Reflexivity

Four tips for developing norms for collaboration agreements

By Edgar Cardenas.

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Edgar Cardenas (biography)

Norms are the foundational building blocks for collaboration agreements. Hence, we must consider what’s an effective way for teams to develop the norms underpinning a collaboration agreement? How can teams build on experience and avoid getting bogged down when negotiating norms?

In helping teams to develop norms that enable productive collaborations, I use Richard Hackman’s definition of norms as “shared agreements among members about what behaviors are valued in the group, and what behaviors are not. They refer only to behavior, including things members say, not to unexpressed private thoughts and feelings” (Hackman, 2011, p.103).

In other words, norms that help you collaborate better must be grounded by clearly identifiable behaviors and team members must agree to abide by these norms. When developing a norm, the team then has to ask: “Is the behavior clear enough that team members have a shared understanding of the specific behavior?” and “Do we agree to using this norm?”

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Building co-production capabilities in researchers: Strengthening reflexivity via learning opportunities

By Emma Ligtermoet, Claudia Munera-Roldan, Cathy Robinson, Zaynel Sushil and Peat Leith.

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1. Emma Ligtermoet; 2. Claudia Munera-Roldan; 3. Cathy Robinson; 4. Zaynel Sushil; 5. Peat Leith (biographies)

What forms of learning can support interdisciplinary teams to rapidly build reflexivity capabilities, especially in preparation for doing transdisciplinary (engaged) science with non-researcher societal actors?

Transdisciplinary co-production requires deep and reflexive learning. Reflexivity is a key capability for researchers doing inter- and transdisciplinary science, involving the critical enquiry of existing assumptions, values and norms underlying our decisions and actions, with the aim to adapt or change current practices or discourses.

Such learning is foundational for understanding and proactively engaging with knowledge-power dynamics, including potentially catalysing shifts in incumbent dynamics when preparing to engage with non-societal actors.

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Seven quality choice points for contemporary action research

By Hilary Bradbury.

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Hilary Bradbury (biography)

How can action researchers empower system actors in impactfully responding to our deepening eco-social crisis? How can action research be a catalyst to successfully transmute the inexhaustible resource of human creativity in all spaces—self to society—toward addressing our global problems? How can we encourage deepening clarity of choices made to navigate a middle path between responding to problems within living communities and contributing to research-based theory?

Mitigating the worst of our global problems requires action research that draws on many kinds and sources of knowledge. In fact, it requires drawing much more from diverse people on the ground, who understand the problems at hand and can offer solutions anchored in their experience of what is meaningful for them.

The aim of the seven choice points described below is to support action researchers in:

  • deepening and speeding up the proliferation of good work,
  • connecting local niche experiments to global reach.

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Preparing interdisciplinary research teams for transdisciplinary co-production: A framework and diagnostic questions

By Emma Ligtermoet, Claudia Munera-Roldan, Cathy Robinson, Zaynel Sushil and Peat Leith.

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1. Emma Ligtermoet; 2. Claudia Munera-Roldan; 3. Cathy Robinson; 4. Zaynel Sushil; 5. Peat Leith (biographies)

How can interdisciplinary teams rapidly and collectively diagnose and design effective engagement approaches as they prepare for engaged (transdisciplinary) research? How can they build bridges with non-researcher societal actors to understand differences in language, methodology and even fundamental philosophies about ways and means of understanding the world?

We have developed a framework with context as the central feature, as this shapes all aspects of collaborative work. Context is then used to centre exploration of interconnected elements of positionality, purpose, power and process (4Ps).

Shared deliberation of the research context and the interconnected 4Ps requires an effective collective learning environment, which is upheld by the pillars of equity, trust, openness and inclusivity, and reflexivity.

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Transdisciplinarity in Africa: Key issues in achieving higher education’s third mission

By Basirat Oyalowo.

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Basirat Oyalowo (biography)

How can transdisciplinarity in Africa help achieve higher education’s third mission, namely making a contribution to society? What are the best pathways for achieving this? What are the key obstructions and potential ways around them?

Higher education’s third mission involves adding to the first two missions of teaching and research towards providing service to society. However, general pathways to achieving this are still unclear. A few studies have explored how and why the local impacts of universities need to be measured, but these are generally from outside Africa and concentrate more on quantitative methods to measure specific impact, such as economic impact.

Transdisciplinarity provides opportunities to consider the diversity of societal needs and values, to benefit from local knowledge, to involve scientific disciplines, stakeholders and target groups.

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What roles do you play in inter- and transdisciplinary projects?

By Hanna Salomon, Benjamin Hofmann and Sabine Hoffmann.

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1. Hanna Salomon (biography)
2. Benjamin Hofmann (biography)
3. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)

What roles do researchers typically play in inter- and transdisciplinary projects? How can they be made transparent in order to reflect on them?

Inter- and transdisciplinary projects typically require different roles and the researchers involved may play one or more of them. There is a plethora of literature describing various ideal-typical roles and we used the literature on researchers’ roles in sustainability science to develop a reflection tool on researcher roles in inter- and transdisciplinary projects.

A Role Reflection Tool

The reflection tool consists of a role survey for individual researchers, a spider web graph for immediate role visualization on the individual and project team level, and a set of questions for individual and project team reflections.

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Transforming North-South academic collaborations through collective reflexivity

By Adriana Moreno Cely, Kewan Mertens and Viola Nilah Nyakato.

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1. Adriana Moreno Cely (biography)
2. Kewan Mertens (biography)
3. Viola Nilah Nyakato (biography)

How can we challenge entrenched colonial dynamics in North-South academic collaborations and foster meaningful transformation? How can we move away from power asymmetries where Northern partners assume roles as donors and agenda-setters, leaving Southern collaborators as recipients and implementers? How can we promote equitable knowledge production, allowing diverse voices to speak while being open to listening to them?

In grappling with these challenges in our own collaborations, we used collective reflexive dialogues to unpack our complicity in reproducing problematic power dynamics.

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Understanding exclusion, sharing benefits and building in reflection in transdisciplinary collaborations

By Annisa Triyanti, Corinne Lamain, Jessica Duncan and Jillian Student

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1. Annisa Triyanti (biography)
2. Corinne Lamain (biography)
3. Jessica Duncan (biography)
4. Jillian Student (biography)

How are ways of knowing excluded in transdisciplinary collaborations? How can transdisciplinary collaborations provide fair compensation for all who dedicate time and effort to the collaboration? How can transdisciplinary processes be made more fair, inclusive and equitable by including reflective processes?

Transdisciplinary collaborations aim to bring together different forms of knowledge, for example academic knowledge with knowledge of practitioners, activists, community groups, etc. Important questions to unpack the politics of transdisciplinary collaborations include:

  • Who decides which societal challenges are addressed?
  • Who has the most access and power to mobilize actions and resources?
  • Who decides who will be involved?
  • Who receives benefits?

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Team development is an essential team science competency

By Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano, L. Michelle Bennett and Yianna Vovides

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1. Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano (biography)
2. L. Michelle Bennett (biography)
3. Yianna Vovides (biography)

How does a team develop purposefully from an assembly of individuals with a shared research interest to an integrated and interdependent team? What process can they put in place to explore and discover not just their own but each other’s motivations, needs, and values? What needs to be put in place to collaboratively establish a team culture, norms, and processes from which they can agree to operate?

Here we describe the Reflective-Reflexive Design Method that addresses intra- and inter-personal dynamics for team development. Two assumptions underpin it:

  1. reflection and reflexivity are necessary dynamics for teaming success, and
  2. interventions that build successful teams take advantage of both dynamics in context and as intersection points.

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Practising responsible research within an Indigenous paradigm

By Norma Romm

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Norma Romm (biography)

What might it mean to practise responsible research within a postcolonial Indigenous paradigm? What is distinctive in terms of the conception of responsible research practice? How does research informed by this paradigm include responsiveness to the voices/spirit of the more-than-human world?

A postcolonial Indigenous paradigm as defined by scholars from a variety of geographical regions is offered as a way of doing research that expressly draws out and tries to revitalise the relational knowing-and-being processes of Indigenous communities in Africa, the Indigenous peoples of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and the USA (First Nations). These scholars (Indigenous, as well as non-Indigenous ones who can be regarded as allies) have tried to credentialise this research paradigm by expanding upon the underlying suggestion that processes of knowing are inextricably tied to ways of living (being in relation to others, human and more-than-human).

This implies a specific conception of responsibility to try to nurture (in all fields of our influence, including in research practices) relationships that can be considered reciprocal rather than exploitative (of other humans or of other species and of the land and its communities).

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Six lessons for newly-forming large research consortia

By Daniel Black and Geoff Bates

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1. Daniel Black (biography)
2. Geoff Bates (biography)

What are some key tips for establishing new, large consortia to tackle complex global challenges? What are the best ways to coordinate large groups of researchers, practitioners and publics towards a shared goal?

Describing this type of research is cumbersome. As a shorthand we have started to use the terms ‘LMITs’ (pronounced ‘limits’) and ‘New LMITs’ to denote similarly characterised projects and teams that are: ‘Newly forming’, ‘Large-scale’, ‘Mission-orientated’, and ‘Inter- and Trans-disciplinary’.

Drawing on our own experience over the past three years of establishing a New LMIT, we suggest six primary inter-related recommendations for other New LMITs, and for those who fund or support such research groups:

1. Factor in (far) more time than you might expect
2. Seek out funders who understand

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Inclusive Systemic Thinking for transformative change

By Ellen Lewis and Anne Stephens

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1. Ellen Lewis (biography)
2. Anne Stephens (biography)

What is Inclusive Systemic Thinking and how can it be effective in achieving transformational change? How can it contribute to a more inclusive and equitable world?

Introducing Inclusive Systemic Thinking

We have coined the term Inclusive Systemic Thinking to describe an approach that is influenced by a field of systems thinking called ‘Critical Systems Thinking,’ as well as by the social and behavioural sciences, fourth-wave feminism, and more recently, our work in the global development sector. Inclusive Systemic Thinking uses the ‘GEMs’ framework for complex systemic intersectional analysis based on: Gender equality/equity (non-binary), Environments (natural and/or contextual) and Marginalised voices (human and non-human). We described the GEMS framework in a recent i2Insights contribution, A responsible approach to intersectionality.

In our work, Inclusive Systemic Thinking is inclusive because we actively reflect on, advocate, mentor, and adapt our practices through an ethos of engagement that is widespread and that uses non-conventional approaches.

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