Over the last two weeks, I had the privilege of taking part in an intensive course called CALS 501 (Leading Climate Action in Society) as part of the inaugural Masters of Arts in Climate Action Leadership cohort at Royal Roads University. The course will continue in short, one week sessions spread over the next year. As I take a big breath, and process what I’ve learned so far, I’d like to focus on two aspects of the learning from the intensive course: transdisciplinarity and design thinking.
First, let me define these terms. As per Nicolescu (2014, as quoted in PYP in Practice, n.d.), the goal of transdisciplinarity is to “unite knowledge for the understanding of the present world” (para. 4). Transdisciplinary thinking can be thought of like cake. The original disciplines are the ingredients. Once combined and baked, they are no longer distinguishable from each other; rather, they make up a new entity with its own emergent properties (PYP in Practice, n.d., para. 4).
Design thinking provides a way to approach problems which is at once creative, focussed on the end user, iterative, and open to failure (Cankurtaran & Beverland, 2020). At its most basic, it is a mode of thinking that borrows its methods from the discipline of design.
The design thinking challenge that our cohort is working through is transdisciplinary in nature. Each team member is bringing ideas from their lived experience, their education, and their work to collaborate on the issue of climate action in society. At its most basic level, then, the project is about “unit[ing] knowledge for the understanding of the present world”. The ideas are flipped inside out, interrogated, and inspected by the team. Then, they are re-worked to come up with a single concept. Through an iterative process, this concept is further modified and developed. To bring it back to the baking metaphor, the team members’ individual ideas are the ingredients. The ideas are then whipped, emulsified, sifted and baked into a single concept – the cake.
But transdisciplinarity is more than just a dessert. As Corman & Cox wrote (2020) “it is a process of inquiry. Mutual learning, exploration between and beyond disciplines, social responsibility, emergent knowledge, and possibility are all aspects of transdisciplinarity” (p. 2). Let’s take a step back and a deeper look at this in the context of the design thinking challenge we are undertaking.
Prior to “baking the cake” (or bringing all team members’ ideas together to come up with one concept), each team member creates five concept drawings to bring back to the team for the process described above.The drawings are based on the empathetic questioning of and listening to a partner. The five concept drawings are created based off of this engaged questioning and deep listening. So, they are based on mutual learning. But beyond that, team members tap into their creativity, and are less censored, when they are forced to draw (rather than write) and when they have to come up with five drawings (whether they thought they had five ‘good’ ideas, or not). So, they are based on possibility and emergent knowledge.
The premise of this particular design thinking challenge that we are undertaking is to find a way to engage the public, or a portion of the public, in climate action through an open learning resource (MACAL program, n.d.). So, there is the element of social responsibility. What’s left is the idea of an exploration between and beyond disciplines, which I think is threaded through the entire process: the questioning of a partner with different experiences and knowledge, the drawings which allow for creativity and playfulness, and the long, meandering, and sometimes challenging conversations about how to meld the ideas of a team into a single concept.
Moving forward through this program, and beyond, it is helpful to know that design thinking can be a powerful tool to unlock the transformative (Corman & Cox, 2020) power of transdisciplinarity. I look forward to learning about more ways to support transdisciplinary thinking as we explore it in the context of climate action.
References
Cankurtaran, P., & Beverland, M. B. (2020). Using design thinking to respond to crises: B2B lessons from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Industrial Marketing Management, 88, 255-260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.05.030
Corman, I. & Cox, R. (2020). Transdisciplinary thinking in the context of the MACAL program. Written for the Master of Arts in Climate Action Leadership at Royal Roads University. Retrieved from commons.royalroads.ca/macal/wp-content/uploads/sites/88/2021/04/MACAL_Transdisciplinary_Thinking03-31-21-3.pdf
MACAL program (n.d.). CAL 501 – Course Design Challenge Worksheet. Retrieved from https://commons.royalroads.ca/cals501/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2021/05/CAL-501-Design-Challenge-Worksheet-May-17-2021-Full-1-1.pdf
PYP in Practice (n.d.). Transdisciplinary learning: All mixed up! Retrieved from sites.google.com/isparis.net/conceptualinquiry/transdisciplinary-learning-all-mixed-up