Exploring the Transdisciplinary Learning Experiences of Innovation Professionals

摘要

Transdisciplinary innovation inherently involves learning how to integrate disciplines towards exploring a problem or towards developing a solution or technology. Thus, transdisciplinary innovation and transdisciplinary learning are practically interchangeable. Although transdisciplinary learning has been studied and experimented with in educational research, the understanding of it in a professional context is limited. We therefore aim our research at addressing this question of how people shift their practice towards other disciplines to address complex issues. We chose to focus on a particularly challenging context – the shift from positivist to non-positivist learning across the career of transdisciplinary innovators when addressing complex problems. What makes this context challenging is that the siloed and heavily specialized nature of working within a disciplinary construct discourages collaboration on real-world complex problems. This context is also challenging because the analytic focus from positivist disciplines results in a reductionist approach, which limits an innovator’s ability to explore problems holistically and abductively. An understanding of the learning experiences of practitioners in these contexts will inform the identification of relevant variables and attributes that encourage innovative learning for ultimately innovative practice. This identification might help us develop better support and education for innovation professionals who want to adopt transdisciplinary practices for the purposes of addressing complex problems. In this article, we discuss the results of a series of in-depth interviews to understand the learning experiences of design innovation practitioners who experienced a shift away from positivist approaches towards transdisciplinary innovation practice. We explore the research approach undertaken to study the motivations and drivers, the emotions experienced during the shift, and the implementation and dissemination of the new learning into professional practice.