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Articles from Integral Leadership Review

Transdisciplinary Reflections2012-08-20 10:08:57 Alfonso Montuori

Five Dimensions of Applied Transdisciplinarity

Alfonso Montuori

Alfonso Montuori

Theres an emerging literature arguing for the importance of a transdisciplinaryapproach, outlining its philosophical roots, and articulating the need fortransdisciplinarity in our present situation. Transdisciplinarity is already branchingout in many different forms and on many different levels, from the highly theoreticalto the more applied. In the following pages Id like to explore an over-archingframework for applied transdisciplinarity. In other words, its one way to get starteddoing transdisciplinary inquiry, and getting a sense of what it actually might involve.

I want to propose five dimensions that constitute the basis of transdisciplinarity.These dimensions are the foundation for transdisciplinary work as I see it. I certainlydont want to give the impression that they are thedimensions of transdisciplinarity,the generally agreed on dimensions, necessary but not sufficient, or anything likethat. Simply that I have found them useful in the practice of transdisciplinarity, in my

own experience researching and teaching. They emerge from my immersion in theresearch on inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, drawing from Morin to Klein,Nicolescu to Newell, Augsburg to Leavy. They are not so much theoreticaldimensions as practical dimensions: they represent aspects and moments ofresearch. Together they form a heuristic for transdisciplinary work, and are intendedas an opportunity to open up dialogue about the process of inquiry itself.

Five Dimensions for a Heuristic of Transdsciplinarity

The 5 dimensions of transdisciplinarity are grounded in a set of questions I believewe need to ask ourselves when embarking on any project we believe should betransdisciplinary. In this issues column I provide a brief introduction to thesedimensions, and Ill provide more extensive examples and theoretical foundations in

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coming issues.

1) Inquiry-Based rather than Discipline-Driven: What are the characteristics of thephenomenon we want to understand? Based on these characteristics, why doesour research need to be transdisciplinary? What are the limitations of existingdisciplinary perspectives? What do disciplinary perspectives leave out that in ourview is important in order to develop rich and complex understanding of the

phenomenon? At this stage we need to be able to give an extensive description ofthe issue we want to explore. This should preferably happen through a narrative, astory, an incident, anything that connects the issue to the real world. Then we canarticulate the various aspects of our inquiry, and show why it cannot be containedwithin the boundaries of only one discipline. Inquiry based means we look at oursubject matter without the restrictions of a disciplinary lens. We look at aphenomenon, and describe it. Then we see what the issues are we want tounderstand, and draw from appropriate disciplines.

2) Trans-paradigmatic rather than Intra-paradigmatic: Once we step outside theconfines of disciplinary knowledge, what does the available research literature haveto say about our subject? What disciplinary perspectives already exist? What isDominant Disciplinary Discoursein others words, in what discipline might we findmost of the work on our topic, even if there is no research specifically on our topic?How are various perspectives constructed, using what fundamental assumptions?Traditionally knowledge is of course organized by disciplines. Within thosedisciplines there are different frames, different perspectives on the issues beingstudied. Most researchers work within the confines of one particular perspective,

and apply that perspective but do not necessarily question it. A Trans-paradigmaticperspective involves an awareness of the many different ways a particular questioncan be framed, and an understanding of the underlying assumptions of thoseperspectives, both within specific disciplines and across them, in the sense thatdifferent disciplines may address a specific topic such as leadership from differenttheoretical perspectives. It also means that while we cannot know every individualpiece of research ever done about our topic, we can still have an understanding ofthe many ways in which the topic has historically been approached. Key literaturehere is found in the philosophy of social science. Brian Fays ContemporaryPhilosophy of Social Science(Fay, 1996) provides a very useful framing of keyquestions. Of particular interest is the fact that Fays book is influenced by, anddraws extensively on, Robert Kegans work and presents a dialectical, postformalapproach.

