Disciplinary Backgrounds Research Articles

Characterizing Research Teams

Abstract Research in health professions education (HPE) is often executed by teams—groups of individuals working together to solve a problem, reconceptualize an issue, or conduct a study. Teams frequently involve individuals from different disciplinary backgrounds or professions1,2 who work collaboratively to accomplish specific scholarly goals. Matching team composition to research goals is critical for ensuring the team has the skills and perspectives necessary to generate, integrate, and mobilize the desired knowledge. Drawing on literature,3,4 we describe the who, what, how, and when of 4 types of research teams.

Disciplinary differences in undergraduate students' engagement with generative artificial intelligence

AbstractThe rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies has sparked widespread discussions about their potential applications in higher education. However, little is known about how students from various disciplines engage with GenAI tools. This study explores undergraduate students' GenAI knowledge, usage intentions, and task-specific engagement across academic disciplines. Using a disciplinary categorization framework, we examine how the hard/soft and pure/applied dimensions relate to students' interactions with GenAI. We surveyed 193 undergraduates from diverse disciplines at a university in Singapore. The questionnaire assessed students' GenAI knowledge, usage intentions, and engagement with GenAI for cognitive and routine tasks against their disciplinary background. The results indicate substantial disciplinary disparities in the level of engagement of students with GenAI. Compared to pure fields, applied fields (both hard and soft) consistently exhibit higher levels of GenAI knowledge and utilization intentions. Furthermore, the engagement of GenAI in routine tasks is relatively consistent across disciplines; however, there are substantial disparities in cognitive tasks, with applied fields exhibiting higher engagement. These results suggest that the practical orientation of applied fields drives GenAI adoption and utilization in academic settings. The study emphasizes considering disciplinary differences to better integrate GenAI into higher education and calls for tailored approaches that align with each field's unique epistemological and methodological traditions to balance GenAI's practical benefits with the preservation of core disciplinary knowledge and skills.

Building Resilience: Strengthening European public health workforce through ECDC Fellowship Programs

Abstract The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) Fellowship programmes offer a two-year training in field epidemiology (EPIET) and in public health microbiology (EUPHEM) aiming to create and maintain a network of highly trained field epidemiologists and public health microbiologists and strengthen the public health epidemiology workforce in the European Union (EU) and beyond. The Mediterranean and Black Sea Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (MediPIET) also aims to strengthen the public health workforce in countries neighboring the EU. During the training, fellows who are based in different public health institutes in the EU and neighboring countries, set-up, implement and evaluate surveillance of communicable diseases, investigate outbreaks and conduct operational research directly linked to public health actions. The programmes facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration across borders, building a foundation for participants and their institutions and promoting long-term collaboration through the alumni network. Participants from diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds enable interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral knowledge transfer, enhancing the effectiveness of public health responses. By facilitating collaboration and networking, exchanging experiences, disseminating best practices and assimilating lessons learned, these programmes contribute to addressing contemporary health challenges, including emerging vector-borne diseases and strengthening public health systems in Europe and neighboring regions. In the face of global challenges such as climate change and globalization, the fellowships exemplify how collaboration can strengthen Europe’s defenses against emerging health threats.

Researchers’ perceptions of their collaboration with indigenous and local people in environmental change research

Seeking to develop more robust diagnoses and responses to complex societal challenges, researchers increasingly involve non-academic actors in collaborative projects. The associated challenges can have major consequences for local people and indigenous peoples. Particularly intractable are the differences in ways of knowing between researchers and other actors which can affect the importance attached to local and indigenous knowledge. Striving to promote responsible research in projects involving local communities, I investigated how 15 researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds and experience of working with local people in projects focusing on climate change and environmental challenges perceive (1) what triggers the need for research involving local people, (2) what knowledge such projects provide, and (3) what benefits can accrue to local people from such projects. I discuss potential reflexive applications of these perceptions to enhance the inclusivity and fairness of research with local actors. The main triggers question (1) elicited were researchers’ interests, personal views, happiness, desire to help others and the need to understand, collect, study and know (people, their culture, their experiences, their knowledge and concerns, and their ways of adapting to environmental change). Questions (2) and (3) elicited very varied perceptions, mostly relating to projects interviewees had participated in.

