Transdisciplinary Thinking Research Articles

Luminous Science: Teachers Designing For and Developing Transdisciplinary Thinking and Learning

Creating learning environments that integrate arts, sciences, and computing in education can improve learning in these disciplines. In particular, transdisciplinary integrations of these disciplines can lead to expansive alterations or dissolutions of epistemological, ideological, and methodological boundaries. We wish to support teachers in the creation of transdisciplinary learning environments that draw on art, science, and computing. We developed a classroom project genre, Luminous Science, that was designed to bridge disciplinary materialities, epistemologies, and representations through students’ construction of computationally-rich representations of physical phenomena. We present a study of a multidisciplinary group of teachers co-designing a Luminous Science unit for their classrooms using sculptural lanterns with programmable media for both investigations and expressions of classroom gardens. We present a framework for examining what disciplinary understandings teachers drew on, how these ideas were utilized, and why they were brought together. We found teachers engaged in richly metarepresentational discussions wherein they applied values, epistemic criteria, and practices from all three constituent fields of study in their design work. We show how teachers developed units that simultaneously overlapped and diverged due to the pressures of navigating disciplinary and school structural challenges. Qualitative analysis of teacher discourse reveals how teachers liberated disciplinary boundaries, actively and critically explored synergies and tensions in disciplinary integration, and traversed goals that focused on both disciplinary improvement and holistic learning. Our study sheds light on how we can both study teachers who are designing for disciplinary integration and support them through professional development opportunities to encourage more transdisciplinary interactions that can expand what it means to do or teach art, science, and computing.

Thinking now: Transdisciplinary thinking as a disposition

Thinking now: Transdisciplinary thinking as a disposition

O DEBATE DA INTERDISCIPLINARIDADE: UMA INTRODUÇÃO CRÍTICA

O apelo à interdisciplinaridade tornou-se hoje em dia cada vez mais urgente, no que devemos estimular em nossos alunos, professores e pesquisadores um entendimento claro destes complexos (i.e., inter-multi-trans-metadisciplinar), incutindo uma verdadeira vocação reflexiva sobre estes aspectos de organização do conhecimento. Mais até do que um estilo de pesquisa, essa vocação reflexiva transdisciplinar deve expressar-se não apenas em temáticas e abordagens interdisciplinares, mas igualmente atenta a oportunidades de estudo e reflexão multi- e transdisciplinar. Abrindo-se assim à participação na resolução dos desafios societais, na busca do diálogo e colaboração com parceiros sociais, tecendo vínculos extramuros às lógicas mais conservadoras das corporações académica e científica. Pretendemos com este pequeno artigo de análise crítica proporcionar uma introdução ao debate da interdisciplinaridade, situando-o historicamente, estabelecendo uma definição quando aos conceitos consensuais destes complexos e sublinhando os princípios que devem estruturar o estilo de pesquisa interdisciplinar.

Ecosystemic and transdisciplinary thinking

Vivemos em uma época marcada por transformações de ordem social e cultural. Na base dessas mudanças, presenciamos uma transição paradigmática na forma de conceber e produzir o conhecimento. Buscaremos discutir qual paradigma é capaz de religar conhecimentos, construindo para uma visão complexa do universo. Objetiva-se compreender a relevância do paradigma emergente com base no diálogo entre conhecimentos científicos e saberes da experiência como possibilidade de romper com o reducionismo e a fragmentação do paradigma tradicional, visto que a visão ecossistêmica e transdisciplinar nos espaços escolares e nas práticas pedagógicas possibilita edificar uma educação mais humana.

A Note on Transdisciplinary Thinking -Meaning Making is an Art-

This article is a follow up on an earlier article1 in an effort to tackle complex problems: be it economic, social, environmental, etc. by utilizing different examples to explore a transdisciplinary methodological framework based on an interpretation of how Leonardo da Vinci tackled tough problems in his time.2 The subtitle is a tribute to da Vinci in that he always tried to depict his understandings of nature in art forms. Our interpretation of da Vinci's approach is summarized into four words, namely: transcendence, possibility, leveraging, and mastery which we will elaborate below.

A new education program for the future

‘´A new education program for the future´ is set in a time when, even though the SDGs have not been achieved in the time allocated for them, working towards the goals and aspirations expressed in them remains as important as ever. Insight into the interconnected nature of society, health and environment and the need for long-term, transdisciplinary thinking and action has led to the creation of a new health and sustainability Bachelor program. Transdisciplinary education and communication have become the new normal and one can feel an excitement growing from the exchange. The expanded understanding of healthcare that underpins this kind of education and practice amplifies critical question to physiotherapy as we move towards new healthcare futures: Will we hold on to physiotherapy as it always has been, or will we change it? Will we oppose or contribute to the creation of new approaches to healthcare practice and education? What will be our contributions to the complex social and environmental challenges of healthcare today and in the future? What futures are we willing to imagine, and which ones are we willing to help come to life?

