5 Dimensions of Integrative Transdisciplinarity

These are a series of questions that illustrate what these dimensions are about. Remember
that the dimensions are all interconnected.

1) Inquiry-driven versus discipline-driven:

This is the dimension that is all about articulating what your topic is. Surprisingly,
it’s not just hard to figure out your topic sometimes, it’s also hard to keep it at the
forefront of your mind with all the theories and methods you’re learning. That’s
why the STORY is central. Then the questions you ask emerge from (aspects of )
the events and experiences story, and on the basis of these you go research where
they have been addressed—almost always in a number of different disciplines.
Avoid a situation where you are using a specific term to describe a phenomenon
only to find there is no research on it. Focus on the phenomenon first, what you’re
calling it second. You may be using a term nobody else uses to describe a well-
known phenomenon.

* Tell a narrative—a story—about the phenomenon or experience you want to study

the way you would tell it to an intelligent non-academic. The story can describe your
own experience becoming aware of the topic, use fictional examples, or be a
composite of real and fictional. For instance, in my case, for one of my interests in
creativity, this would be my story of being a musician playing in bands, noticing the
interactive, relational dimensions of creativity and collective improvisation, then
looking how the research literature has addressed this experience, which is widely
recognized and discussed by musicians, only to find there was no research on this
topic, then exploring why this topic was ignored, etc.
* What aspects of your story do you want to understand? Go over your story and
find out what you want to know more about.
* In which disciplines is your topic, or something very close to your topic, usually
discussed?
* How is the topic addressed from a disciplinary perspective? Find examples. What
does a disciplinary approach not address? What does it leave out?
(You have an example of how both these questions can be addressed in the Lone
Genius article)
* Why does your research go beyond the boundaries of a single discipline and have
to be transdisciplinary? Don’t name disciplines: name what specifically you want to
understand.
* Why is this topic significant?

2) Meta-paradigmatic:

This dimension is at the heart of your literature review and of your engagement
with theory. Your literature review is a discussion of the key texts, authors, and
ideas in and around your topic. Your topic will probably have been addressed from

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 a number of different perspectives, with different theoretical foundations. You
need to know what these are. You also need to know what your theoretical
perspective is. This dimension is where you explore your field, what’s happening
there, and where you fit in. Whether you do a theoretical or a qualitative
dissertation, there’s no escaping theory. We all come to our topic with a
conceptual framework (a looser version of a theory that is not necessarily thought
through or even conscious).

… no matter how little you think you know about a topic, and how
unbiased you think you are, it is impossible for a human being not to
have preconceived notions, even if they are of a very general nature. …
The framework tends to guide what you notice ... and what you don’t
notice. In other words, you don’t even notice things that don’t fit your
framework! We can never completely get around this problem, but we
can reduce the problem considerably by simply making our implicit
framework explicit. Once it is explicit, we can deliberately consider
other frameworks …(Borgatti, 1999)

* A dissertation is supposed to be an original contribution to a field. What is your

field? How do you know your contribution is original?
* Who are the key authors and works (articles/books) in your field?
* What are the key current trends?
* What are the theoretical frameworks and methods that have been used to
research your topic?
* What are the underlying assumptions of these theories?
* Who are the scholars, and what are the works (articles, books) that have
influenced your own thinking and why?
* What theory or theories do you plan to draw on for your work? Why?
* What method do you plan to use in your research? Why is it appropriate?
* Who is your audience?
* What might be some alternative framings of your topic?
* Does your topic have a Dominant Disciplinary Discourse, or a discipline where most
of the research on your topic has been done?
* What journals publish articles relevant to your research? Provide examples of
articles.
* How does the systems/complexity dimension supply a fundamental paradigm for
your research?
* What might be some counterarguments to your views and ideas about your topic?
* What criticisms have there been of your theoretical and methodological
approaches as used by other scholars?

3) Systems/Complexity:

Transdisciplinarity and systems/complexity approaches go hand in hand. Once you

start to study a phenomenon contextually, systemically, things change quite
radically. You look at it in terms of its relationships, connections to its
environment, etc. This can be the most difficult dimension to “get” because it’s
quite…complex. It makes very different assumptions about the world than the
dominant culture in the U.S.A., as the Becvars points out. That’s why you should

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 really make a point of reading Stepping in Wholes, one of the recommended
readings, available as a pdf in FILES, since it gives a good overview. Make sure you
look for examples of systems theory being used in your field.