What is planetary justice?

ABSTRACT To reconsider the meaning of justice in a planetary frame is both a necessity in our time of multiple entangled crises and an endeavour that seeks convergence and synthesis where there might instead be irreconcilable differences. We invited scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to share their perspectives on the scope, scale, and purpose of planetary justice and received a variety of responses – all highly worthwhile in their own right. What we can conclude from this new milestone in the literature on planetary justice is that people emphasize different justice concerns and operate with different ontologies. Are the Earth system and the pluriverse opposing frameworks or somehow reconcilable? What concerns should be prioritized is also contested. Can there be a decolonial, multispecies, Earth systemic, justice that begins with the self and where matter is included in our sphere of justice? However, one agreement seems to be that planetary justice is inevitably ecosocial justice.

Embracing Levin’s Legacy: Advancing Socio-Technical Learning and Development in Human-Robot Team Design Through STS Approaches

AbstractThis paper investigates the synergy between Levin’s theories on technology transfer as a socio-technical learning and developmental process (TLD process), and what we learnt about socio-technical systems (STS) theories in a case study developing human robot solutions for the construction sector. Levin’s extensive work highlights the significance of technology transfer as a means for organizational development. His TLD process emphasizes the intricate interplay between technology, organizational change, and learning and highlights the importance of incorporating cultural knowledge and skills into the technological transfer process. Contemporary STS views developed through our own work are introduced to complement and extend Levin’s theories by providing a systemic lens to understand the broader socio-technical context in which technology transfer occurs. To illustrate the synergies and potential challenges from Levin’s theories of technology transfer with contemporary STS concepts, we use a qualitative study of a unique case about the design and development of human-robot teams (HRTs) for construction tasks. Our findings reveal that while Levin’s theories provide a valuable foundation for understanding technology transfer and organizational change, contemporary socio-technical systems face unique challenges in the context of AI-driven human-robot teams, where intelligent robots also contribute to the socio-technical learning process. Moreover, the rapidly evolving nature of technology and innovations could exponentially impact on multidisciplinary design teams, stakeholder participation and inter-organizational dynamics. The discussions suggest an extension of co-generative learning to incorporate ‘collaborative intelligence’ between human-robot teams enabled by artificial intelligence (AI). Consequently, we suggest that Levin’s theories of technology transfer, developed before the rapid application of AI, may not have fully considered further social challenges caused by the introduction of autonomous systems such as AI-driven HRT systems. We extend Levin’s important work by suggesting that addressing such challenges requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with different disciplinary backgrounds to develop robust and reliable socio-technical systems frameworks to navigate the complexities of robotics and AI in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Research on the Construction of Calligraphy Education Curriculum System from an Interdisciplinary Perspective

With the continuous advancement of educational models, interdisciplinary education has gradually become an important means of promoting teaching innovation. This study aims to explore the construction of a calligraphy education curriculum system from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining the traditional values of calligraphy art with modern educational needs to propose a systematic curriculum design plan. The paper first introduces the theoretical framework and implementation strategies of interdisciplinary education, clarifying the disciplinary background of calligraphy education and its innovative applications in interdisciplinary integration. Next, through an in-depth analysis of the design principles, integration strategies, and teaching methods of the interdisciplinary calligraphy education curriculum system, the study evaluates the effectiveness of curriculum implementation and future development trends. The research indicates that interdisciplinary calligraphy education not only enriches the curriculum content but also enhances students' comprehensive abilities and innovative thinking. Future research should focus on curriculum practice models, applicability across educational stages, and international collaboration to further promote innovation and development in calligraphy education.

The role of different types of knowledge and expertise in explaining recognition justice in flood defence and flood risk prevention

AbstractFlood risks worldwide are rising and it is increasingly recognised that the impacts of floods are not neutral. Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics determine people's capacity to deal with flood events. These differences in social vulnerability to floods need to be considered in flood risk management (FRM) to prevent the most vulnerable groups from being disproportionately impacted. However, due to a diversification of FRM strategies and the involvement of various policy domains, the experts working on FRM are no longer a homogeneous group. Where FRM was previously dominated by engineers, now various experts are involved that have different disciplinary backgrounds, knowledge bases and approaches to FRM. As a result, they also differ in their recognition of social vulnerability to floods. In this paper, we explore the different types of knowledge and expertise in FRM in three countries (England, Flanders and France), focussing on the strategies of flood defence and flood risk prevention. We characterise the epistemic communities supporting the domains and study to what extent experts differ in their recognition of social vulnerability to floods. We also dive into the mechanisms employed to stimulate integration between experts and consider the extent to which this integration can strengthen recognition justice.

