Disciplinary Boundaries Research Articles

Towards equitable multilingualism: promoting transdisciplinary, collaborative dialogue between English as a lingua franca and translingualism

Abstract Inspired by Hult’s (2010. Theme-based research in the transdisciplinary field of educational linguistics. In Francis M. Hult (ed.), Directions and prospects for educational linguistics, 19–32. Springer) discussion of theme-based research within educational linguistics that focuses, first and foremost, on solving problems rather than adhering to disciplinary boundaries and conventions, this article calls for transdisciplinary collaboration to resolve educational problems related to monolingualism, native-speakerism, and the hegemony of colonial ideologies. More specifically, we make a case for transdisciplinary dialogue between English as a lingua franca (ELF) and translingualism. We argue that these two research fields, with their increasingly converging interests and goals as well as distinct strengths, can make a greater impact in addressing persistent educational problems through targeted collaboration, research, and (language) pedagogy based on equitable multilingualism (e.g., Ortega, Lourdes. 2019. SLA and the study of equitable multilingualism. The Modern Language Journal 103. 23–38). In this conceptual paper, we first introduce translingualism and ELF as equally legitimate multilingual theories. Next, we identify shared key tenets and orientations as well as distinctive vantage points of each approach that researchers and educators can take advantage of for collaboratively addressing problems within classrooms and beyond. Finally, we lay out a vision for how this transdisciplinary, collaborative dialogue can help realize more equitable multilingualism.

Examining S-T-E-M Teachers’ Design of Integrated STEM Lesson Plans

AbstractReform efforts in different parts of the world call for the adoption of integrated approaches to STEM education. However, little is known about how teachers work, as members of learning communities, to design STEM teaching material such as lesson plans. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the design of STEM lesson plans by in-service secondary teachers (n = 26) from all S-T-E-M disciplinary backgrounds who participated as members of a learning community in the context of a 7-month professional development program comprised of 13 small-group sessions. STEM lesson plans were analysed based on the key characteristics of a conceptual framework of integrated STEM, and the teachers’ identified interdisciplinary elements were analysed through the boundary objects framework. The qualitative content analysis produced four main findings: (a) divergencies take place at the disciplinary level when teachers design STEM lesson plans; (b) teachers coming from different disciplines have different positioning regarding specific integrated STEM key characteristics; (c) the type and sequence of instructional activities served as a boundary-design practice; (d) the nature of the boundary objects that teachers identify in order to teach integrated STEM differs according to the discipline. The findings of the study shed light on teachers’ understanding and needs at the disciplinary level and call for specially designed STEM professional development programmes that provide explicit opportunities for disciplinary boundary crossings.

University education, conflicts, borders and cooperation: interdisciplinary perspectives between Brazil and Ukraine

The dossier "University education, conflicts, borders and cooperation: interdisciplinary perspectives between Brazil and Ukraine" brings together national and international articles that problematize the complex relations of higher education in conditions of crisis, cross-border cooperation between cultures and fields of knowledge. With interdisciplinarity as a horizon, the manuscripts discuss how universities can build bridges across disciplinary boundaries in order to promote peaceful coexistence in regions marked by conflict and division. The texts address the potential of internationalization and university cooperation. Overall, this issue provides a thought-provoking and timely contribution to debates on the role of higher education in building more just and peaceful societies.

“We are all just humans participating”: the role of an embodied approach, virtual space and artistic media in shaping participants’ experience in a co–design process

ABSTRACT Integrating multiple perspectives is key to successful co-design, yet often hampered by communication gaps arising from different epistemological backgrounds and lived experiences. This challenge is amplified when the design problem centres around experiences that are difficult articulate in words, such as those in Parkinson’s disease (PD). To explore alternative strategies for communication between diverse PD stakeholders, Piece of Mind brought together neuroscientists, performing artists and individuals with lived experience to co-create an interdisciplinary performance grounded in scientific and experiential knowledge. Participants met on Zoom over nine months, in which creative, embodied approaches were used to share scientific concepts, facilitate discussion, and identify key issues for the performance. We built on emergent themes through virtual and in-studio collaborations, culminating in a 45-min filmed and live performance. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a subset of participants regarding their co-design experience and take-aways, to identify elements of process, space and materials contributing to its success. We found that an embodied approach, in virtual space and incorporating multiple artistic media, enabled participants to leave their comfort zones and disciplinary boundaries to engage with one another through curiosity and generosity – and consider how these conditions facilitated disparate starting points to converge towards a common goal.

