Learning through interdisciplinary dialogue: Methodological approaches for bridging epistemological divides

Abstract

Scientific innovations for sustainable development often make huge promises about overcoming climate change, or promote technological innovations that have potential development implications. However, the social outcomes of such interventions are often considered superficially; thus potentially reinforcing injustices or producing unforeseen, undesirable outcomes. Increasingly, projects claim to have an interdisciplinary dimension, but processes of interdisciplinary dialogue can be difficult to maintain. This means that researchers have to be prepared to engage in potentially extensive, transformative dialogue and be willing to learn from the disciplinary knowledge of the other. This can be methodologically challenging both for natural and social scientists. This paper reports meta-research exploring the methodological processes and learning experiences of academics involved in research on the implementation of second-generation biofuel technology. Through interdisciplinary meetings, workshops, reflections and interviews we built up sustainable relationships and bridged epistemological divides. Our approach to interdisciplinary dialogue offers insights into the methodological challenges of interdisciplinary work. We used the framework of transformative learning theory to identify key aspects of the interdisciplinary process and reflected on the need for sustained and open opportunities for dialogue in order to find genuine ways to communicate across disciplines. We explicitly revealed and considered our taken-for-granted assumptions to identify what we understood by key terms and processes, including ‘sustainable’, ‘development’, ‘methodology’, ‘truth’, ‘marginal land’ and ‘outputs’. We found these encounters created opportunities to influence the trajectory of each other’s research and thinking, with the ideal of social and environmental justice prominent in all our discussions. It was through ongoing learning and dialogue that we found that the multifaceted challenges of sustainable development research can become more open, more critical and more able to reveal appropriate solutions and promote relevant ongoing scientific research. This interplay between disciplines is an innovative way to influence decision-making directly.

Introduction and rationale

Research into technological solutions to development-related problems is often led by university science departments keen to ‘inform beneficiaries’ about the efficacy of their intervention. Such research impact is increasingly prioritised by funding agencies. UK Higher Education provides an institutional environment in which natural science assumes a privileged position in relation to social science (Fanelli, 2010). Interdisciplinarity thus exists within institutional cultures fostering the assumption that scientific solutions simply need to be inserted into any given context (Viseu, 2015). This has implications for interdisciplinary team members, in terms of core assumptions about what counts as data, and pressures to privilege certain types of science-based intervention. Increasingly, research projects incorporate an interdisciplinary dimension, in order to address social concerns that surround any development intervention (Delgado and Åm, 2018). However, institutionalised hierarchies of knowledge production can undermine the solidarity required to bridge epistemological divides.

This paper reports on a British Academy funded Knowledge Frontiers project, STRIPES – Social Transformative Research Informing Processes of Environmental Science, which brought together an interdisciplinary team of researchers, to explore the implications of novel chemistry research that creates enzymes for a bioethanol-from-cellulose refinery, potentially presenting innovative solutions to the global need for sustainable fuels. These enzymes open up the possibility of breaking down ‘waste’ biomass, which can be grown on ‘marginal lands’, thus producing advanced or ‘second-generation’ biofuels, theoretically without competing for land with agricultural crops. The team, made up of social scientists, with expertise in participatory planning and development, and natural scientists, with expertise in developing and identifying enzymes used to break down cellulose in plant matter, came together to critically analyse the many assumptions within this process and to consider how such technologies could be developed in ways that address broader social and environmental justice goals. We reflected on mainstream approaches to development and interrogated the assumptions, questions, priorities and criteria used when new technological innovations are proposed. This was contextualised through conducting a case study of the first operational second-generation bio-refinery in Brazil, in order to investigate decision-making processes from a range of stakeholder perspectives. We used interpretive social science methodologies to consider how different frameworks of analysis may influence the perceived outcomes of implementing the technology. We deliberately sought to challenge disciplinary hierarchies and mind-sets and explore how future enzyme research could be informed by these new understandings.

We discuss here how we facilitated transformative learning through authentic interdisciplinary dialogue, examining assumptions by opening space for exploring epistemologies, terminologies and methodologies. We then conducted a qualitative analysis of the data derived from reflection documents completed by the core team and collaborators in the workshops we organised, and from interviews with the team. This research into methodological challenges allows us to provide insights into the processes and outcomes of interdisciplinary research. Specifically, we look at the learning experienced by the academics in the project team and wider collaborators. While there is similar research looking at interdisciplinary processes, we have found little research that focuses on interdisciplinary dialogue as an opportunity for transformative learning within research teams. We argue that this offers an important contribution to the methodological design of projects, particularly on development issues.

The focus on development approaches has particular implications for the relationship between the social and natural sciences. ‘Development’ is by definition about making things better in some way (which is highly subjective) and needs significant attention to the assumptions that underpin how problems are framed and what ‘better’ might look like (Willis, 2014). This project was framed around understanding the development problem through the social sciences, reversing the conventional interdisciplinary hierarchy, with the natural science intervention ‘in service’ to the search for socially just and context-responsive solutions (Viseu, 2015). Throughout our research process, we unpacked development assumptions as part of our interdisciplinary learning, and we found that the natural scientists thought more about the social outcomes of their research as a result.

