How to promote the integrative ability of transdisciplinary graduate students

Abstract

By integrating the insights of academic researchers and stakeholders from outside the academy, transdisciplinary research promises to help address complex challenges that threaten the safety and well-being of people the world over. This promise has led to the development of systematic efforts to train graduate students to conduct transdisciplinary research, and there is increasing interest in transdisciplinary education in the graduate training literature. This article discusses the promotion of integrative ability in transdisciplinary graduate students, focusing specifically on an educational approach that fostered transdisciplinary skills in a complex, transdisciplinary, international and multi-year project dealing with invasive alien woody plant species in eastern Africa, the “Woody Weeds” Project. Graduate students in the project were expected to collaborate with each other, with senior scientists, and with stakeholders in several work packages to conduct research addressing the project’s goals. Research success required integrating perspectives across many differences, including different disciplines, institutions, languages, nations, and cultures. The Woody Weeds graduate student training program was designed to help students meet integration challenges across these categories of difference. Using the Woody Weeds training program as a framework, we offer a set of ideas for others interested in designing programs that can produce graduate students capable of conducting international, transdisciplinary research by fostering the integrative consciousness of individual students and the integrative capacity of student teams. We critically assess the extent to which the training program enhanced integrative ability using interviews with participants, outputs of the project, and the author team’s experiences.