On the Paradoxical Structure of the Concept of Style. A Theoretical Framework

<p>In addition to his famous concept of the style of life or lifestyle, Simmel develops a more general concept of style in his writings on art and aesthetics. He makes clear in this context that the concept of style has a paradoxical structure that mediates between the general and the particular and that it always stands for the general. This concept of style allows Simmel to apply it in different research fields: sociology and social philosophy, ethics, art and aesthetics or intellectual history. In developing a theoretical framework for understanding Simmel’s concept of style, we will need to cross these disciplinary boundaries. We will examine the fields of arts and aesthetics as well as intellectual history so as to illustrate how Simmel applies the concept of style. This will also make the paradoxical structure of this concept clear</p>

Lived-through Experience, Multi-perspective Methodology, Contentious Polysemy: Challenges in the Study of Vulnerability

The article concludes the special section on vulnerability. By reflecting on the arguments in and the convergences between the contributions to the preceding trialogue, it outlines three key challenges in vulnerability research. Across disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological boundaries, the contributions agree in their criticism of negative, individualistic, and/or essentialist conceptualizations of vulnerability; instead, they call for a non-dualist, pluralist, and participative approach to vulnerability that takes the lived-through experience of individuals as its starting point. Based on this decision, the challenges arise of (1) how to conceptualize and identify the structures of lived-through experiences of vulnerability and of (2) how the experiences of individuals and groups in different social positions can be collected, understood, and interpreted. The trialogue texts, we argue, provide important impulses for the development of a multi-perspective methodology, which permits to analyze vulnerability in a way that is theoretically, ethically, and methodologically appropriate. Finally, by taking lived-through experience as a starting point, the articles in this special section (3) contribute to a better understanding of the contentious polysemy of the term vulnerability. By analyzing the constitutive ambivalence and ambiguity of experiences of vulnerability as well as the difficulties of intersubjective communicability, the contributions help to understand why articulations of vulnerability are often vague and why vulnerability can be politically instrumentalized. In this way, the comprehensive understanding of vulnerability (e.g., as positive and negative, enabling and inhibiting), promoted in the trialogue, also becomes a means of moral and political criticism.

The University As Infrastructure of Becoming: Re-Activating Academic Freedom Through Humility in Times of Radical Uncertainty

ABSTRACT Traditionally, the field of science and technology studies (STS) considered the scientific laboratory as the central site of knowledge production and technological development. While providing rich analyses of the social construction of scientific knowledge and the role of non-human actors, STS scholars have often neglected the university – the very context in which laboratories themselves are embedded – as a relevant object of research. In this paper, we argue for re-introducing the university as a relevant category and object of analysis by using the notion of epistemic virtues to link epistemic culture – traditionally the focus of STS – and epistemic structure – traditionally the focus of higher education studies. Advancing this line of argumentation, we make three analytical moves. First, we explore academic freedom as a specific version of negative liberty that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. We suggest that academics continuously negotiate academic freedom considering culturally and socially situated epistemic virtues such as objectivity and neutrality. Second, we introduce the notion of humility to revisit scientific knowledge production more generally and academic freedom in particular. Finally, we argue that practicing humility leads to enacting the university as an infrastructure of becoming otherwise, thereby enriching our understanding of universities as distinct and highly complex social spaces with a logic of their own.

Integrated nonurban-urban flood management using multi-objective optimization of LIDs and detention dams based on game theory approach

Flood events in urban and non-urban areas have long-term devastating impacts on communities resulting in casualties and economic damages. Different interconnected concepts of flood management lead decision-makers to broaden their focus from traditional points of view to transcend the disciplinary boundaries of hydrological modeling. So, evaluating interconnected aspects of flood control requires configuring an Integrated Flood Management (IFM) system. In this research, a novel comprehensive framework is proposed to control floods in urban and non-urban areas using Low-Impact Development (LID) practices and detention dams, simultaneously. In the first step, urban and non-urban areas of the Darakeh catchment in Tehran, Iran, as the study area, are modeled using Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). Next, by coupling the SWMM with Pareto Envelope-based Selection Algorithm II (PESA-II), optimal management scenarios are generated considering four hydrological-economic objectives. Each management scenario specifies the optimal sites and dimensions of detention dams and the optimal location and area of LIDs in non-urban and urban areas, respectively. Indeed, the innovative IFM framework provides a multi-dimensional trade-off between upstream and downstream flood protection. Then, interactions among the main stakeholders with conflicting interests are incorporated into utility functions. Ultimately, using COmplex PRoportional ASsessment (COPRAS) and Nash bargaining methods the most capable management scenarios are selected based on stakeholders' preferences. Results showed that the IFM framework can be significantly effective in flood severity attenuation. Based on the findings, proposed method warrants peak flow reduction up to 60.04 and 53.50 percent at the inlet and outlet of the urban area. Besides, the Nash bargaining approach tends to select a scenario with a higher peak flow reduction compared to the COPRAS method. Also, results signify that each stakeholder's relative importance and preferences can remarkably impact the decision-making process. In addition to resolving conflicts arising from implementing flood control measures, this framework can incorporate divergent aspects of flood management into a reliable system.