We begin with a literature review of processes and definitions of interdisciplinary research and associated methodological issues. We then discuss the centrality of epistemology, defining this as the theory of knowledge that considers the origin of knowledge, the place of experience and reason, and how this relates to our conceptualisations of the world (Blackburn, 2008). We outline the context of the study and the methods used to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue. We define our research questions, methodology and analysis and discuss the findings regarding the team’s experiences of participating in interdisciplinary dialogue, considering the expectations, the processes and the learning outcomes within the project. We finish with some conclusions for methodological innovations.

Interdisciplinary dialogue

There is a growing body of literature on interdisciplinary research, with ever more emphasis on the importance of incorporating different perspectives, and the nature of complex global challenges requiring new ways of collaborating. This is also reflected in the policies of funding bodies (e.g., UK Research and Innovation, 2022). However, there is little evidence in the literature of emphasis on methodological approaches that can lead to dialogues across broad epistemological divides, or what can be learned by the participants in this dialogue. The advantages of interdisciplinary work are often assumed to be around creating new conceptualisations of scientific and societal phenomena (Klein, 1996) and enabling ‘cross-fertilization of ideas and knowledge from different contributors to promote an expanded vision of a subject as well as new explanatory theories’ (Stokols, 2006). The disadvantages are cited as being labour intensive with a long time-lag for demonstrated benefits (Stokols, 2006: 68). This is compounded by the ‘clash of paradigms’ (Deschepper et al., 2017: 1) that can occur when social and natural scientists work together with very different methodological backgrounds. Siloed research is a common outcome when academics with diverse epistemologies are not able to understand the nature, strengths and challenges that each perspective brings (Salm, 2021).

Definitions and expectations of interdisciplinarity also vary. The extent to which teams work to a shared conceptual framework is important (Rosenfield, 1992), which implies the need to have a clear understanding of one’s own underpinning assumptions. The extent to which perspectives cohere or synthesise through a project can also determine the type of interdisciplinarity and the extent to which it bridges epistemologies (Klein, 1996). It can also be important to distinguish between multidisciplinary (working in parallel teams), interdisciplinary (working jointly but from a discipline-specific base) and transdisciplinary (using a shared conceptual framework) (Rosenfield, 1992), but definitions of these terms also differ. The extent to which there is integration may vary at the level of data, concepts, theories, methods and findings (Leavy, 2016). For Lattuca (2001), the importance of overarching synthesis of concepts and methods tends to be a feature of transdisciplinary research, and for Brown et al. (2010) researchers only really go beyond their disciplines in transdisciplinary research. As such, this requires more openness, tolerance, and respect towards other perspectives as well as a commitment to mutual learning. ‘Transdisciplinary collaborations, thus, are more likely to force participants out of their disciplinary “comfort zones” and require their unwavering commitment to sustained and mutually respectful communications’ (Stokols, 2006: 68). We use the term interdisciplinary, but argue that there are a range of ‘degrees of interdisciplinarity’ (Huutoniemi et al., 2010) including:

• the scope (the ‘conceptual and cultural distance between the participating research fields’ (p. 82)),

• the type (the way that epistemic components from different research fields are brought together (p. 85)), and

• the goals (whether they are epistemological or instrumental (p. 85)).

There are few studies that focus on unpicking the messy processes of interdisciplinary dialogue, and what makes it successful (or not), or which examine the ‘processes and mechanisms that facilitate the emergence of integration of interdisciplinary teams’ (Armstrong and Jackson-Smith, 2013: 1). Communication and relationships are important aspects of interdisciplinary working, along with research environment factors and the individual characteristics of the team (Aboelela et al., 2007: 331). One of the key issues is language and terminology because ‘scientists speak in dialects that are specialised to their disciplines. Unfortunately, these dialects can at times sound like common language, leading the uninitiated reader to the mistaken conclusion that she understands what is being said’ (Wear, 1999: 299). This means that the team must work collaboratively to expose the disciplinary filters through which their expectations and practices are filtered (Jewitt et al., 2021). Communication is key to interdisciplinary studies and yet there is often a great deal of ambiguity to manage (Donovan et al., 2015). In addition to communication, language differences can cause difficulties in terms of fundamental differences in epistemologies, sets of knowledge and methods and different ways of formulating research questions (Bracken and Oughton, 2006: 372). Recognising the assumptions and understandings that are often bound up with certain terms is difficult since these are often tacit or implicit within particular disciplines (Nagy and Scott, 2000). The need for overt discussion of meanings can seem patronising or time-consuming, but missing this step can lead to team members working with different underlying conceptions of a project. Jeffrey (2003) asserts that clear communication requires that team members are able to understand the specific meaning of terms in their own discipline in order to convey those meanings to others, and thus the team can develop a shared understanding of commonly used terms. Indeed, the need for time allocation for developing shared vocabularies is essential to successful interdisciplinary projects (Bracken and Oughton, 2006).

Evaluations of the methodological approaches that can lead to successful interdisciplinary projects often focus on how well teams are integrated, communication, epistemology and clarity of language or objectives (e.g., Bark et al., 2016; Kragt et al., 2016; Wickson et al., 2006). Jewitt et al. (2021) suggest that in order for interdisciplinary dialogue to be effective, collaborators must experience ‘disciplinary boundary crossing, the sharing (through doing) of each other’s practices, collective interrogation of terminologies and concepts’ (Jewitt et al., 2021). Similarly, Mainsah (2022) recommends a variety of creative pedagogies to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue such as workshops with hands-on group activities and presentations (p. 253). There are many potential barriers to these principles working, such as prejudices between social and natural sciences (Redclift, 1998), difficulties of understanding the ‘other’ and considering power relations (Campbell, 2005: 576).

