LibGuides: Design Factory New Zealand: Post Graduate Certificate

The Research Process

Research

Te Tiriti o Waitangi

The Literature Review

Where to find information

Searching Tips

Writing

APA Referencing

Transdisciplinary

YouTube video- Trandisciplinary Research

The Transdisciplinary Research

YouTube Video on the Transdisciplinary Research

Ethics

Are you going onto your master's? Start your ethics application now!

Fill out either a low-risk or a high-risk form.

Low-Risk Ethics Form - If the project is one in which the nature of the potential/actual risk of harm to participants or the researcher is minimal and no more than is normally encountered in daily life, then a Low-Risk Application should be completed.

High-Risk Ethics Form - Research that does involve a certain amount of risk for the researcher and/or participants requires the completion and submission of a Full Application.

Once you and your supervisor are happy with it, send it to your Research Leader. Anthea Fester is the Research Leader for the Design Factory

Transdisciplinary Research: Principles, Processes, and Products

The Transdisciplinary Framework (TDR)

What is Transdisciplinary Research?

It is about engaging stakeholders in problem-solving to co-produce new knowledge
It is about looking at an issue or problem from all angles to get a new perspective
It is a reflexive process
It is a reflective irritative process
It is about looking at a complex system and seeing the interconnectedness and connection of all elements, people, and concepts
It is about crossing disciplines to make sure all the experts are consulted

This field guide defines transdisciplinary research as research that integrates knowledge across academic disciplines and with non-academic stakeholders to address societal challenges. It is guided by the principle that ‘scientific rigor meets societal relevance’.

YouTube Video on Problem framing in transdisciplinary research

Resources/ Books

Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research by Patricia Leavy
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781598745924
Publication Date: 2011-09-15
Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research by Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn (Editor); Jill Jäger (Foreword by); Elisabeth Zemp (Editor); Christian Pohl (Editor); Holger Hoffmann-Riem (Editor); Urs Wiesmann (Editor); Susette Biber-Klemm (Editor); Walter Grossenbacher-Mansuy (Editor); Dominique Joye (Editor)
Call Number: 001.4 HAN
ISBN: 9781402066986
Publication Date: 2008-01-15
Methods for Transdisciplinary Research by Matthias Bergmann; Thomas Jahn; Tobias Knobloch; Wolfgang Krohn; Christian Pohl; Engelbert Schramm; Ronald C. Faust (Translator)
Call Number: 001.42 BER
ISBN: 3593396475
Publication Date: 2013-02-15
Transdisciplinarity by Basarab Nicolescu
Call Number: 001.4 TRA
ISBN: 9781572738355
Publication Date: 2008-03-01
Transdisciplinary higher education : a theoretical basis revealed in practice by Paul Gibbs, editor.
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 3319561855
Publication Date: 2017
Transdisciplinary Public Health by Debra Haire-Joshu (Editor); Timothy D. McBride (Editor)
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781118418024
Publication Date: 2013-05-02

Journal Articles

Bella Chiesa, B., Christoph, V., & Hinton, C. (2009). How many brains does it take to build a new light: Knowledge management challenges of a transdisciplinary project? Mind, Brain, and Education, 3(1), 17-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-228X.2008.01049.x

Library Link

Klein, J. T. (2013). The transdisciplinary moment(um). Integral Review, 9(2), 189 – 199. http://www.integral-review.org/issues/vol_9_no_2_jun_2013_full_issue.pdf#page=194

Library Link

Mitchell, C., Cordell, D., & Fam, D. (2015). Beginning at the end: The outcome spaces framework to guide purposive transdisciplinary research. Futures, 65, 86-96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.10.007

Library Link

Montuori, A. (2005). Gregory Bateson and the Promise of Transdisciplinarity. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 12(1-2). https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/af57/4ea4faa818c61c8db8a1fe7a4ed61987845c.pdf

Montuori, A. (2013). The complexity of Transdisciplinary literature reviews. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 10(1/2), 45–55. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/complicity/index.php/complicity/article/view/20399/15670

Nicolescu, B. (2010). Methodology of transdisciplinary: Levels of reality, logic of the included middle and complexity. Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering and Science, 1(1), 19-38. http://basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_Notice/TJESNo_1_12_2010.pdf

Nicolescu, B. (2014). Methodology of transdisciplinarity. World Futures, 70(3-4), 186-199. file:///C:/Users/lbdxc/Downloads/ArticleWorldfutures.pdf

Polk, M. (2015). Transdisciplinary co-production: Designing and testing a transdisciplinary research framework for societal problem solving. Futures, 65, 110-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.11.001

Library Link

Roux, D. J., Stirzaker, R. J., Breen, C. M., Lefroy, E., & Cresswell, H. P. (2010). Framework for participative reflection on the accomplishment of transdisciplinary research programs. Environmental Science & Policy, 13(8), 733-741. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2010.08.002

Library Link

Shenton, A. K., & Hay-Gibson, N. V. (2011). Information behaviour and information literacy: The ultimate in transdisciplinary phenomena? Journal of Librarianship and information Science, 43(1), 166-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000611410767

Library Link

Scholz, R. W., & Steiner, G. (2015). The real type and ideal type of transdisciplinary processes: part I—theoretical foundations. Sustainability Science, 10(4), pp. 527-544. 10.1007/s11625-015-0326-4

Library Link

Stokols, D. (2006). Toward a science of transdisciplinary action research. American journal of community psychology, 38(1-2), pp. 63-77. DOI 10.1007/s10464-006-9060-5

Library Link

Wickson, F., Carew, A. L., & Russell, A. W. (2006). Transdisciplinary research: characteristics, quandaries and quality. Futures, 38(9), pp. 1046-1059. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2006.02.011

Library Link

Other Resources

Roodt, H. (2018). A mode of thought: A brief introduction to transdisciplinarity and the ethical guiding principles for practice in the Masters of Applied Innovation.