Words can only get us so far

The traditional ontological division between the lexicon and grammar has often resulted in a reductionist view of the lexicon and lexical competence as composed of individual words in isolation. This narrow view of the lexicon has transcended disciplinary boundaries and is apparent in the focus on single words of widely used psycholinguistic measures of language (e.g. picture naming, verbal fluency, lexical decision) and cognitive ability alike (e.g. Stroop, recall in working memory span). This article argues that such an approach has imposed limitations on the questions that can be examined by researchers and on the generalizability of some results. Here I propose that, rather than assigning multiword units their own ‘niche’ in psycholinguistic studies, they should be viewed as part of the way core lexical competence is measured and conceptualized, both in monolingual and bilingual speakers. I also review promising advances in recent years brought about by a surge in the number of studies focused on multiword units and by new tasks of individual cognitive skill (e.g. multiword-based chunking ability). These hold the potential to allow for a cross-disciplinary shift in the examination of lexical competence as grounded in community-based norms and in line with current usage-based approaches.

Developing a Gain-in-research-ability Test to Navigate and Assess Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) benefit student learning by providing accessible authentic research opportunities. However, the uniqueness of each disciple and variation in instructors’ perception of CUREs make it challenging to reach a consensus on how to effectively assess students’ research abilities in a CURE laboratory. To address this question, we developed a Gain in Research Ability Test (GRAT) based on seven areas of competencies in research (Identify, Question, Plan, Conduct, Analyze, Conclude, and Communicate). The GRAT framework orchestrates the learning objectives and research activities, providing a quantitative assessment of student learning outcomes. The GRAT scores before and after the interventions revealed a significant growth in students’ research abilities, consistent with students’ perception of the GRAT-navigated research experience. As the seven areas of competencies in research are commonly observed across disciplines, the GRAT framework circumvents disciplinary boundaries and sets universal milestones for the assessment of CURE. Future larger-scale and cross-discipline studies are warranted to explore the potential of GRAT to provide a common metric for substance and consistency in the assessment of students’ gain in research ability across disciplines.

Using participatory video in environmental research

Abstract Tackling environmental challenges that face humanity requires us to acknowledge new ways of working and to cross disciplinary boundaries. However, the methodological toolkit used by environmental researchers to explore the human attitudes, knowledge and behaviours that drive global challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate breakdown remains constrained. Here, we describe participatory video, a methodology for capturing and communicating knowledge, which goes beyond interviews, focus groups and participant observation. We draw from the literature and our own experience of conducting participatory video projects in Nepal, Guyana and Peru. We demonstrate the diverse ways in which the methodology can be applied to environmental research and highlight its strengths and limitations. Participatory video provides a more holistic understanding of environmental issues by using multiple types of data, its longer‐term engagement with issues, opening channels of communication between stakeholders, engaging a diversity of knowledge systems and advocating for transformative change. By taking a participatory video approach, environmental researchers may begin to counter commonplace criticisms about lack of diversity and entrenched colonialism. This simultaneously responds to wider calls for environmental research to engage with social justice issues, represent diverse voices, understand different contexts and acknowledge the role of power. Crucially, this helps build trust amongst all those involved. By demonstrating how we have successfully used participatory video in projects in conservation, ecology and climate science, we provide guidance for researchers looking to expand their methodological toolkit. Ultimately, we seek to improve the use of participatory methods to help support communities to tackle the environmental challenges that they face. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Advancing Collective Intelligence in Human–AI Collaboration: Foundations for the COHUMAIN Framework

Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered machines are increasingly mediating our work and many of our managerial, economic, and cultural interactions. While technology enhances individual capabilities in many ways, how can we ensure that the sociotechnical system as a whole—comprising a complex web of hundreds of human–machine interactions—is exhibiting collective intelligence? Research on human–machine interactions has been conducted within different disciplinary silos, resulting in social science models that underestimate technology and vice versa. Integrating these diverse perspectives and methods is crucial at this juncture. To truly advance our understanding of this important and rapidly evolving area, we need frameworks to facilitate research that bridges disciplinary boundaries. This paper advocates for establishing an interdisciplinary research domain—Collective Human-Machine Intelligence (COHUMAIN). It outlines a research agenda for a holistic approach to designing and developing the dynamics of sociotechnical systems. To illustrate the approach we envision in this domain, we describe recent work on a sociocognitive architecture, the transactive systems model of collective intelligence, which articulates the critical processes underlying the emergence and functioning of collective intelligence in human–AI collaborations.