Epistemologies and transformative learning

Many researchers have observed a disconnect in the epistemological starting point of natural and social scientists (Bernard, 2006: 17), yet these obstacles are rarely discussed when embarking on an interdisciplinary project. Indeed, natural scientists rarely even consider their own epistemology, assuming that their theory of knowledge and the understanding of what we can know about the world is universal. Accordingly, their role as researchers is the uncovering of ‘facts’, with an acceptance of a ‘single reality’ (Lincoln and Guba, 1985: 28), typical of a positivist epistemology. There tends to be less appreciation of the ways in which scientific ‘truth’ is itself socially constructed. Social science can take a more diverse range of epistemological approaches, from positivist through to more interpretive, and there is lively debate around this. Many social scientists see research as the interpretation of a particular set of circumstances, observed in specific contextual conditions and through the lens of the researchers’ own values and experiences, and their own institutional contexts (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). Thus, knowledge production is intersubjective, which means that complete objectivity is not possible, making generalisations difficult and undesirable (Bryman, 2004). Recognising the power dynamics, the dominant voices, and the different possible outcomes become important factors in establishing scientific truth, and the direction of scientific research may be better able to meet social justice goals if it is informed by interpretive, context-sensitive social science approaches. This is particularly relevant when researching sustainable development, a concept that is contested, and subject to multiple interpretations through different development theories.

The positivist approach to knowledge, traditionally associated with universities, privileges some knowledge over others (Giroux, 1983). There is undoubtedly a power dynamic at play when it comes to assessing what is ‘proper’, ‘robust’ or ‘objective’ research. An awareness of these hierarchies within academia is important when pursuing interdisciplinary learning. For academics trained in a specific discipline, the worldview can be deeply held, so communicating across these divides can often be superficial. Many interdisciplinary projects exist at a level at which participants can remain firmly grounded in their own epistemology without recognising the worldview of the other. Our analysis of our own interdisciplinary dialogue is informed by an interpretivist approach (Wellington, 2000) and we argue that when researchers become more aware of their own filters and the values through which they interpret their research, they can learn to speak across disciplines in a way that can transform their work.

Transformative learning is understood as ‘becoming critically aware of one’s own tacit assumptions and expectations and those of others and assessing their relevance for making an interpretation’ (Mezirow, 2000: 4). This means questioning the premises on which our beliefs are based and exploring other points of view through dialogue. Dialogue requires openness to the other that is based on a genuine respect for their perspective. Buber (1947) discusses the relation between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ when he presents the idea of genuine dialogue (Morgan, 2007). ‘Thou’ is the Other who brings a surprise. From the meeting between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’, something develops which bears the surprising character of genuine dialogue. ‘In genuine dialogue, speaker and listener are caught up in the same experience. Speaking and listening are not distinct operations and, whether speaking or listening, we establish a bond through which the Other’s words have an impact’ (Zimmermann and Morgan, 2016). We can only hope for beneficial social change if we reflect critically in dialogue with others. ‘We need others to serve as critical mirrors who highlight our assumptions for us and reflect them back to us in unfamiliar, surprising, and disturbing ways’ (Brookfield, 2000: 146). Freire’s (2005) concept of dialogue for a critical reading of the word-world also supposes learning to listen. One must feel comfortable in the space provided and there must be trust and feelings of solidarity and security (Mezirow, 2000: 13–14).

Methodology and analysis

The question we sought to answer was: To what extent do academics on an interdisciplinary project ¹ experience transformative learning when time and space is dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue?

• What supports and hinders this process?

• To what extent do they experience changes in their assumptions?

• What is their perception of their own learning throughout the interdisciplinary process?

The core team consisted of 10 members. We report them here as either natural scientists (NS) (chemistry, biochemistry, biology) or social scientists (SS) (political education, science education, geography, social anthropology, social policy, physical education, communication). While it is problematic to construct a dichotomy in this way, for the purposes of this paper, it allows us to make a distinction that is useful in analysing our findings based on the stated epistemological starting-points of the team. Findings also distinguish between co-investigator team members (TM), and collaborators (C). The team met regularly and organised a series of three workshops. Collaborators from outside the core team were invited to these to engage in discussions around the substantive content of the project: the use of enzymes to develop second-generation biofuels. Workshops lasted all day with a break for lunch when we ate together. In these workshops, we presented our use of terminology and methodologies, had a tour around the Chemistry lab, walked around campus looking at different types of biomass and conducted various participative learning methodologies. We spent time at the outset to explicitly reveal and consider our taken-for-granted assumptions and identify what we understood by key terms and processes, including ‘sustainable’, ‘development’, ‘methodology’, ‘truth’, ‘marginal land’ and ‘outputs’. We found these encounters created opportunities to influence the trajectory of each other’s thinking, with the ideal of social and environmental justice prominent in all our discussions. This enabled us to deepen our understanding of the potential interplay between disciplines as an innovative way to better articulate research findings so as to influence decision-making in research directly. We kept a large piece of paper at the side of the room at all times for us to note down arising issues, which we referred to as ‘knots’ that we needed to untangle as a group. These were issues that we realised we understood in different ways or ideas that needed to be explored in more depth. We then made time to go through these as a group to discuss in more detail. We explored what we meant by ‘development outcomes’ through different theoretical lenses, encouraging critical reflection on assumptions and the implications of these for social and environmental criteria in development research. Despite allowing lots of time for these workshops, we always found we needed more time.