Leonardo: A ‘mind space’ in transit

This ultimate Archaeology celebrates the legacy of Leonardo, an idea that became a Journal that developed into a global transdisciplinary community. The author reflects on the last half century of innovation in the practice of art and science that has galvanized generations of creative practitioners entangled in the turbulence of transdisciplinary thinking. In tracking the emergence of this mind space, this Archaeology projects to the future where Leonardo has a vital role to play in engaging and shaping new world perspectives.

Transforming sustainability science for practice: a social–ecological systems framework for training sustainability professionals

New applied approaches are needed to address urgent, global environmental issues. Practitioners, scholars, and policy makers alike call for increased integration of natural and social sciences to develop new frameworks for better addressing the range of contemporary environmental issues. From a theoretical perspective, social–ecological systems (SES) offers a novel approach for enhancing sustainability science and for improving the practice of environmental management. To translate SES theory into action, education and training programs are needed that focus on the application of SES approaches across the education and professional spectrum, from K-12 to graduate training to agency management. We developed a training framework that serves sustainability practitioners by building their capacity to apply SES approaches to real world problems and decision-making. The framework uses a SES-based environmental management approach based on a systemic worldview, transdisciplinary thinking, co-development of knowledge, stakeholder engagement, and adaptive governance. The social–ecological systems training and education program (SESTEP or “see-step”) framework was designed to provide SES training opportunities as a response to the need expressed by senior directors of US federal land management agencies. The core of the framework is a 12-step SES heuristic that provides a diagnostic tool for practitioners as they work through a SES case-study issue or problem. The curriculum provides adaptable and tailored professional development training for sustainability professionals to enhance sustainability science in practice. The evaluation of the inaugural course indicates achievement of positive course learning outcomes consistent with advancing sustainability science in practice.

In the shadow of sociology: Bateson through the lens of Durkheim

Gregory Bateson developed his transdisciplinary thinking in the shadow of sociology, but his ideas are not generally viewed as part of the field of classical sociology. This article will explain this exclusion by arguing that Bateson’s way of theorising – while attempting to make progress in the understanding of reality – returns to ideas that were already rejected within the field in which he first worked. Furthermore, as a reading of Bateson through the lens of Durkheim will show, Bateson’s theories fail to provide a better understanding of social reality than those of his predecessors. This type of critical analysis demonstrates the weakness of some of Bateson’s central claims and contributes to a more in-depth understanding and reassessment of his ideas from a sociological perspective. Pointing out that Bateson’s critique of the modern worldview is based on a pre-critical and pre-modern philosophy of wholeness is not to invalidate Bateson’s foundational intuition that our current mode of thinking challenges our chances of surviving as a species. However, in order to make a theoretically convincing argument concerning how our thinking challenges our survival, a more critical understanding of the relation between mind and society than the one Bateson offers is required.

Teacher and student enactments of a transdisciplinary art-science-computing unit

Transdisciplinary learning environments have potential to bring together the arts, sciences, and computing within schools. We investigate the student and teacher enactment of sensemaking practices that break down disciplinary silos. We describe a pedagogical approach, Luminous Science, where students make dynamic, computationally-rich artistic representations of data from a classroom garden. Then we present an analysis of students’ sensemaking practices used during the transdisciplinary unit in three cases of art, science and computing classrooms. Qualitative analysis of a student group and teachers’ curricular materials in each of these classrooms elucidates how teachers’ enactment choices, organization, and facilitation of the unit we co-designed with them facilitated opportunities for students’ transdisciplinary thinking and learning. We show that when teachers’ enactments supported increased computational complexity and ties between artifact and phenomenon, then students participated in deeper transdisciplinary sensemaking. We discuss the implications for the design of curricular materials and professional development to support effective organization and discourse practices by teachers in orchestrating transdisciplinary sensemaking.

