Inter- and Transdisciplinarity Beyond Buzzwords: Educational Pathways for Sustainable Research Collaborations was the full title of this conference co-organized by the ITD Alliance that SLU Urban Futures is a founding member since 2020. This conference offered an opportunity to meet the ID/TD community and to share and reflect on the Future Platform’s format.
The workshop focused on the key conference stream Growing capacity for inter- and transdisciplinarity and offered an arena for dialogue, to share ideas, experiences and important questions that we face when working with ID/TD at our different organizations. In a workshop of 1,5 hours, participants circulated from table to table and co-shaped a ‘reflection space’ with the help of critical questions. Inspired by Kolb’s (2015) learning circle[1] those questions triggered different types of experiences that concern e.g. mandate, incentives, right encounters and future directions for ID/TD. A synthesis of some main take-aways follows below. Please note that those opinions or reflections are not necessarily shared by all participants though display a variety of perspectives.
Table 1- How to better shape a mandate? How to create stable institutional support/anchoring?
The participants shared different experiences but agreed on the importance of a place to meet. A successful TD centre for example needs to have the involved personnel located together, everyone from PhD students to professors. Integrating professors at the centre is key to creating legitimacy. Important key factors are creating awareness, allocating time to meet and a place that makes it easy to meet and talk.
“Don’t create a stable support, create a dynamic support!” That is what is needed to succeed with ID/TD research and education.
To shape mandates it is important to offer and support:
- Strategic work – it is a long-term commitment to change an organisation;
- Tactics - use your tactics to fulfil your ideas: learn from mistakes, learn from others, figure out how your organisation ‘thinks’;
- Educate up - make sure that colleagues know the importance and potential of ID/TD research and education move up within the organisation (placing ambassadors in different positions in the organisation is very efficient).
Table 2 - How to attract and motivate? How to inspire? What is a disincentive?
Attraction and motivation are often of monetary character. Big money and big career opportunities are important incentives for many young researchers. Internally motivation is best triggered by narratives, feelings and the actual “doing”. Narratives have a topic to address that needs an ID/TD approach and/or develop methods accordingly. Inspiration often starts with the DOING; gathering around a problem that requires different views to practice and understanding the need for an ID/TD approach is encouraging instead of starting with the conceptualisation of ID/TD work. For example, to gather around a topic to apply for funding could be attractive too.
There were also disincentives/obstacles discussed. For SLU’s future platforms and alike at other universities the challenge lies in “task us but not supporting us”; being tasked with a what (developing and increasing ID/TD research initiatives at the university), needs also a how (the conceptual, practical and organisational structures and resources to support this endeavour). Sometimes seniority is a prerequisite in applications etc. and creates a barrier for junior staff. A general problem with funding for ID/TD projects lies still in the siloed funding streams and disciplinary narrow assessment criteria/assessors.
Table 3 – When and how to introduce ID/TD?
The discussions focussed on different groups of people and highlighted the differences in interdisciplinary (ID) and transdisciplinary (TD) approaches. The former is unavoidable and the latter might become more relevant in a more mature state of academic career. For example, the value of promoting problem-solving capacities and dealing with complexities for students is key, though to build expertise in a particular subject too.
When to introduce ID/TD was suggested to vary with the academic field and it is important to ask why ID/TD, if you know the WHY, then the WHEN and HOW will follow. We need both generalists and specialists and collaboration of different expertise. Ideas of systematic progression through an academic career from one discipline into ID/TD, with BSc/MSc programmes including both natural and social science courses were discussed. Others stated that relational skills are needed, already from kindergarten age and if people learn these early, they will benefit from ID/TD work later on.
Table 4 - How to explore and test future directions for ID/TD at your organization? (e.g. pilots, partnerships, prototypes)
The discussion highlighted the value and need to accommodate ID/TD profiles in the existing systems, which means to accommodate space for new roles.
Piloting processes, e.g. on existing curriculum, profit from some mandatory task to anchor the novel practice and to have some sort of strategic plan for the experimental learning approach. The discussion also pinpointed the need for the cultural shifts and that students often represent drivers for change (bottom up). The understanding of what science is seem to determine in people’s openness and engagement in ID/TD approaches.
To cope with the plurality in science perspectives were mentioned; mapping approaches to display relationships (visibility/awareness), design thinking as an approach for different knowledge co-creation (tool) as well as regional anchoring of the university to collaborate with other stakeholders (e.g. civic university). Further, the identification of leverage points was discussed, i.e. analysis of what is successful and why. Here the following was mentioned as supportive:
- Problem based learning – there is not one defined solution
- Expertise – availability of ‘go to people’
- Encounters – to create potential arenas for learning
- Cultivating and language – to follow up and facilitated dialogue
- Sharing – knowledge & good-/best-practice