Transdisciplinary Training Collaboratory: Building Common Ground

Addressing today's environmental and sustainability challenges calls for solutions-oriented, actionable science, also known as engaged science. This approach is defined by two shifts from conventional ways of doing science. First, it requires collaborative, team-based science focused on problem solving of real-world problems.

Second, the teams are comprised of a wide range of societal partners working closely with disciplinary experts. Although an improved understanding of guiding principles for engaged science are emerging through research and case study analysis at local to regional scales, sustainability scientists lack a common language and a common set of practices and approaches that can be used in many different regions and situations.

This project aims to harness the collective wisdom of sustainability science researchers and leadership trainers from around the world, leading to aligned best practices and training products that can be used and adapted in regions around the world. This solutions-oriented, actionable science training will be used in academic and informal learning opportunities, improving the potential for researchers to partner effectively with government agencies, non-profit organizations, and the private sector to tackle pressing sustainability challenges.

This project will enable a collaboration of training and research communities that will share knowledge, compare best practices, evaluate approaches and develop and test training materials for effective engaged science. The project will build a more coherent understanding of the central elements that allow solutions-oriented actionable research or transdisciplinary research to succeed, and provide a common framework for training in the field.

The investigators plan to assemble a team of pioneering researchers and trainers who have been recognized in their region as thought leaders. The approach will be to mirror the process of transdisciplinary research—that of co-design, co-produce, and co-implement in order to create usable training products. These products will be tested in regional and global workshops in a variety of contexts by the experienced training team.

After testing, the organizers will create a design guide accompanied by resources for transdisciplinary trainers and disseminate them widely throughout the regions where the researchers and trainers work as well as through global sustainability conferences and networks. This work will ultimately result in a common language for transdisciplinary research and will build new knowledge and training products focused on what works in transdisciplinary research.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.