A set of learning outcomes for transdisciplinary thinking*

Abstract

Forestry, as a profession, tends towards requiring an understanding of multiple traditional academic and non-academic disciplines. Given the importance of integrating social and environmental concerns, it could even be said to tend towards needing transdisciplinary approaches. Accordingly, it would be of some value to examine what this means and the core skills necessary to train the next generation of foresters. Transdisciplinary thinking is not a term easily defined, for it refers to knowledge created outside of and beyond the conventional frame of academic disciplines. From a theoretical perspective, transdisciplinary thinking can be broken down into three ‘pillars’ or key high-level ideas (Nicolescu 1996; Klein 2004; Max-Neef 2005). The first of these pillars is the notion that there exist complex relationships between all things, beyond simple cause and effect (Nicolescu 1996). The second states that there are multiple levels of reality, defined by a change in fundamental rules between each (Nicolescu 1996). In simpler terms, some ‘universal’ rules may not hold in all circumstances, such as between the macro and quantum realms (Max-Neef 2005). Some transdisciplinary theorists go further and suggest that disciplines which gather raw scientific data such as physics, biology or chemistry differ sufficiently from professional, normative or philosophical disciplines to be considered different academic realities (Max-Neef 2005). The third pillar provides a system of logic to help navigate these multiple realities. This is referred to as the ‘logic of the included middle’ and allows contradictory information to exist in a middle state of consensus (Nicolescu 1996). Much as a photon can be either a wave or a particle depending on the reality from which it is reserved, there is a third state, a quanton, which accepts that both are true (Max-Neef 2005). If you can manage to consider all these ideas at once while conducting work or research, congratulations, you are a transdisciplinary thinker. For the rest of us, this is more of an ideal to work towards that requires more training and new skills to be able to practice. What follows is the need to translate these highly abstract concepts, which have already been greatly distilled, into a more applicable framework for teaching. This was one of the key aims of my research. What emerged was a testable framework of six skills and understandings. Following a process of refinement based on thematic analysis of a qualitative dataset of interviews, three learning outcomes emerged. Transdisciplinary thinking can be said to require the following: