While we do not explain Q methodology here, it is increasingly used and we refer those who want to find out more to Watts and Stenner (2012).

One disadvantage of the Q-method is the amount of time and effort that has to be invested in developing the Q-statements. Here we offer the statements we developed through an extensive process in our study for others to use either in their own Q methodology or in surveys.

Clarifying incentives and expectations in research collaborations

August 3, 2023June 14, 2022

By Alisa Zomer and Varja Lipovsek

authors_alisa-zomer_varja-lipovsek — 1. Alisa Zomer (biography)
2. Varja Lipovsek (biography)

In which areas do research collaborations between academics and practitioners often run into trouble? What difficult questions can we ask ourselves and our partners at the outset of a research collaboration that can set us up for a successful partnership? How can we learn from past successful and failed aspects of research partnerships?

In our experience four areas where collaborations can have problems are:

Incentives and expectations
Timelines
Collaborative decision making and team buy-in
Learning and dissemination.

In our guide, “How to have difficult conversations” (MIT Governance Lab, 2020), we designed sets of questions for both academic and practitioner partners to clarify priorities and assumptions, so that potential tensions can be turned into productive and creative exchanges.

Understanding diversity primer: 2. Mental models

June 23, 2022April 28, 2022

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_2

What are mental models and why are they important? How do they affect how problems are framed, understood and responded to? How do they affect how well those contributing to the research work together?

Mental models are a person’s understanding of the world and how it works, and are unique to each person. They exist in a person’s mind as a set of small-scale simplified models about different aspects of reality that are functional but necessarily incomplete.

Mental models apply to all aspects of reality ranging from concrete objects such as a ‘chair;’ to abstract concepts such as ‘trust;’ to geographical locations such as ‘Sydney;’ to connections, interconnections and causal relationships; and to simple and complex situations.

Boosting the transformative power of transdisciplinarity with quantum theory

October 12, 2021October 12, 2021

By Cyrille Rigolot

How can transdisciplinarity improve its ability to foster very deep, very fast and very large transformations toward sustainability?

Quantum theory might be a major source of insights in that direction. Although quantum theory is not new to transdisciplinarity, lately it has become much more accessible, practical, and potentially transformative on the ground.

Quantum theory for transdisciplinarity research

In the debates last century about the emerging transdisciplinary research field, quantum theory inspired theorist Basarab Nicolescu to develop three basic ‘axioms’, which he argues should be recognized at the core of transdisciplinarity research, namely:

A heuristic framework for reflecting on joint problem framing

May 31, 2021June 23, 2020

By BinBin Pearce and Olivier Ejderyan

authors_binbin-pearce_olivier-ejderyan — 1. BinBin Pearce (biography)
2. Olivier Ejderyan (biography)

What is joint problem framing? What are the key issues that joint problem framing has to address? How can joint problem framing be improved?

What is joint problem framing?

A key aspect of tackling complex problems is effectively bringing together differing points of view. These points of view are what Craik (1943) refers to as “small-scale models” of the problem situation. These are mental models formed from each individual’s experiences, interests, knowledge and environment. These mental models then set the boundaries for what problem definitions and solutions are possible and relevant to consider.

Why model?

August 11, 2023August 20, 2019

By Steven Lade

What do you think about mathematical modelling of ‘wicked’ or complex problems? Formal modelling, such as mathematical modelling or computational modelling, is sometimes seen as reductionist, prescriptive and misleading. Whether it actually is depends on why and how modelling is used.

Here I explore four main reasons for modelling, drawing on the work of Brugnach et al. (2008):

Prediction
Understanding
Exploration
Communication.

I start with mental models – the informal representations of the world that we all use as we go about both our personal and professional lives – and then move on to formal models.

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?

Five principles of holistic science communication

April 17, 2020February 20, 2018

By Suzi Spitzer

How can we effectively engage in the practice and art of science communication to increase both public understanding and public impact of our science? Here I present five principles based on what I learned at the Science of Science Communication III Sackler Colloquium at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC in November 2017.

1. Assemble a diverse and interdisciplinary team

Scientists should recognize that while they may be an expert on a particular facet of a complex problem, they may not be qualified to serve as an expert on all aspects of the problem. Therefore, scientists and communicators should collaborate to form interdisciplinary scientific teams to best address complex issues.
Science is like any other good or service—it must be strategically communicated if we want members of the public to accept, use, or support it in their daily lives. Thus, research scientists need to partner with content creators and practitioners in order to effectively share and “sell” scientific results.
Collaboration often improves decision making and problem solving processes. People have diverse cognitive models that affect the way each of us sees the world and how we understand or resolve problems. Adequate “thought world diversity” can help teams create and communicate science that is more creative, representative of a wider population, and more broadly applicable.

Sharing mental models is critical for interdisciplinary collaboration

November 30, 2022September 19, 2017

By Jen Badham and Gabriele Bammer

What is a mental model? How do mental models influence interdisciplinary collaboration? What processes can help tease out differences in mental models?

Mental models

Let’s start with mental models. What does the word ‘chair’ mean to you? Do you have an image of a chair, perhaps a wooden chair with four legs and a back, an office chair with wheels, or possibly a comfortable lounge chair from which you watch television?

Productive multivocal analysis – Part 2: Achieving epistemological engagement

March 30, 2023August 3, 2017

By Kristine Lund

In a previous blog post I described multivocality – ie., harnessing multiple voices – in interdisciplinary research and how research I was involved in (Suthers et al., 2013) highlighted pitfalls to be avoided. This blog post examines four ways in which epistemological engagement can be achieved. Two of these are positive and two may have both positive and negative aspects, depending on how the collaboration plays out.

Once a team begins analyzing a shared corpus from different perspectives — in our case, it was a corpus of people solving problems together — it’s the comparison of researchers’ respective analyses that can be a motor for productive epistemological encounters between the researchers.