A group of six team members conducted fieldwork in Brazil; this was an international and interdisciplinary group of three British academics (from education, chemistry and social policy) and three Brazilian academics (from education, biochemistry and communication). This experience of working together in the field was also transformative in terms of interdisciplinary learning, and we spent some time working on written outputs and reflections in between the data collection visits, which allowed for deeper understanding of each other’s field experiences.

For the final stage of the project, the team met weekly or bi-weekly to discuss the analysis and write-up of the project and to continue with the interdisciplinary learning processes. We organised another workshop, this time inviting researchers from all departments (via the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre at York) to get a broader range of perspectives on the project and on the dialogues we were having as a team. We had 20 attendees (in addition to the project team) from chemistry, biology, environment and geography, education and psychology. This was a half-day discussion-based workshop and we collected the thoughts of all the participants in the form of an open question questionnaire that they first discussed in small groups and then wrote up individually. Finally, we conducted one-to-one interviews with all of the core team in order to reflect critically on the processes in which we had engaged and explore perceptions of interdisciplinary dialogue and learning. In these interviews, the team were asked about their initial expectations of the project and then to reflect on changes they had experienced. These were probed with relation to constructing and testing hypotheses, disciplinary language and terminologies, approaches to data, evidence and analysis, individual motivations and behaviour, group dynamics and individual contributions, points of agreement/disagreement, the nature of the development challenge, theories of change. They were asked where change, either individual or of the team, was not sufficient and what they would do differently. Finally, they reflected on the meaning of interdisciplinarity and what supports this.

This process produced a lot of rich qualitative data, which we were able to analyse to draw out themes and explore the extent to which the team had undergone transformative learning, and which aspects facilitated and challenged the interdisciplinary dialogue. Our data included reflections from the team and other collaborators after each of the workshops and informal meetings, questionnaires from the final workshop and internal reflective interviews. All the data was transcribed and uploaded into NVivo12 and thematically coded. While we were satisficed with the data, we recognise that there were limitations with our approach. We had hoped to keep reflective journals throughout the project. This would have allowed us to observe change rather than asking the team members to remember their experiences in an interview at the end. Moreover, this was a willing, supportive community, prepared to dedicate time to the project, and while we have a good range of disciplines represented, we recognise that there were perspectives that were not covered within our core team. Finally, we were clear that the context of the project was important, in that it was about a development challenge, so generalisation is difficult. Nevertheless, we think that the research makes an important methodological contribution in terms of the importance of dedicating sufficient time and space to unpicking disciplinary assumptions and offers some insightful ways to do this that foster interdisciplinary learning.

Findings

This section outlines the findings from the NVivo analysis. It is arranged into three sections, expectations, processes and outcomes.

Expectations

There was an overriding consensus that part of the reason the project worked well was because there were shared values regarding desirable outcomes of the project. The idea was that we could create a community of scholars to discuss these ideas (NSTM). There was an explicit commitment to social and environmental justice and what we wanted to achieve and a common purpose of wanting to address injustice. Team members saw progress in the ‘shared understanding and a recognition of the depth of alternating epistemological underpinnings of our ideas and how that might work over the course of the project’ (SSTM). The team were open-minded from the outset, recognising the power dynamic in higher education, with one person noting that natural science often seems to think it has a ‘monopoly on wisdom’ (NSTM), and that this was an important aspect to challenge.

There are strong disciplinary expectations in universities about what ‘counts’ as data and good research. The difference in approach between having clear hypotheses at the outset to test on the one hand, and starting with an exploration of the issue on the other, was surprising for natural scientists, as was the notion that opinions and feelings could count as data. There was also frustration about some social science processes being rather obscure, with greater emphasis on exploratory methods and interpretative analysis.

Dominant development narratives are informed by positivist approaches to solutions, with development seen as ‘modernisation’, and the idea that ‘bigger’ and ‘more’ is generally ‘better’. So, we explicitly examined alternative development theories in considering expectations. We paid attention to the assumption that technology ‘fixes problems’ and ‘makes things better’, asking whether we know what the ‘problem’ is in context or what ‘better’ looks like to the ‘beneficiaries’. Natural scientists on the team articulated the problem with international development work that promotes the natural science narrative of ‘how can we tell people how to benefit from the solution we have come up with for them?’ (NSTM). We interrogated the narrative that a scientific development solution is detached from context and can be universalised, and we spent time unpicking assumptions regarding marginal land, poverty, waste products, development, sustainability, terms all identified in the early workshop as being problematic. This led to a more critical unpacking of what might constitute good development outcomes, and for whom.

Processes of interdisciplinary research

In terms of processes, the important dimensions to emerge were the communication within the team, the space and time available for dialogue and the institutional structure that impinged on the project.

