Gauging the Transdisciplinary Qualities and Outcomes of Doctoral Training Programs

Abstract

Thompson-Klein 1996;Turkkan, Kaufman, and Rimer 2000). Researchers and practitioners in the fields of urban planning, public policy, and environmental management long have understood that complex problems such as community violence, environmental degradation, transit-related injuries, sustainable development, brownfields redevelopment and urban change are unlikely to be resolved in the absence of efforts to integrate knowledge drawn from several different disciplines (Blower et al. 1982;Killingsworth 2003;McCarthy 2002;Murdoch 1993;Roland et al. 2002;Scriven 2003;Stokols, Grzywacz, et al. 2003;Schon 1987;Watson 2002).The need for interdisciplinary collaboration toward improved planning practice was recognized long ago. Sdasuk (1976) called for interdisciplinary research aimed at effective regional planning in developing countries. Kozlowski (2002) argued that achieving a comprehensive knowledge of developmental processes is unattainable by individual planners. Among planners' basic skills should be their capacity to synthesize the results of research drawn from several other disciplines and integrate them into a coherent whole. Kozlowski based his claim on the assumption that planning cannot effectively address the major social, economic, and ecological problems faced by communities around the world without an understanding of all disciplines involved in this process and substantial interdisciplinary cooperation.Calls for the adoption of an interdisciplinary perspective by planners have been voiced in earlier discussions of gender and development (Jackson 2002), oceanic and coastal management (Gable 2003), human-nature interactions (Rosa 1999), and sustainable development (Downs 2001), among others. Furthermore, the need for interdisciplinary training in the planning profession has been emphasized by planning scholars for some time now, and numerous attempts have been made to improve the educational process of planners so that it explicitly incorporates an interdisciplinary perspective (Bradbeer 1999). For example, Hammer (1999) proposes several practical strategies to integrate a wider range of interdisciplinary perspectives into 437 AbstractA key assumption underlying recent investments toward establishing transdisciplinary research centers and training programs is that cross-disciplinary research and training provide a stronger basis for achieving scientific and societal advances than unidisciplinary programs. It is necessary to develop reproducible and reliable criteria for identifying the distinctive qualities of cross-disciplinary research and training programs, especially in the field of urban and regional planning. The current study provides an exploratory first step toward that goal. A composite scale designed to measure the transdisciplinary qualities of doctoral dissertations as an important product of one's intellectual development and graduate training was constructed and administered in the present study. Dissertations completed over a twenty-five-year period by Ph.D. candidates within an interdi...

Building the capacity to solve complex health challenges in sub-Saharan Africa: CARTA’S multidisciplinary PhD training

“…Our process evaluation suggests we are on the right path, but longer-term follow-up to assess CARTA's impact on the production of research evidence and its impact is needed. 6,22,26 Although we are working in sub-Saharan Africa, our model has international relevance. Globally, there are major health challenges that need to be addressed by innovative research.…”

“…However, 5 of those 14 reported that they were now using mixed methods in their doctoral research -an indicator used to assess whether research is multidisciplinary. 22 "I can now understand a qualitative paper and critique [it]. Also I now think outside the quantitative box when asking research questions".…”

26. Teaching Transdisciplinarity in a Discipline-Centred World

“…Mitrany and Stokols (2005) identify characteristics of transdisciplinary researchers, including inclusive thinking, broadgauged, contextually oriented in their theorizing, methodologically eclectic, open-minded, respectful of divergent viewpoints, and adept at promoting good will and cross-disciplinary tolerance. The "products" of transdisciplinary research extend beyond the products of traditional disciplinary research (e.g., academic publications and presentations in discipline-specific journals and at discipline-specific conferences) and include new, innovative hypotheses; integrative theoretical frameworks for analyzing problems; novel methodological approaches to analyzing those problems; and, ultimately, evidence-based recommendations for policy and practice (Stokols et al, 2003).…”

“…Fortunately, the increasing interest in transdisciplinarity in health research has led to an emergent literature exploring possible ways of assessing the transdisciplinarity, including assessing the transdisciplinarity of a research product (Mitrany & Stokols, 2005), research agendas (Fuqua et al, 2004) and researcher competencies (Gebbie et al, 2008).…”

Sustainability Impact Assessment – An Overview with a Holistic and Transdisciplinary Perspective towards Agricultural Research

“…In order to achieve this, they transcend disciplinary boundaries and include the perspectives of public agencies, the business community and civil society in the research process (Hadorn and Pohl, 2007). ""Transdisciplinary projects are those in which researchers from different fields not only work closely together on a common problem over an extended period but also create shared conceptual models of the problem that integrates and transcends each of their separate disciplinary perspectives" (Mitrany & Stokols, 2005). "Transdisciplinarity is a principle for organizing processes of mutual learning and problem solving between science and society.…”