STEMskiller: Skill Set Map for Mentors of Early Career Researchers
ENGAGEMENT, INVOLVEMENT, COLLABORATION, TRANSDISCIPLINARITY, AND INQUISITIVNESS: Converging science and technologies
Transdiciplinarity
Definition:
Unlike interdisciplinarity, “transdisciplinarity” (TD) represents academic effort with a clearer goal: to understand the world across disciplinary demarcations, and the:
…emergence of transdisciplinarity is dated conventionally to the first international seminar on interdisciplinarity (ID), co-sponsored in 1970 by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the influential typology created for that meeting, TD was defined as ‘a common system of axioms for a set of disciplines’ that transcends the narrow scope of disciplinary worldviews through an overarching synthesis.[1]
Transdisciplinarity attempts to answer questions such as:
How to tackle the manifold aspects of reality? How to increase understanding on global and complex issues? How to stimulate synergies among disciplines? How to support co-operation and exchange among experts and sectors?[2]
Mentors should make mentees aware of such trends because grants at the international level (e.g., EU grants related to sustainability and climate change) can incorporate a basic level of collaboration across disciplines in an attempt to solve societal problems.
[1] Klein, J.T. (2014). Discourses of transdisciplinarity: Looking Back to the Future. Futures, 63, 69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.08.008>
[2] Kim, Y. (1998). Forward to: Stimulating Synergies, Integrating Knowledge.International Symposium on Transdisciplinarity, Val-d'Oise, France, 1998, III. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000114694
Useful resources on Transdiciplinarity:
Alonso-Yanez, G., House-Peters, L., Garcia-Cartagena, M., Bonelli, S., Lorenzo-Arana, I., & Ohira, M. (2019). Mobilizing transdisciplinary collaborations: Collective reflections on decentering academia in knowledge production. Global Sustainability, 2, https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2019.2
Provides a description of a multi-national TD collaboration in the area of global sustainability, challenges encountered, and thoughts about how to improve future joint efforts.
Klein, J.T. (2014). Discourses of transdisciplinarity: Looking Back to the Future. Futures, 63, 69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.08.008
Provides a brief overview of TD and current interpretations of related concepts, concluding that:
As an epistemological project, TD will be aligned more closely with the discourse of transcendence. As a method of knowledge production, it will be linked with utilitarian objectives, although they range from manufacturing new products to new protocols for health care and environmental sustainability. As a form of critique, it will continue to interrogate the structure and logic of the university and its role in society (p. 73).
UNESCO Division of Philosophy and Ethics. (1998). Stimulating Synergies, Integrating Knowledge.International Symposium on Transdisciplinarity, Val-d'Oise, France.https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000114694
Discussions of TD itself as well as its incorporation into the conceptualization of UNESCO as an organization, helpful in understanding the historical context in which the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals arose.[1]
[1] https://en.unesco.org/sustainabledevelopmentgoals
Tags: All IPS; all PSR; all IAL; CompQ
Peer Review: None
Table of contents:
Author: Stephanie Krueger
Peer Reviewer(s): None
Last Updated: October 28, 2021