Communication

Much of the data focused on issues of communication within the group. In particular the use of language and terminology, developing understanding through establishing relationships and opportunities for respectful questioning. We also navigated the dimension of communicating across different cultures and languages, as well as disciplines.

Use of terminology and language

We spent some time defining terms specifically relating to the substance of the project, such as ‘enzymes’ and ‘second-generation biofuels’. We then focused on terms, such as ‘development’ and ‘sustainability’, sharing our own assumptions about the meaning of these. Language relating to research, such as ‘hypothesis’, ‘data’ and ‘outcomes’ were also considered. The team commented that more time was desirable for presenting our own work and ideas of data very explicitly to other team members at the outset. There was a lot of reflection in the one-to-one team interview data about the need to negotiate boundaries and highlight where shifting meanings existed. We made a list of ‘knots’ that needed to be unpicked, and everyone added to this. The overriding issue that emerged was that this work is extremely time intensive, and with so many demands on time it can feel frustrating, because, as the team acknowledged, ‘there is a need to go slow, but this can also feel like progress is not being made’ (NSTM).

Relationships and understanding

An essential element of setting up good team communication and dialogue was to ensure that the group felt comfortable together (Mezirow, 2000), and this takes time to accomplish. The team noted that people felt willing to share doubt in the group, and that this had improved throughout the project. As one team member commented, ‘it established a space where people should feel “safe” to talk about and explore these problems’ (SSTM). The informal spaces, such as coffee meetups and workshops were seen as an important dimension of enabling the group to get to know each other better and therefore feel more comfortable.

Respect for each other’s disciplines and expertise was essential to making interdisciplinary research work, this meant being conscious of people’s diverse backgrounds and experiences and having a positive attitude in discussions to allow different perspectives to emerge. There needed to be an open attitude and ‘willingness on all sides to learn from others and share their own experiences’ (SSTM) and a flat structure within the team. Since everyone brought different expertise to the project, some with far more academic experience than others, some with more knowledge of the field and each with their own disciplinary perspective, having a ‘slow, non-hierarchical approach’ (SSTM) was important.

Questioning and dialogue

There was an emphasis on the importance of giving ourselves time to ‘dwell on the ideas we have’. We noted that often in university settings academics work in parallel, generally in specific faculties and departments, sitting quite comfortably within their disciplinary approach, working on a similar issue or on a project without coming together or understanding the disciplinary backgrounds of the other, then going away and publishing in their respective journals. The reflexivity of this project highlighted the importance of understanding the research approach of other disciplines in order to improve our own research. One key aspect of this project was the intention to actually engage in a meaningful dialogue, genuinely listen to each other, and take the time to share our starting assumptions (Buber, 1947; Freire, 2005).

The team reported seeing how academics think in ‘questioning ways, where they will constantly prompt the others with open questions and from that start to form an understanding’ (NSTM). Importantly, there was a perception that all team members were ‘open to question and be questioned’ (SSTM), fostering an interest in learning from each other. In particular, the importance of questioning assumptions about ‘development’ came up several times and also the need for reflection and questioning our own perspectives.

Spaces for dialogue

Spaces for the dialogue to occur were essential. The importance of informal spaces to build relationships was a strong theme, as was the need for experiential learning, both on campus or through fieldwork.

Informal meetings

Informal spaces helped build relationships. This enabled people to feel more comfortable about contacting the group or speaking about personal views. Some saw the informal meetings as good ways to set up activities that would make the formal meeting more productive, and there were many comments that ‘regular friendly, low-key meetings are very important in building up knowledge and trust that are essential in interdisciplinary working’ (SSTM).

However, there was also some frustration with the informality and lack of organisation in some informal meet ups. Some of the collaborators disengaged from the more informal processes and one team member commented that sometimes it would be useful to have more formal presentations of our disciplines and enable others to ‘visualise this and see how each one approaches science’ (NSTM). As one social scientist noted, ‘Maybe we need to think more creatively about how to ‘walk people through’ our research methods. . . . Sometimes being willing to state what seems to be ‘the obvious’ to you is an important starting point in getting these dialogues going’ (SSTM). This visualisation can be aided by spending time in the workplace of particular disciplines (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). We coded this as ‘physical spaces’.

Physical spaces

All participants discussed the powerful nature of learning in different contexts in order to understand how others think. There was a site visit to the chemistry labs, which provided some tangible experience for the team to learn about how others work. Many team members noted how helpful it was to ‘learn about chemistry research in the physical research environment – in the lab, viewing the equipment, etc.’ (SSTM). Another activity early on in the project involved a guided walk around the University campus looking at various forms of ‘useful’ biomass and discussing the premises of the chemistry research that stimulated the project. All participants recalled this positively, noting for instance that the ‘guided walk around the campus, observing trees, shrubs and grasses with potential for cellulose, seemed to capture the way many people in chemistry and biology think about problems and view the world’ (SSTM). These physical spaces for embodying the experience of the other was a powerful tool (Zimmermann and Morgan, 2016) and demonstrates the importance of experiential learning in our data.