Dobson, A. P. (2014). Yellowstone wolves and the forces that structure natural systems. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002025

Kinnunen, J. (2018). Role of boundary objects in knowledge co-creation: A case study of a service co-design workshop (Information Networks Master of Science). Aalto University, Helsinki. https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/32485/master_Kinnunen_Joel_2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Levinson, M. (2016, January 21). Transdisciplinarity: Thinking inside and outside the box [Blog post]. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/transdiciplinarity-thinking-inside-outside-box-matt-levinson

Martin, V. (2017). Transdisciplinarity revealed. https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5037P

Levinson, M. (2016, January 21). Transdisciplinarity: Thinking inside and outside the box [Blog post]. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/transdiciplinarity-thinking-inside-outside-box-matt-levinson

Martin, V. (2017). Transdisciplinarity Revealed. https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5037P

Stakeholder Voices

"Engaging stakeholders is often critical for addressing problems because we can’t understand or solve societal challenges without their knowledge and action. It is also more likely that research ideas are adopted by stakeholders when we engage with them directly and build trust over time. There is a long history of participatory practice and extensive academic literature that lends rigor to this approach".

Resources/ Books

Group Creativity by Paul B. Paulus (Editor); Bernard Arjan Nijstad (Editor); Bernard A. Nijstad (Editor)
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9780195147308
Publication Date: 2003-09-04

The Three Axioms of Research

TDR has three axioms of research. They are ontological, logical, and complex axioms (Nicolescu, 2010). These three axioms are the controlling ideas that shape the TDR framework and help describe the ideologies of the methodology.

The ontological axiom talks to the reality of the subject. It outlines the social-environmental aspect of reality, including our knowledge of that aspect and the different levels of reality about the wicked problem and the object. How one works in the included third is by acknowledging the roles of the subject and object and how they work together but also how they work apart at the same time.

The logical axiom talks about the radical middle. In any object or subject there are ‘A and non-A’. But in transdisciplinary research we say that there is ‘A and then there is non-A’ but there is also a place in the middle and that is where the transdisciplinary researcher works. This is also known as the ‘included third’.

The complexity axiom holds that every issue is universally interconnected. This principle of universal interdependency is the interdependency of all levels of reality. Stated simply, everything is connected. ‘...this simply cannot be captured by mathematical language but only by symbolic language’ (Nicolescu, 2010, pp. 19-38).

Complexity Theory

This theory of complexity is most easily described by the analogy of the case of the wolves at Yellowstone park (Dobson, 2014, para. 10). Park officials removed all the wolves since they posed a danger to humans using the park for recreational purposes. What they didn’t fully appreciate was that wolves are one component of a very complex ecosystem. When one component is taken away, an imbalance is created in the whole ecosystem. The number of Elks grew and they ate more of the vegetation. With the reintroduction of the wolves in 1995, the Elks began to eat in places that they wouldn’t get ambused and the native vegetation began to grow again in areas that they had been devastated, (Dobson, 2014, para. 5). Complexity theory is the same. It states that in a complex system to you can view one component in isolation but in the complexity of its interactions with the other components in the network.

Complexity theory and Transdisciplinary research are closely related. Transdisciplinary research seeks to find an innovative solution to a wicked problem. The problems in question are so complex, with so many layers and perspectives and possible outcomes, that transdisciplinary researchers will seldom find the ultimate solution. Rather, they aim to untangle the problem a little bit more by opening the conversation between all the stakeholders and finding a practical solution that can be implemented at that time. Then they hope that someone else can continue after them and find another insight that may have been missed in the first lot of research and untangle the problem a little more so that eventually, over time and with many minds and voices, the problem will be completely dissolved (Klein, 2004). Klein and Newell (cited in Klein, 2004), describe advancing inter-disciplinary study as a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession.

YouTube Video: Wolves save yellowstone park

Connectivity & Reflexivity

Reflexivity

From the Cambridge dictionary the defination ... "is the fact of someone being able to examine his or her own feelings, reactions, and motives (= reasons for acting) and how these influence what he or she does or thinks in a situation".

Generally speaking, reflexivity requires self-questioning, in particular a willingness and ability to question one’s own assumptions, how they relate to societal power structures, and how they shape one’s actions. More specifically, here, we use reflexivity to mean a theoretically informed capacity to critically analyse one’s underlying assumptions, expectations, and positioning in relation to one’s involvement in outreach. It is not simply an internal thought process, but rather a type of thinking tied to action (Salmon, Priestley, & Goven, 2017, p. 58)