* Systems theory is a whole theoretical framework that is too rich to summarize

here. Make sure you read the relevant readings in the class, and above all, make sure
you understand what the difference between a reductionist and a systemic approach
to a specific topic is—the paradigm of simplification and the paradigm of complexity.
Think of an example, and make sure you study the examples in the readings.
* Systems and complexity theories are used in fields ranging from biology to
sociology, family therapy, psychology, management, creativity research, and a host
of other fields. Look for examples of how systems theory is being used in your
specific field. Essentially they present the foundation of a different worldview. Note
that the old worldview informed what is still considered good scholarship and good
research by many.
Having said that…
* Assume the world is interconnected. Your topic is embedded in time and space,
and relationships and interactions are a key dimension of any topic.
* Look at the history of your topic: What is the history of the topic itself (rather than
how people have researched it)? How has it been researched over the years? How
have the ideas about your topic evolved over the years?
* Who or what is your “unit of analysis”?
* What is the difference between an open and a closed system, and what are the
implications for your research? Are you viewing your topic as an open system, or a
closed system? What is the difference?
* If your specific topic has not been researched extensively broaden the scope to see
where people are doing research that is related. For instance, there was no research
on creative groups when I first started looking at creativity research. As a result, I
looked at creativity research generally, in order to understand why it might not
address what seemed to me a fairly obvious topic. Think of your topic as situated at
the center of a series of concentric circles—systems within systems. The further out
you go, the broader your perspective. I ended up looking at the sub-discipline of
creativity as a whole, first in the context of psychology (the psychology of creativity,
a sub-discipline of psychology which has its own journals, etc.), but then broadened
my view and found relevant discussions in art, philosophy, etc.
* Notice dualism and oppositions, such as order/disorder, male/female, in the
discourse of your topic. Are they hierarchical binary oppositions, like male/female,
humans/culture, white/black have been in the US? These are obvious ones. Look at
what is being privileged. Theory over practice? Individual over society? Society over
individual? Biology over culture?
*Reflect on causality (Becvar), and what you learned about it—who or what “causes”
something? What is “reciprocal causality,” and how can it be applied both to human
interactions and to how concepts relate?
* Morin warns about the “paradigm of simplification.” What does that mean? Can
you think of examples? What about the “paradigm of complexity?”

4) Integrating the Inquirer into the Inquiry:

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 In the past, social science focused on objectivity, and eliminating the research and
their beliefs, opinions, life story, emotions etc. from the research. The research
was supposed to be objective. In recent years, there’s been a movement away
from this, and towards making the inquirer transparent, and making the beliefs,
assumptions, and so on explicit. For your dissertation, you have to be able to
articulate your positionality, what you bring to the work in terms of your
background, possible biases, your creative process in putting together the
research, and so on.
* Why was research supposed to be “objective?”
*Reflect on your identity as a PhD student and beyond. What are your assumptions
about what it means to become an independent researcher? Will you become an
expert, a scholar, an intellectual, or…? Do you know what the expectations of a PhD
are? In other words, what is a Ph.D. supposed to know and be able to do?
* What are your assumptions and beliefs about your topic?
* Why are you interested in the topic?
* Are you able to see how readings are applicable to you—to your work, ideas, etc.?
* If you have a strong personal investment in this topic, pay close attention to the
possibility that you may have strong biases, and tendencies to reject/accept certain
ideas, authors, viewpoints etc. Look through the Psychology of Knowledge pdf
posted on February 13th
* Who are the scholars, and what are the works (articles, books) that have
influenced your own thinking? How have they influenced you? What is it about them
that has appealed to you? Wo, in other words, are your ancestors?
* Reflect on your creative process—in formulating your inquiry, in your writing, and
your research. Are you experiencing obstacles? What do you find boring? Inspiring?
* Look over the material on creativity and see what you can learn about your own
process.
* Reflect on your possible cognitive traps. These are discussed in the pdf on the
psychology of knowledge, about the dangers of what Morin calls “errors and
illusions” such as wanting to be right, your psychological investment in your topic,
tendencies towards over-simplification, etc.
* What is your background, and how do things like your age, race, gender, class,
national culture affect your perspective?
* How are you creating your understanding of your topic? Have you considered
alternatives? Are you aware of other perspectives, particularly critical ones?

5) Creative Inquiry/Creativity:
Here we look at how to frame your work as researchers as a creative process. Note
also that Lovitts’s research found that creativity was essential for successful
doctoral researchers. Here we learn about the creative process in academia, how
to avoid the dangers of both Reproductive and Narcissistic attitudes, how to reflect
of our own creative process and what examples are of creative work in academia,
what constitutes creative research and why, what some of the key creative
contributions to your field are, and more.

* Assess yourself on a continuum form Reproductive/Narcissistic/Creative Inquiry.

Do you still have holdovers from Reproductive educational experiences that affect

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your work? Do you find yourself falling into the trap of Narcissistic learning and
focusing on your own ideas/feelings/concerns at the expense of the existing
research on your topic?
* Reflect on your academic work as a creative process. What is creative about
research? About a literature review? About reading an article? Remember Lotto’s
video about how perception shapes our view of the world, and perception itself as a
creative process.
* Name some scholars who have made creative contributions to your topic, and to
the world of ideas in general. What about them was “original?” What did they
contribute to their field?
* The larger point is to frame your inquiry as a creative process. Even when you read
an article, you are creating your understanding of what the article is about. It's your
creative interpretation, meaning what you foreground, what you place less emphasis
on, how you work out the implications, etc. We talked about how when we read an
article in a field that is not our own, being able to use the basic ideas and
transferring them to our topic is also a creative process. Finding many different ways
to frame the topic, or a particularly illuminating way to bring together existing
research to shed new light on a topic, all of that is a creative process.