Fieldwork

The other key site for experiential learning was the field trip to Brazil. The value of the learning that took place when the team were in a different context, living together for a period of time (albeit short) cannot be understated. Even though circumstances meant that not all the team could go on the trip and the time was more limited than originally planned (a consequence of the institutional demands on people’s time as well as personal constraints), the intensity of the interactions and the time for debriefs were essential:

Actually some of the best things that came out of it were the times when after we’d had these quite intense visits, that we took the time to sit down . . . and go through what had been said and talk about what we had seen and where we were going. . . . That was quite a nice way to consolidate our sort of different experiences, what we’d seen during the data collection. (SSTM)

This was important for building relationships and understanding each other, but also for a deeper understanding of the context, and to see that context through the eyes of colleagues. One said that being there ‘together made it much easier to talk across disciplines’ (NSTM). The feeling of being on a retreat meant that people could relax more and say more about what they really thought. It ‘opens up a dynamic that you can’t get another way’ (NSTM).

Time for dialogue

There were a number of comments about the difficulty of reaching shared consensus (especially from natural scientists). However, with or without consensus, finding time for ‘genuine dialogue’ (Buber, 1947) is hugely time consuming. Bracken and Oughton (2006) and Campbell (2005) noted that good interdisciplinary work takes time, and there is no way around this. This can be challenging and frustrating and some of the team were surprised about how much time this took, but all reflected that this time was essential to the success of an interdisciplinary project. Taking time to discuss how different words and concepts were interpreted by others was seen as ‘fundamental’ but this can be a ‘slow process’ that takes ‘time and patience’. In particular, the natural scientists noted that ‘much more time is devoted to this than it would be in science’ (NSC) and that they felt that once they started on this journey that there was still more time required to address the important ‘knots’ that needed untangling. There was a feeling that we were just getting going when the time ran out. This is an important aspect of setting up this kind of space for dialogue that is rarely acknowledged at institutional level. This led to questions of what is seen as ‘efficient’ use of time. This became part of the learning process. One scientist used the analogy of learning a language, which resonates quite well with the idea of developing interdisciplinary competence:

It wasn’t the words, it was the syntax, the construction, articulation – it’s like learning English, but learning idiomatic English. What’s the way to learn idiomatic English if you’re a foreigner, you spend time in the country, that’s the analogy, that’s the difference for me. And that only comes with time really, and how far do you want to extend that? It’s not just the syntax, it’s the way people interact with each other, body language even, for me became part of the concoction. (NSTM)

However, there was a clear message that: ‘Devotion of time to the process is an important, and unexpected, condition of doing this work well’ (NSTM). Indeed, relating this to the ideals of transformative learning, it is clear that to engage in learning that really challenges our deep assumptions and explores different perspectives adequately, there is a need to dedicate sufficient time:

I think it is about understanding each other’s language and assumptions and methods, or what sort of questions does it make sense to ask from disciplinary backgrounds, but I think it just takes so much time . . . kind of really slow, almost without an agenda at times, I think that really helped in understanding how people work and what people's priorities were. (SSTM)

Institutional structures

Finding this time and space however, does not sit comfortably into the institutional environment of a University in the 21st century. The general feeling was that the structures under which most academics operate generally hinder engagement in a project of this nature, especially for natural scientists. It is significant that two of the core team felt able to participate specifically because they, for different reasons, did not need to worry about fostering an academic career. One of the natural scientists commented that often collaborations did not easily ‘fit into university structures and reward systems’ (NSTM). They felt able to take an active role in the project because of their position in their career, not needing to worry too much about the ‘normal rules of rewards in institutions’ (NSTM). Similarly, one of the social scientists, approaching retirement commented that they didn’t need to ‘think about publications, promotions targets, career etc.’ (SSTM). It was seen that this sort of project is working against the tide in the increasingly corporate, neoliberal UK academic institutions. The pressure of publications, and particularly the Research Excellence Framework (REF), makes very explicit use of disciplinary boundaries. As one of the team commented: ‘Funders, departments, universities, REF all seem to (despite encouraging interdisciplinarity superficially) promote ways of working that hold the discipline at the centre, making it difficult to manoeuvre outside of this’ (NSTM).

Institutions hold structures in place that make interdisciplinary work difficult. This is exacerbated when staff time is not fully funded on a project, making it difficult for academics to squeeze it in around teaching and other commitments. Some departments, notably in the Science Faculty, explicitly undervalued interdisciplinary projects, which they saw as necessarily ‘not pushing the boundaries of knowledge’ within their discipline. This made it difficult for some of the team to justify their time on the project in their departments. Clearly, when progress is slow, time consuming and meetings are spent on clarifying terms and understanding different perspectives, this can be hard to explain to management. Trying to find time for international fieldwork on top of this was another difficulty faced. It must be said, however, that the British Academy was very supportive in facilitating the research and made adapting it in the face of a variety of challenges very manageable.

Learning outcomes

We discuss here some of the perceived outcomes of our interdisciplinary processes. These include learning about other disciplines, such as what is considered appropriate in terms of data (an important first step), learning from other disciplines, such as new knowledge on the topic (essential for the substantive work of the project), and learning with other disciplines, in order to see things differently (the outcome of genuine interdisciplinary dialogue).

Learning about other disciplines – Realisations

A key outcome was the recognition that ‘we did have a better understanding of each other and that was really more important than consensus’ (SSTM). The team all reflected on how learning about how things are done in other disciplines was ‘interesting’, ‘surprising’ and ‘eye opening’ (NSC).