The Socio-Cultural Life of Migration Categories: Insights Across the Global South and North – Introduction to the Special Issue

Categories have gained new centrality in migration studies, highlighting the importance of critically approaching policy labels and considering categories as a lens rather than a pre-determined analytical toolkit. This Special Issue (SI) brings together migration scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds from the Global South and North. This article introduces the SI with a theoretically driven discussion of migration categories, hopefully inspiring further research and orienting newcomers to the field. Current studies have what we term sub-field confinement, one-dimensionality and context-related perspectival limitations. Bridging migration subfields, empirically apprehending the disconnections between policy and experiential dimensions of labelling and de-centring Global North analyses are key to understanding the socio-cultural life of migration categories. Further comparative and interdisciplinary research is necessary, given the topic’s rising importance in migration studies.

Academic freedom: Global variations in norm conceptualization, diffusion and contestation – an introduction

Abstract This Introduction provides an overview of the topics covered in this special issue on ‘Academic freedom: Global variations in norm conceptualization, diffusion and contestation’, which explores what academic freedom means, how this may vary on a global level, how the norm spread around the world and what current contestations look like. The Introduction defines some terms essential to this debate, such as the freedom of science, academic freedom, freedom of scientific research and the right to science, and offers an analytical framework for the various contributions of the special issue. This includes, in particular, a distinction between illiberal and liberal science scripts and their relationship with academic freedom, as well as between different forms of contestations and limitations of academic freedom. Authors from varying disciplinary and regional backgrounds address different aspects of this theme in their respective contributions, of which the introduction gives a brief summary.

Impact of Disciplinary Variations on Second Language Mental Lexicon

This study investigates how academic disciplines impact second language (L2) lexical competencies. Prior L2 research has often overlooked the broader effects of disciplinary backgrounds on lexical development. To address this gap, this study utilized lexical decision, memory, and semantic fluency tasks to examine lexicon recognition, memory, and storage processes among L2 Chinese learners from various academic fields. The study participants comprised 16 students from the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) disciplines and 11 from the Science and Engineering (S&E) disciplines, all having passed HSK level 4. The tasks were conducted using E-Prime 2.0. The findings revealed distinct cognitive strategies and thinking patterns among the participants from different disciplines . These strategies and patterns affected lexical task performance in terms of accuracy and response times. Although lexical memory exhibited no significant variation among the groups, discipline-specific tendencies were observed in the formation of semantic networks. Learners from S&E disciplines preferred mastering field-relevant Chinese terminology, whereas HSS learners tended to acquire words outside their specific disciplines. This observation highlights how learners’ disciplinary backgrounds influence their vocabulary acquisition and the organization of semantic networks in L2.

The Climate-Changing Context of Inflation: Fossilflation, Climateflation, and the Environmental Politics of Green Central Banks

Abstract In this forum, I seek to demonstrate how the growing confluence of climate change and inflation offers a fruitful research agenda for environmental politics scholars. It develops two independent, yet interrelated, concepts first proposed by Schnabel: first, fossilflation, the legacy cost of the dependency on fossil energy sources, which has not been reduced forcefully enough over the past decades, and second, climateflation, the growing impact of natural disasters and severe weather events on economic activity and prices. With the subject of inflation often considered to be a contextual or descriptive feature of environmental issues, the economic implications of climate change have come to challenge the conventional understanding of the inflationary phenomenon. This article seeks to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds on the subject of climate change–induced inflation and the questions it presents for notions of “green” central banking.

