A key aim of transdisciplinary research is for actors from science, policy and practice to co-evolve their understanding of a social–ecological issue, reconcile their diverse perspectives and co-produce appropriate knowledge to serve a common purpose. With its concurrent grounding in practice and science, transdisciplinary research represents a significant departure from conventional research. We focus on mutual learning within transdisciplinary research and highlight three aspects that could guide other researchers in designing and facilitating such learning. These are: “who to learn with”, “what to learn about” and “how to learn”. For each of these questions, we present learning heuristics that are supported by a comparative analysis of two case studies that addressed contemporary conservation issues in South Africa but varied in scale and duration. These were a five-year national-scale project focusing on the prioritisation of freshwater ecosystems for conservation and a three-year local-scale project that used ecological infrastructure as a theme for advancing sustainability dialogues. Regarding the proposed learning heuristics, “who to learn with” is scale dependent and needs to be informed by relevant disciplines and policy sectors with the aim of establishing a knowledge network representing empirical, pragmatic, normative and purposive functions. This emergent network should be enriched by involving relevant experts, novices and bridging agents, where possible. It is important for such networks to learn about the respective histories, system processes and drivers, values and knowledge that exist in the social–ecological system of interest. Moreover, learning together about key concepts and issues can help to develop a shared vocabulary, which in turn can contribute to a shared understanding, a common vision and an agreed way of responding to it. New ways of group learning can be promoted and enhanced by co-developing outputs (boundary objects) for application across knowledge domains and creating spaces (third places) that facilitate exchange of knowledge and knowledge co-production. We conclude with five generic lessons for transdisciplinary researchers to enhance project success: (a) the duration, timing and continuation potential of a project influences its prospects for achieving systemic and sustainable change; (b) bridging agents, especially if embedded within an implementing agency, play a critical role in facilitating transdisciplinary learning with enhanced outcomes; (c) researchers need to participate as co-learners rather than masters of knowledge domains; (d) purposeful mixed-paradigm research designs could help to mend knowledge fragmentation within science; and (e) researchers must be vigilant for three pitfalls in mutual learning initiatives, namely biases in participant self-selection, perceived superiority of scientific knowledge and the attraction of simple solutions to wicked problems that retain the status quo.

Transdisciplinary research for systemic change: who to learn with, what to learn about and how to learn

There is a call for more transdisciplinary (TD) research, from academia, society, and funding agencies. Consequently, the field of TD research is searching for ways of proving the value and providing evidence to support the effectiveness of such research. The main challenge for evaluating TD research is attribution, that is how to link societal change to the TD research process. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between the quality of the research process and the effects and impacts that are being evaluated. Building upon earlier attempts at evaluating TD research, this article tests three key aspects of effective sustainability research: its relevance, credibility, and legitimacy. To explore the link between the quality of process and societal effects, we analyze and compare outputs, outcomes, and impact of five TD projects. Overall, our analysis shows that while relevance, credibility, and legitimacy gave important insights regarding the links between process and impacts, they are not adequate for evaluating TD research impact. Process qualities such as practitioner motivation and perceived importance of the project, together with breadth of perspectives, the openness/flexibility of participants, and in-depth exchanges of expertise and knowledge, contributed to producing internally relevant, credible, and legitimate results. However, we also saw a need to develop the relevance, credibility, and legitimacy framework, in relation to the external dynamics of the project process, heterogeneous stakeholder groups, and the credibility of practice-based knowledge, which together with institutional factors and the political context significantly shape the possibility of impact.

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Assessing the Impact of Transdisciplinary Research: The Usefulness of Relevance, Credibility, and Legitimacy for Understanding the Link between Process and Impact.

Transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge and sustainability transformations: Three generic mechanisms of impact generation

Opportunities for knowledge co-production across the energy-food-water nexus: Making interdisciplinary approaches work for better climate decision making

https://www.dora.lib4ri.ch/eawag/islandora/object/eawag%3A13859/datastream/PDF2/Hoffmann-2017-Exploring_transdisciplinary_integration_within_a-%28accepted_version%29.pdf

Exploring transdisciplinary integration within a large research program: Empirical lessons from four thematic synthesis processes

Achieving the promise of transdisciplinarity: a critical exploration of the relationship between transdisciplinary research and societal problem solving (Special Feature : New Directions in Sustainability Science)

Merritt Polk

Papers

Achieving the promise of transdisciplinarity: a critical exploration of the relationship between transdisciplinary research and societal problem solving (Special Feature : New Directions in Sustainability Science)