The key areas of learning for the natural scientists were around what constitutes ‘appropriate processes, data and outputs, what expectations social scientists have in research, how ideas are communicated, and how what we are doing will feed into those outcomes for this project’ (NSTM). Natural scientists commented that they now had ‘a much better understanding of the process and needs of those working in education/social science disciplines and what they are looking for in order to generate useful information’ (NSTM). Another natural scientist saw this as a move from ‘a perfection of decision making to one that is recognising the power of imperfection’ (NSTM). The recognition that ‘the same concept might be perceived/understood in a different way between people with different knowledge and personal experience’ (NSC) was a key insight for some. Many grappled with the challenge of managing many different perspectives on issues they had previously taken-for-granted as being straightforward, but commented that they had developed a lot of patience as they saw the value in this. Perhaps the biggest area of learning for natural scientists was what constituted data, with surprise expressed that personal reflections could count as data (NSC). The learning of the social scientists mirrored these comments in that they became more aware of how alien their methods of research were to their natural science colleagues.

Learning from other disciplines – Understandings

For social scientists, there was more emphasis on what they had learnt from the other disciplines. This tended to be related to substantive understanding of the focus on the project, in this case the development of enzymes for bio-energy, biomass and technology. For all the team there were comments on learning from other team members in terms of different understandings of development or sustainability. Simply being able to see how other disciplines contribute to these issues, and take time to interrogate the interaction between these was important. Understanding was developed in terms of how we can engage in interdisciplinary work, ‘how to create these opportunities, finding out differences, finding out people’s views, where people are coming from, how they work’ (SSTM). Natural scientists also discussed learning about looking at development through different paradigms. There were reports of looking at things in new ways, or finding out more about substantive issues. Learning about the expectations of others was also key and this gave way to lots of opportunities for two-way learning and reflection on different approaches.

Learning with other disciplines – Transformations

One of the key outcomes of a truly transformative learning process is that learners report a shift in their fundamental ways of organising knowledge or understanding how they see a particular issue. There was certainly evidence of this in this project, as illustrated below, but also scope for this to have gone further. There was evidence of some of this learning being internalised and potentially influencing future research by learning to genuinely listen to and learn with others. For many, particularly the natural scientists, a key outcome was accepting that there are other ways to interpret and understand research and acknowledging limits to their take-for-granted assumptions and paradigms.

Reflecting on assumptions

We considered the extent to which we had had a chance to examine our own bias and reflect on prior assumptions. There was a view that we had begun to share our assumptions with each other and that this was the starting point for research. Taking time to see how aspects of the project looked different from varying theoretical perspectives was a useful process and having the group identify ‘knots’ that still needed untangling was a key way in which assumptions were aired and often challenged. The group all commented on how useful it was to think about different frameworks and ‘lenses’, something that was unfamiliar in the natural sciences:

We had a very good talk about ‘sustainability’ and ‘development’ that produced a number of ‘lenses’ through which we could interrogate the processes involved with each. (NSTM)

There was a strong engagement with the idea of really trying to see things ‘through other people’s lenses’ (SSTM) and understanding other perspectives by reflecting on our own prior experiences. Many people commented on ‘having to explain ourselves more than we’re used to’ (NSTM) in order to communicate our taken-for-granted assumptions. This process was useful in that it made people look at their starting assumptions more than they usually would, and this allowed people to recognise their own biases. This was described as a ‘valuable but challenging process’. It meant that natural scientists in particular began to think more about the social implications of their work, which for many was relatively new.

For me – in my background I was not dealing with social problems, not caring too much, I have to do my research and build my career and not thinking how my work, my science can contribute to society, or how a community can be improved. So, I learnt that my research and my career needs to take this into account, otherwise my science won’t make sense. (NSTM)

Thus, through dialogue, a number of team members noted that they felt that there had been ‘some genuine moments of group discussion where collective learning has taken place’ (SSTM).

Challenging dominant narratives

Perhaps the most interesting dimension that one natural scientist reported learning through dialogue with social science colleagues was the extent to which positivist paradigms are dominant in universities, and being confronted, not only with the realisation that this exclusionary knowledge hegemony exists, but also that this can be challenged:

Yes, for a scientist, deductive reasoning and creating causal relationships between . . . that’s the name of the game. And I should tell you that has a strong psychological grip pretty much on every scientist I know, right to the point that it excludes all other forms of thinking. You see that materialize in all sorts of different ways, one of which is a certain hegemony of thinking in meetings. (NSTM)

This is an important observation, and it is significant that this knowledge hegemony had never been challenged in other interdisciplinary projects. Indeed, the space to examine epistemological differences was one of the key aspects of this project, and it was these observations that laid the foundations for transformative learning.

Given the hegemony of the positivist scientific paradigm, this project focused on rebalancing the interplay between natural and social science. Rather than science driving the agenda, with social stakeholders and others informed/consulted late in the process of implementation, there was a clear move in this project to ‘put the science at the service of the social’. This meant that in some ways there was more emphasis on challenging the natural scientists than the social scientists, which created a potential tension. It was clear that, unlike many interdisciplinary projects, this was led by social science.