Preparing for a Career at the Intersection of Geography and Computing: Availability and Access to Training Along Geocomputational Career Pathways

The growth of the geospatial services industry is increasing the demand for a workforce with training at the intersection of geography and computing (i.e., geocomputation) in terms of skills, knowledge, and disciplinary background. To be more effective at increasing the supply of geocomputational professionals, we need to better understand the existing educational pathways that are available to acquire knowledge and skills in geography, computing, or both. In this article, we aimed to enhance our understanding of the current standing of geocomputational career pathways by (1) articulating the existing curriculum pathways from school to career and identifying broadening participation challenges associated with training opportunities; and (2) identifying specific gaps in knowledge, skills, and training needs and opportunities between geographers, computer scientists, and the geospatial technology industry. Our analysis of a survey of geocomputational professionals identified significant differences in knowledge, skills, and access to training between different educational pathways and between different demographic groups.

Critical considerations of career enrolment data: Challenges, limitations, and possibilities

The advent of Career Enrolment Data (CED) in Higher Education is an important development for graduate employability practitioners and other stakeholders seeking to understand, analyse and enhance students’ career readiness. CED, collected annually from all students in participating universities, requires students to self-report on their own career readiness, and is described as having ‘the potential to be a component of a standardised measure of learning gain in relation to student employability’ (Cobb, 2019, p.23). Reflections are offered by two graduate employability practitioners currently tasked with introducing CED to educators and recommending its use to support careers-focused components of their curricula. Drawing on different disciplinary backgrounds to inform their approaches, both practitioners are keen to explore opportunities to capitalise on the strengths of data insights. However, they advocate for a carefully nuanced and contextualised approach, openly acknowledging relevant limitations and risks when presenting the data to educators and other stakeholders. Drawing on one author’s background in psychology, it considers the process of self-reporting on which the data wholly relies, noting potential influences and biases that may be relevant. The second author offers a sociological perspective, using the concept of neoliberalism as a framework for engaging with concerns about an employability agenda driven by corporate and economic interests, and a culture of auditing sometimes associated with hardship for academics and a detrimental effect on pedagogy. While it should be noted that experts in CED such as Gilworth and Cobb take care to acknowledge limitations and risks (Cobb, 2019; Gilworth, 2023) this reflective account grapples with the challenge of ensuring that these important nuances are not lost as the context shifts from theory to practice.

Eliciting diverse perspectives to prioritize community actions for biodiversity conservation.

Communities have a strong role in protecting biodiversity. In addition to participation in restoration, a range of actions in the public or private sphere may support biodiversity. Despite this, there is a lack of clarity about what actions should be prioritized for behavior change campaigns. We developed and applied a method to prioritize community actions for biodiversity conservation that incorporates an expert-based assessment of impact and a community-informed measure of the likelihood of uptake. In stage 1, experts (n=143) completed a survey that quantified the relative impact of actions based on best-worst scaling of perceived impact. In stage 2, surveyed community members (n=3200) ranked the likelihood of adopting actions based on the ease or difficulty of performing each action, and the opportunity for change based on the proportion of respondents not yet engaging in each behavior. Experts gave the following actions the highest ranking for impact: voting for the environment (first), participating in restoration in ecological priority areas (second), and purchasing and protecting remnant bushland (third). When considering the disciplinary background and institutional background of experts, voting and participating in restoration activities remained in the upper ranked options. However, there was some divergence between these groups. For example, reducing beef consumption was ranked third by university-based experts but ranked 28th by experts based in state government. Overall, community members ranked the following behaviors as most likely to be adopted: following quarantine laws (first), reducing plastic use (second), and managing pets (third). Top likelihood ranking of actions was minimally affected by community characteristics (nature relatedness, gender, location). Integrating these findings, the action ranked most favorably for impact, likelihood, and opportunity was participating in restoration. Choosing actions for behavior change campaigns requires consideration of the entire social-ecological system-from social factors that enable or constrain adoption to the ecological impact of actions across relevant social and ecological contexts.

Inhibiting Shuttle Effect and Dendrite Growth in Sodium-Sulfur Batteries Enabled by Applying External Acoustic Field.

The room-temperature sodium-sulfur (RT Na-S) battery is a promising alternative to traditional lithium-ion batteries owing to its abundant material availability and high specific energy density. However, the sodium polysulfide shuttle effect and dendritic growth pose significant challenges to their practical applications. In this study, we apply diverse disciplinary backgrounds to introduce a novel method to stimulate polarized BaTiO3 (BTO) nanoparticles on the separator. This approach generates more charges due to the piezoelectric effect under stronger driving forces produced by applying a controllable acoustic field at the outer edge of the cell. The acoustically stimulated BTO attracts more polysulfides, thus reducing the shuttling effect from the cathode to the anode and ultimately enhancing the battery performance. Meanwhile, the acoustic waves create additional streaming flows, improving the uniformity of the sodium ion dispersion, enhancing the sodium ion transport and reducing the possibility of sodium dendrite development. We believe that this work offers a new strategy for the development of high-performance Na-S batteries.

