Reflexivity

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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Three lessons for community engagement in international research

By Aysha Fleming

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Aysha Fleming (biography)

What’s required for researchers to effectively engage with local communities in international research tackling complex socio-ecological problems?

In a project involving Indonesian and Australian researchers working with local communities to restore peatlands in Indonesia, we identified three key elements for international collaboration with stakeholders:

  1. project design
  2. individual and collective skills and competencies
  3. processes to support knowledge integration.

Project design

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Intentional ecology: Building values, advocacy and action into transdisciplinary environmental research

By Alexandra Knight and Catherine Allan

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1. Alexandra Knight (biography)
2. Catherine Allan (biography)

As a society, how do we encourage early and ethical action when building our knowledge and confronting serious challenges?

In this blog post we explore the conceptual framework of intentional ecology and apply it to a case study to illustrate how it deals with the question raised above.

Intentional ecology – foundations and actions

Intentional ecology, illustrated in the figure below, is a new conceptual framework that enables early, applied and relevant integrated action, as well as reflexive and dynamic approaches to implementation of conservation and sustainability measures. It’s a better way of doing science.

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A Partnership Outcome Spaces framework for transdisciplinary student-staff partnerships

By Giedre Kligyte, Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer, Jarnae Leslie, Tyler Key, Bethany Hooper and Eleanor Salazar

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1. Giedre Kligyte; 2. Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer; 3. Jarnae Leslie; 4. Tyler Key; 5. Bethany Hooper; 6. Eleanor Salazar (biographies)

How can universities leverage students’ perspectives to create pathways towards lasting organisational change in higher education? How can we conceptualise institutional impact and outcomes of transdisciplinary student-staff partnerships?

Why student-staff partnerships?

Student-staff partnerships is an emerging approach to collaboration between students and staff members to create more egalitarian learning cultures in universities. Through partnerships, students are typically engaged in co-creating aspects of curriculum and student-facing university initiatives (such as service design), acknowledging students as having authority in their learning experience.

The Partnership Outcome Spaces framework

We adopted and extended the Transdisciplinary Outcome Spaces model described by Mitchell and colleagues (see also Mitchell et al., 2015) to develop a Partnership Outcome Spaces framework which enabled us to reconceptualise the purpose, scale and impact of process-oriented student-staff partnerships.

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Listening-based dialogue: Circle of dialogue wisdom / Diálogo basado en la escucha: Círculos de diálogo entre saberes

By Adriana Moreno Cely, Darío Cuajera Nahui, César Gabriel Escobar Vásquez, Tom Vanwing and Nelson Tapia Ponce

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1. Adriana Moreno Cely; 2. Darío Cuajera Nahui; 3. César Gabriel Escobar Vásquez; 4. Tom Vanwing; 5. Nelson Tapia Ponce (biographies)

A Spanish version of this post is available.

How can marginalised knowledge systems really make themselves heard in collaborative research? What’s needed for research decolonisation to properly recognise Indigenous and local knowledge? How can power imbalances be bridged to ensure that everyone has an equal voice?

We describe the “circle of dialogue wisdom” as a methodological framework to reconceptualise participation, empowerment and collaboration.The framework has 6 phases, which should be seen as spiral and iterative rather than linear.

The six phases, shown in the figure below are:

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Three ways research perpetuates injustices

By Barış Bayram

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Barış Bayram (biography)

Why is it hard to recognise the full value of a new idea, research finding or other innovation? Why do people fail to properly appreciate other people or things most of the time? Can this help explain why injustices persist?

There is no “invisible hand” that allocates rewards according to capabilities or performance, including ensuring that academic research or social interactions are recognised in terms of scientific or ethical merits.

There are three main patterns causing what I call “unjust appreciation”:

  1. lack of intellectual development to determine values, merits and deserts (ie., just rewards)
  2. cognitive biases and social biases, especially related to status and groups
  3. tribalism, along with power and conflict considerations that rely on cost-benefit analysis.

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Interdisciplinary competencies and innovation

By Colleen Knechtel

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Colleen Knechtel (biography)

What interdisciplinary competencies are required for innovation? How can such interdisciplinary competencies be implemented to foster innovation?

Keys to stimulating innovation are cultivating interdisciplinary mindsets and skillsets. Interdisciplinary mindsets involve recognizing diverse knowledge to enable collaboration to enhance collective creativity, whereas interdisciplinary skillsets embrace relational competencies, work experiences, the sciences, humanities, trades and technologies. Integrating such diverse knowledge and skills is key to innovation.

Strategies for implementing interdisciplinary competencies

1. Recognizing prior knowledge and skills

A ‘growth mindset’ that focuses on strengths and competencies that is grounded in transformative learning strengthens confidence, affirms lifelong learning abilities, and motivates individuals to identify and address learning gaps.

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Six lessons from students about transdisciplinary learning

By Irina Dallo, Jan Freihardt and Juanita von Rothkirch

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1. Irina Dallo (biography)
2. Jan Freihardt (biography)
3. Juanita von Rothkirch (biography)

What is an effective way of providing students with practical experience in stakeholder engagement? How can students learn to communicate and engage with community members on a transdisciplinary project, as well as how to create a space for those community members to reflect on their daily lives through interactions and discussions with the student outsiders? What makes it possible for students to broaden their horizons and to acquire new competences and skills?

We present our reflections on how the Winter School 2020 “Science meets Practice” run by ETH Zürich successfully contributed to our transdisciplinary learning process. We suggest there are six key lessons for those who want to design a successful course.

Lesson 1: A diverse and motivated group

A key element in fostering the transdisciplinary learning process was the diversity of the participant cohort.

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Considering uncertainty, awareness and ambiguity as a three-dimensional space

By Fabio Boschetti

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Fabio Boschetti (biography)

The concept of unknown unknowns highlights the importance of introspection in assessing knowledge. It suggests that finding our way in the set of known-knowns, known-unknowns, unknown-knowns and unknown-unknowns, reduces to asking:

  1. how uncertain are we? and
  2. how aware are we of uncertainty?

When a problem involves a decision-making team, rather than a single individual, we also need to ask:

  1. how do context and perception affect what we know?

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