Shaping the Future of Destinations: New Clues to Smart Tourism Research from a Neuroscience Methods Approach

In the context of the technological era, the smart tourism construct serves as a bridge between human and the artificial worlds, combining social sciences and neurosciences. This study aims to explore smart tourism through neuroscientific methods in order to shape the future of tourism destinations, using a hybrid methodology combining bibliometric techniques and content analysis. The findings reveal the integration of diverse scientific domains, highlighting a transdisciplinary approach. They offer clear evidence that neuroscientific methods in smart tourism integrate multiple areas of scientific knowledge, surpassing disciplinary boundaries. “Destination” stands out alongside “emotion”, “visual attention” and eye tracking (ET). The collaboration network reveals the emergence of a new school, called neurotourism in the 21st century, formed mainly by actors and organizations from the Global North, evoking the need to include the Global South in the research scenario. The predominant methods include ET, heart rate (HR), and electroencephalography (EEG), suggesting triangulation with traditional methods for robust results. Virtual reality emerges as the primary immersive technology, promising insights when integrated with neurosciences. This study’s practical and theoretical contributions guide smart tourism strategies and enhance destination experiences through neuroscientific methods, addressing a gap in the scientific literature while advancing ontological and epistemological understanding.

The Cultivation of College Students’ Innovative Ability in the Field of Interdisciplinary Culture

Interdisciplinary culture has an influence on the cultivation of college students’ disciplinary thinking and the improvement of their comprehensive quality. However, the single discipline culture can easily lead to educational routines of disciplinary thinking, which is inconducive to the cultivation of college students’ thinking expansion and innovation ability. Divergent, associative, comparative, and structural thinking is a powerful tool for innovation, which should be strengthened by opening disciplinary boundaries, breaking disciplinary barriers, and carrying out disciplinary cultural dialogue to form an interdisciplinary cultural field, so as to cultivate students’ cross-disciplinary thinking habits and innovation ability.

Teacher educators and environmental justice: conversations about education for environmental justice between science and geography teacher educators based in England and Brazil

While environmental education has been present in the field of education for decades now, only recently our particular subject areas of science and geography have started to pay more critical attention to specific concerns surrounding the intersection of environmental issues and social justice (also known as environmental justice) within the context of formal secondary education, including in secondary teacher education programmes. Drawing on scholarship, policy landscapes and socio-environmental concerns from both the global South and the global North, and on a methodological approach based on transnational collective reflection and collaborative-dialogic writing, in this article we delve into our different cultural, geographical and disciplinary contexts, views and experiences as four teacher educators from Brazil and England who have been working at this intersection between environmental justice and Science and Geography teacher education programmes for secondary formal education. Here we will argue that environmental justice needs to have a central role in such teacher education programmes if we aim to support young people and their teachers in navigating the spatially diverse and unequal impacts of environmental emergencies in global North and South communities. We also consider future directions for research and collaboration across national and disciplinary boundaries within the landscape of environmental education for environmental justice, reflecting on the future of teacher education across the global North and the global South when facing more frequent and severe environmental emergencies.

In spirit and in truth: (re)searching Christianity and racial liberation in education

As educational justice scholarship addressing racial oppression continues to name the role of the spirit, there is a need for Black and Brown Christian educators and researchers to locate ourselves as grounded in the epistemologies and pedagogies of Christ as our spiritual home. This paper brings together eight Black and Brown Christian educators and researchers to grapple with what it means to be Christians committed to racial justice in education against the backdrop of centuries of religious corruption. Through collaborative autoethnography, we turn to our spiritual and religious lives situated within our racialized identities to challenge the disciplinary and material boundaries of what critical qualitative research counts as “knowing.” In doing this, we give ourselves, and all educators and researchers, permission to make evident the unseen forces that shape our ways of being in research and teaching.