Foundation for transdisciplinary education at Cape Peninsula University of Technology

South Africa faces a multitude of social, economic and environmental challenges, which require well-considered planning efforts. However, the efficacy of the built environment professions to adequately plan for the current and future populations can to some extent be questioned. Factors that are arguably responsible for the failure of the professions to achieve the desired outcomes include the following: (1) the inability of professionals to comprehensively analyse community problems and (2) although the various professions might work on the same issues, they largely fail to transcend disciplinary boundaries. This state of affairs can in part be linked to the role of higher education, which is in a good position to equip future professionals with the skills required for the analysis of diverse societal problems. In spite of the importance of education and training, there is a paucity of literature that explore ways in which the South African higher education sector instils transdisciplinary thinking and, accordingly, imparts the requisite soft skills to students. Using the case study of Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, the aim of this article was to present efforts that are pursued towards instilling transdisciplinarity in students. The efforts revolve around community service-learning pedagogy, which grants students a platform to work in close collaboration with communities. In the process, students and community members develop an in-depth understanding of the community’s problems and how they could be collectively resolved.

INTEGRATIONIST TRIADIC AGENDAS FOR CITY RESEARCH:CASES FROM RECENT URBAN STUDIES

With more than 60% of the world population living in urban areas, cities are becoming at the centre of attention in academic institutions and government organizations. However, there appears to be a continuous fragmentation in the types of knowledge developed where issues or concerns are always addressed in isolation and many factors critical to a comprehensive understanding of cities towards creating better urban environments are oversimplified at best or ignored at worst. Therefore, the thrust of this paper is to demonstrate the thought processes involved in instigating frameworks, raising questions, and establishing objectives for responsive city research. It aims to present two triadic agendas that untangle the essential components of city research; the first is the Lefebvrian triadic conception on the production of space and the second is the triadic perspective of lifestyles theories for understanding housing developments, typologies, and choices. Contextually, while the theoretical underpinnings of these agendas are developed based on a body of knowledge generated in the context of the Western world, their conceptualisation is adapted to grasp and examine key unique particularities of selected emerging (and globalised) Arab cities in the Gulf region. Calling for the need for a trans-disciplinary thinking paradigm for city research, the two agendas adopt an integrationist approach that is amenable to understanding the urban realities of these cities.

A set of learning outcomes for transdisciplinary thinking*

A set of learning outcomes for transdisciplinary thinking*

Ethnic Studies as Decolonial Transdisciplinarity*

The decolonization of knowledge entails various forms of transdisciplinarity, but not all forms of transdisciplinarity are decolonial. This article offers an analysis of decolonial transdisciplinarity in relation to the European sciences, its disciplines, and its methods. It identifies a “secular line,” which combines with a “color line” to define the context and horizon of the European sciences. I propose that Ethnic Studies establishes a different attitude from that underlying the European sciences and represents an example of decolonial transdisciplinary thinking.

Managing risks to Canada’s boreal zone: transdisciplinary thinking in pursuit of sustainability1

The policy landscape is changing as Canada considers its energy future. The Canadian boreal zone has a large amount of natural resources, giving Canada options in terms of its energy future. However, the sustainability of the boreal zone has been deemed at risk because of the cumulative effects of intensifying natural resource activities (forestry, mining, oil and gas, and renewable energy) on ecosystems in the face of the uncertainty associated with climate change. As Canada considers the future of the boreal zone, there will be additional challenges to ensure that we do not further disadvantage marginalized human populations living in the boreal zone who are at high risk of the consequences of climate change. In response to these challenges, the Boreal 2050 project was initiated to understand the risk of failing to achieve the future sustainability of the boreal zone using the ISO 31000 risk management framework. First, we identified the major drivers of the risks to the sustainability of the boreal zone, which include atmospheric change, the demand for provisioning and nonprovisioning ecosystem services, demographics and societal values, industrial innovation and infrastructure, and governance. Second, we analyzed the risk of failing to achieve a sustainable boreal zone using scenario analysis, where we framed four plausible future scenarios around two axes of change: the global economy’s energy and society’s capacity to adapt. Third, we evaluated the risk and determined that present governance systems are driving Canada towards failing to achieve a sustainable boreal zone. To ensure the future sustainability of the boreal, we need to shift from an oil/gas/coal-producing country to a renewable energy leader and shift from using a top-down strategy where Canadians have a low capacity to adapt towards a mixture of top-down and bottom-up participatory strategies where Canadians—particularly Indigenous peoples living in the boreal zone—have a higher capacity to adapt. To facilitate this shift in governance, substantive changes will be required in institutional arrangements designed to protect boreal ecosystems.