This led to perhaps the most significant area of learning, which was how social science can lead natural science in context-appropriate directions. One natural scientist commented that they had changed in how they saw the use of technological interventions when they are applied globally, noting that ‘people come in with a solution but rarely deliver on intended outcomes’ (NSTM) because technology becomes embedded into specific contexts in very different ways and there are so many factors that impinge on that. Therefore, the success of these may be improved by considering contextual factors much sooner in the process of developing new innovations.

From the perspective of another natural scientist, science dominated the discussions at the beginning of the project, but this had gradually shifted over the course of the project, until the social science was seen to be leading:

We have learned that science takes a smaller role in achieving [development outcomes] than perhaps we did at the beginning, I certainly have any way. Rather interestingly I think, if you were just to carve it up, that’s social science, that’s not, maybe you would find that the percentage of discussion that science has had slowly but surely has possibly shrunk in the contribution to the debate. That, I would say, is the largest change to the debate. (NSTM)

This switch in the role of disciplines in terms of setting agendas was a key area of learning, particularly for natural scientists. This emphasis on the social context setting the agenda for science was an important outcome of the project.

Conclusions

We found that there is considerable scope for academics on an interdisciplinary project to experience transformative learning when time and space is dedicated to meaningful interdisciplinary dialogue. This means finding ways to develop trusting and respectful relationships through open communication and informal interactions in order to feel safe to challenge their own disciplinary assumptions and explore the views of others. Experiential learning also opens up the potential for transformative learning; the value of interdisciplinary fieldwork and physically visiting each other’s places of work cannot be underestimated. Understanding how others see the world is an important starting point and this has interesting implications in terms of how we set out for others what our research is about. Natural science is often compelled to create clear, linear visual representations in the pursuit of simplification of complexity (Latour and Woolgar, 1986), whereas social scientists seem more comfortable wading through the messiness of words, thoughts and abstract concepts. These are important things to remember in thinking about how we all communicate our research to colleagues and how we find ways to communicate that work for everyone. This may mean using tools to enable us to ‘speak each other’s language’, at least at the outset of a project. This, however, is time-consuming and requires time to be built-in to a project from the outset.

Moreover, institutional structures and incentives work to reinforce disciplinary boundaries and this erodes the possibility of finding the time and space to generate authentic interdisciplinary dialogue, in which we establish a bond through open speaking and listening (Buber, 1947). For the natural scientists, there was a very clear pull from their departments that they needed to be doing ‘cutting edge science’ and focus on micro level solutions, but often the social application of that was absent from the planning process. This was despite the recognition that in many cases the level of social impact is not directly related to the level of scientific innovation – relatively ‘simple’ science can deliver important benefits. Therefore, the initial aims of the project were to bring a social science lens to the project in order to think in more detail about intended benefits of the scientific innovations and the potential social implications. It seemed that to some extent there was a disconnect between what is seen as ‘cutting-edge science’ and what is ‘good development’. This discrepancy did not come from within the team, but was reported from science departments. The extent to which colleagues could navigate this seemed to depend a little on their status within the department.

The insistence in some science departments that science be ‘injected’ into a situation to solve a development problem creates a serious disconnect that is reinforced and reproduced at a range of institutional levels. Natural science departments in particular do not recognise the importance of the social contextualisation of their work, even when addressing social problems (Viseu, 2015). Peer review publications, Research Excellence Framework (REF), promotion criteria, professional recognition all seem to work against scientists engaging in genuine interdisciplinary work. It is easy enough to put together a project with colleagues from different departments, but serious consideration of the extent to which a project is interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary, how this can be accomplished and what learning can inform the project, is often missing. The idea that we need to consider the context in which a new technology might be implemented jars with the value placed on generalisability at the heart of the positivist epistemology. While genuine dialogue across disciplinary boundaries is possible on an individual basis, particularly open-minded people motivated by social justice (which captures all of our team), the institutional structures constrain them in a way that make it seem like a constant battle.

Perhaps the key outcome was the ways these processes allowed us to disrupt the epistemological hegemony that is so embedded in our institutional environment. There was evidence of transformative learning from the ways that the team discussed genuinely listening to each other (Buber, 1947), looking at issues through different lenses and reflecting on prior assumptions (Mezirow, 2000) and challenging dominant narratives of research and development (Brookfield, 2000). However, what a project of this nature exposes is the deep institutional commitment to positivist approaches to research and, by extension, to single discipline-based ‘excellence’. This does not just come from university science departments, but also from funding bodies, which reinforce these hierarchies through creating a strong neoliberal environment for research (Holmwood, 2014). These structures prevent epistemological pluralism and put social science ‘in the service’ of the science interventions that will ‘solve’ all development problems. Unless we are prepared to challenge this hegemony, it will be difficult to create fertile ground for genuine interdisciplinary dialogue, for transformative learning on the part of academic scholars or for solutions to development problems that carry social and environmental justice values and context-sensitivity at their heart. This project relied on a shared methodological commitment to creating the time and space necessary for genuine interdisciplinary dialogue. As such, it demonstrated the possibility exists, but this is limited to institutional ‘pockets’, sustained by motivated individuals and team cultures that go against the grain. Further research is needed on experiences of similar research initiatives in UK universities. Theories of transformative learning provide a useful framework for analysing these experiences and exploring strategies for tackling institutional cultures that disincentivise interdisciplinary practice.