“I Learned How to Think, Not What to Think.” Student Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Honours Programme

The Arts and Science Honours Academy (ASHA) is a unique interdisciplinary undergraduate honours programme at a large research-intensive university in Canada. Data were collected in early 2020 from 108 past and present students, representing the first eleven cohorts of the programme. Triangulating results from quantitative and qualitative analyses, we describe the ASHA students’ educational and social experience during their time at university and, for those who have graduated, their post-graduate activities. Situating our investigation within previous literature examining interdisciplinary undergraduate learning communities and high impact practices, we assess whether students from arts and science disciplines experienced the programme differently, and which aspects of the programme were most impactful. We find that academically, students reported benefiting from the exposure to interdisciplinary thought, the opportunity to do research, and the study abroad requirement. Socially, students reported benefiting from the connections they formed with a small cohort of high achieving peers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. While science students reported benefitting the most from ASHA socially, arts students were more likely to indicate that the programme influenced their careers following graduation. These findings provide evidence to support the creation and design of future interdisciplinary undergraduate programmes.

Introduction to the special issue “environmental criminology in crime prevention: theories for practice”

In this special issue, five articles demonstrate the impact of contemporary Environmental Criminology theory on the understanding of crime and the development of crime prevention practices in both urban and rural contexts. The articles exemplify the development of Environmental Criminology as a field that extends beyond crime in physical spaces to encompass offenses in cyberspace, illustrating the field’s adaptability and relevance in an increasingly digital world. Authored by environmental criminologists from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, these articles offer a range of international perspectives, thereby contributing to the field of security while addressing broader social issues.

Characteristics and considerations of French medical education

Abstract French medical education, with a long history and guided by laws and decrees set by the French Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health, aims at elite training, focusing on the cultivation of students’ clinical practice and scientific research capabilities, and implementing a unified medical talent training model. The French medical education system continuously seeks innovation and change. In September 2020, a new round of reforms was initiated in aspects such as admission pathways, examination system, and assessment methods. These changes aim to enhance medical students’ disciplinary backgrounds, strengthen process-based assessment, and foster the development of versatile medical professionals. This article analyzes the characteristics of French medical education and the main measures of this round of reforms, providing insights and considerations for the training of cultivated medical talents in China.

Student feedback guides the development of a microbiome card game “No Guts No Glory”

Introduction: We frequently associate microbes with infection, rarely expounding on their usefulness and importance to healthy development. For humanity to leverage these microbial “super powers”, learners from all backgrounds need to appreciate their utility and consider how microbes could help solve some of the most critical problems we face. However, learners are frequently uninterested or intimidated by microbiology. The card game “No Guts No Glory” was created to engage students by piquing curiosity and encouraging informal learning to change perceptions and advocate the value of microbes to good health. Methods: Undergraduates from various faculties in the National University of Singapore were invited to play and give feedback on accessibility, engagement and self-reported learning gains. Results: The game was well-received across disciplinary backgrounds with positive feedback (5-point scale) on game mechanics being fun (4.17±0.63), attractive artwork (3.83±1.00) and scientific snippets (3.79±1.04), positive re-playability (3.46±0.84), player engagement for those without foundational knowledge in microbiology (3.63±1.04), and usefulness of knowledge taught (3.54±1.10). Areas for improvement evidenced from feedback included unclear instructions (2.74±0.98), limited content taught (2.76±0.93), not generating interest to attend formal microbiome classes (2.88±1.17) and not prompting lifestyle changes (1.98±1.11). Conclusion: This pilot study provided valuable insights from the target demographic, with concrete ideas on how to improve the educational potential of “No Guts No Glory”. Findings further lay the groundwork for the design of future instruments to objectively quantify learning gains from gameplay. Keywords: Game-based Learning, Microbiome, Microbiology, Card Game, No Guts No Glory