La formación del docente de Proyecto en el Programa Nacional de Formación de Administración

En las instituciones universitarias, los procesos de formación docente, son en esencias dinámicos e inacabados, más aún cuando se suscriben nuevos procesos curriculares que rompen con el estatus quo preponderante. El presente ensayo tiene el propósito de reflexionar e impulsar un proceso de formación docente en la Universidad Politécnica Territorial del Estado Mérida “Kléber Ramírez” (UPTMKR), en su Programa Nacional de Formación de Administración, el cual presenta una innovadora estructura curricular, donde específicamente la unidad proyecto, demanda capacidades y actitudes en los docentes los cuales no han sido preparados apropiadamente y que por las características de esta actividad pedagógica, es necesario disertar profundamente. Por consiguiente, se realiza una fundamentación que de los basamentos legales de la Misión Alma Mater y los Programas Nacionales de Formación, posteriormente se diserta sobre el paradigma socio crítico de Torres (1983), la Complejidad o Transcomplejidad de Morín (1998); y de Ugas (2003), así como algunos elementos del pensamiento transdisciplinario, finalmente se concluye con algunos pensamientos sobre Competencias de Veliz (2009). El artículo de Zacarías (2015), orientó de manera importante el desarrollo del presente trabajo.

Education for Sustainable Development 4.0: Lessons Learned from the University of Graz, Austria

Higher education for sustainable development plays a crucial role in the transformation of society towards a more sustainable pathway of development. The new trends in society and technology experienced in the course of the fourth industrial revolution come with challenges, but also provide opportunities. In this paper, we reflect on the conceptual basis of education for sustainable development as approached at the University of Graz, Austria, and contrast this basis with the expectations stated by students. The results showed that students acknowledged the high importance of digital competencies and found it highly important to be confronted with future-oriented topics and contents. Interestingly, students seemed skeptical about online course formats and digitalization of teaching and clearly preferred the interactive classroom experience. Students also rated international topics and transdisciplinary thinking as fairly important. Interestingly, a relatively high share of students only saw mediocre added value in experiencing international classrooms, and in having international teachers, when it comes to meeting their top priority, which is being competitive in the job market. Education for sustainable development in the future will not only need to prepare students for international, interdisciplinary, and digital environments, but also will need to meet the expectations of demanding and ambitious students and provide them with bright career prospects.

Online professional development for environmental educators: strategies to foster critical thinking and social interactions

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer opportunities for professional development of environmental educators globally, yet we lack understanding of participants™ cognitive and social learning processes and of how instructors can enhance these processes. Based on the Community of Inquiry framework, we used a survey and coded participant discussion board and Facebook posts to examine the cognitive, social, and teaching presence in the Environmental Education: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems MOOC, offered by Cornell University. Rather than train educators in a specific curriculum, the goal of the MOOC is to expand educators™ critical and transdisciplinary thinking about the field of environmental education and to enhance social interactions to support learning, educators, and knowledge co-creation. Results indicate that cognitive presence is higher on the discussion board whereas social presence is higher on Facebook. Over half of cognitive posts focused on exploration, a lower level of learning, whereas just less than a fifth reflected higher level integration, suggesting room for enhancing cognitive learning. Our results suggest strategies to encourage higher levels of thinking and more meaningful social interactions to foster learning, educator support, and co-creation of knowledge, thereby improving online professional development.

New challenges for education in agroecology

ABSTRACTBased on discussions in a workshop associated with the conference The Agroecological Imagination: A Franco-American Exchange, we synthesize the state of agroecological education. We focus on three central questions: the what, how, and who of agroecological education. What are the key competencies, skills, and attitudes for future agroecologists? How do we best teach and learn agroecology? Who the learners and teachers are and should be? With regard to the what, we offer the notion of the expert-generalist who has an expertise but is also trained in integrative and transdisciplinary thinking. With regard to the how, we emphasize the importance of experiential learning and action learning, or active experience, and process for content in context. With regard to the who, we discuss the centrality of recognizing the broad community of agroecology, and the importance of agroecological education reflecting that breadth.

The entrepreneurial university as an engine for sustainable development

This study adopts a novel approach of conceptualising entrepreneurial universities through the lens of the UN higher education sustainability initiative (HESI). Transcending the narrow approach of the entrepreneurial universities as generating spin-offs, entrepreneurial universities are closely linked with the concept of sustainable development. Interpreting entrepreneurial universities as agents promoting economic, social and environmental change, the HESI can offer a useful framework for expanding the potential of entrepreneurial universities. This study reveals that whilst the majority of HESI signatories only commit to a limited number of sustainable development goals (SDGs), there is sufficient evidence of 'best practices' to regard the HESI as a useful and transformative framework for HEIs that can encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. To this extent, this paper aims to capture the interaction between entrepreneurial universities and the SDGs. However, the paper draws attention to the need for a holistic approach for HEIs that allows for more transdisciplinary thinking and collaboration. It is revealed that this can be challenging for HEIs.