Scientific identity and epistemology of movement, exercise, and sport sciences through the analysis of scientific production of Italian full professors

This study addresses the epistemological and identity challenges encountered by Movement, Exercise, and Sport Sciences (MEaSS) in Italy, particularly concerning the organization of scientific knowledge within academic contexts. MEaSS struggles to define its scientific identity and address epistemological concerns due to the concurrent operation of its academic scientific disciplines (ASD) within both biomedical and pedagogical domains. This situation raises questions about the classification of knowledge within MEaSS and its distinctiveness within the Italian academic community. The study aims to analyze the scientific production of Italian full professors in two ASDs of MEaSS and determine its relevance to biomedical, pedagogical, psychological, or sports domains. It also intends to investigate the alignment of Italian academic structures with international standards, particularly the European Research Council (ERC) model. Each full professor’s top 20 scientific products, ranked by the highest number of citations within the Google Scholar database, were analyzed. The analysis of scientific production among Italian full professors in the two ASDs of Movement, Exercise, and Sport Sciences (MEaSS) revealed significant findings. In the ASD of M-EDF/01, 58.5% of publications were attributed to the biomedical domain, followed by 32.7% in the sports domain, 6.9% in the pedagogical domain, and 1.9% in the psychological domain. For the ASD of M-EDF/02, 47.5% of publications were in the biomedical domain, 25% in the sports domain, 18.1% in the pedagogical domain, and 9.4% in the psychological domain. The prevalence of biomedical-focused research within both ASDs of MEaSS highlights a notable deviation from the intended disciplinary boundaries, raising concerns regarding the loss of scientific identity and epistemological coherence. These results emphasize the urgent need for alignment with international standards to ensure clarity of scientific identity and promote interdisciplinary research in MEaSS.

Overcoming boundaries: Interdisciplinary challenges and opportunities in cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience has considerable untapped potential to translate our understanding of brain function into applications that maintain, restore, or enhance human cognition. Complex, real-world phenomena encountered in daily life, professional contexts, and in the arts, can also be a rich source of information for better understanding cognition, which in turn can lead to advances in knowledge and health outcomes. Interdisciplinary work is needed for these bi-directional benefits to be realized. Our cognitive neuroscience team has been collaborating on several interdisciplinary projects: hardware and software development for brain stimulation, measuring human operator state in safety-critical robotics environments, and exploring emotional regulation in actors who perform traumatic narratives. Our approach is to study research questions of mutual interest in the contexts of domain-specific applications, using (and sometimes improving) the experimental tools and techniques of cognitive neuroscience. These interdisciplinary attempts are described as case studies in the present work to illustrate non-trivial challenges that come from working across traditional disciplinary boundaries. We reflect on how obstacles to interdisciplinary work can be overcome, with the goals of enriching our understanding of human cognition and amplifying the positive effects cognitive neuroscientists have on society and innovation.

Side-by-side

In this paper, a pedagogical model for fostering transdisciplinarity in the built environment is described. Unlike learning situations in design education which use multidisciplinary teams, this model is characterised by students working side-by-side on the same project each producing their own proposal. As is explained, the development of this model was inspired by a growing awareness of the need to look beyond discipline boundaries in order to more effectively address issues involving the design of the built environment; issues associated with a rapidly changing and increasingly technologically complex world. In this respect, transdisciplinarity formed the philosophical and theoretical basis for the development and implementation of a cross-discipline studio elective for architecture and interior design students from years three to six in their course. While there are limitations with the model, the evaluation reveals insights into how we might continue with constructing more appropriate learning opportunities for engendering transdisciplinary attitudes in students and graduates.

A dialogue between science and conservation: another naïve exploration in response to Salvador Muñoz-Viñas

This article is a response to Salvador Muñoz-Viñas’ 2022 article in this journal, ‘Conservation science, conservation practice and the conservator’s knowledge: a naïve exploration’. In his article, Muñoz-Viñas outlines 46 questions related to a conservation treatment that, we are told, cannot be answered by using the scientific method. This forms the basis for a vindication of the value of the knowledge of conservators, as well as a critical exploration of the limits of heritage science. In my response, I also present a list of questions related to a hypothetical scientific experiment. I have chosen questions that cannot be answered by science alone, because they require the expertise of conservators. In that way, I showcase a heritage science that respects the tacit knowledge of conservators, indeed, that depends on it. Essentially, the way we ask questions shapes the way we answer them. I argue that we must ask inclusive questions that help us collaborate across perceived disciplinary boundaries. The limitations of heritage science identified by Muñoz-Viñas are genuine, but we disagree in the attitude we should have in front of them. Interesting research happens only at the limits of scientific knowledge, precisely where heritage science has the most acute need for the knowledge of conservators.