3) Complex thinking rather than Reductive-Disjunctive thinking: How are we thinkingabout our topic? What is our unit of analysis or system definition? Are weseparating and abstracting, or distinguishing and connecting? The Trans-paradigmatic dimension asks us to reflect on the plurality of ways that our topic hasbeen framed in the context of its larger ecology. This dimension asks us to look at

our own thinking, introducing a metacognitive and systemic/complex approach.(Particularly as outlined by Morin 2008a, 2008bcomplex thought is closelyrelated to postformal thought. This will be the topic of a future column.) Ourtraditional way of thinking focuses on analysis, simplicity, and abstraction. This way

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of thinking mirrors the organization of knowledge into specific disciplines inuniversities. The danger is hyper-specialized silo-thinking that can take us everdeeper inside a single system, and cannot account for interrelations and how thesystem we have chosen to study interacts with, affects, and is affected by, itsenvironment. Systems theory and cybernetics emerged in attempts to create toolsand a language to reconnect and move across the disciplines that had become tooclosed and hyper-specialized. Complex thought integrates systems theory,

cybernetics, and complexity theory to offer a way of thinking that accounts forcontext, interconnection, interdependence, change, and uncertainty. Attempting todo work across disciplines, connecting topics, ideas, and phenomena, with a way ofthinking that separates, abstracts (etymologically: removes from context), andisolates is defeating the purpose.

4) Integration of the Inquirer rather than Objective elimination of inquirer: Intraditional social science, the inquirer and his/her experience, subjectivity, values,etc., are to be completely removed form the inquiry in an attempt to duplicate the

method of the natural sciences. In transdisciplinary research, the inquirer attemptsto make her- or himself transparent through the process of inquiry, which involves aconstant awareness of the inquirers participation, both in the potential for self-deception and for creativity. Why are we doing this research? What does it saysabout us, our motivations, and our life as a whole that we are choosing to researchX rather than Y? What are our guiding assumptions, our beliefs, motivations, andimplicit theories? Who are we influenced by? What has shaped our understandingof the world? Who are we, and how do we engage with and approach knowledgeand knowing? What skills and theoretical frames do we bring to this inquiry, and

where might we need to broaden our skill- and theory-base? Transdisciplinarityviews inquiry as an opportunity for self-inquiry, and stresses the necessity for self-inquiry as a way of keeping our instrument tuned, as it were.

5) Creative Inquiry rather than Reproductive Inquiry: Transdisciplinarity frames entireinquiry as Creative Inquiry, and therefore as a creative process. How do we createour understanding of any phenomenon? How do we engage with the researchliterature, and also with our social and cultural context? Creative inquiry is a processof knowledge creation (Montuori, 2011a). Reproductive inquiry (Montuori, 2011b)does not account for creativity. The frame of Creative Inquiry stressed theconstructive character of every inquiry.

Transdisciplinarity is not, in this view, either a research method or simply a way ofdoing research that utilizes a number of different disciplines. It is an altogetherdifferent way of thinking about knowledge, knowledge production, and inquiry. Theemergence of transdisciplinarity itself offers a wonderful opportunity for inquiry intoour own fundamental assumptions about knowledge, knowledge production, andinquiry.

References

Fay, B. (1996). Contemporary philosophy of social science. New York: BlackwellPublishers.

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Montuori, A. (2011a). Creative inquiry. In N. M. Seel (Ed.), The encyclopedia of thescience of learning. Heidelberg: Springer.

Montuori, A. (2011b). Reproductive learning. In N. M. Seel (Ed.), The encyclopedia ofthe science of learning. Heidelberg: Springer.

Morin, E. (2008a). On complexity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Morin, E. (2008b). The reform of thought, transdisciplinarity, and the reform of theuniversity. In B. Nicolescu (Ed.), Transdisciplinarity. Theory and practice(pp. 23-32). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

About the Author

Alfonso Montuori, PhD, is Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies,where he designed and teaches in the Transformative Leadership M.A. and the

Transformative Studies Ph.D. He was Distinguished Professor in the School of FineArts at Miami University, in Oxford Ohio and in 1985-1986 he taught at the CentralSouth University in Hunan, China. An active musician and producer, in a former lifeAlfonso worked in London England as a professional musician. He is the author ofseveral books and numerous articles on creativity and innovation, the future,complexity theory, and leadership. Alfonso is also a consultant in the areas ofcreativity, innovation and leadership development whose clients have includedNetApp, Training Vision (Singapore), Omintel-Olivetti (Italy) and Procter and Gamble.

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