Transdisciplinary Professional Learning And Practice

This book presents thinking about and through transdisciplinary and professional development as an educative process. Rather than focusing on the delineation of the approaches offered, an analysis of these contributions points to commonality in those problems that benefit from a transdisciplinary perspective. The core elements of transdisciplinarity can lead to what might be called metanoia - another way of knowing; a knowing which is ‘beyond that which is creative and transformative. This poses challenges for the practice of all professionals and is the core issue that this book addresses. The book brings together the constituting views of transdisciplinarity, or metanoia, and focus them on current professional practice.​ The book is structured in two parts and five sections. The first part deals with key issues in Transdisciplinarity; its actuality and how it creates knowledge. Section 1 has three original papers which look at Transdisciplinarity from a different lens. Especially, the Islamic voice has not been heard in this context before. Section 2 considers the knowledge aspect of Transdisciplinarity and how this might be confronted with existing disciplinary knowledge. Part 2 of the book is directly focused on professionals and their education. The third section considers research pedagogy and graduate education for the professional. This is followed in section 4 which offers a discussion on team work. In the final section six chapters present the transdisciplinary practitioner in different contexts.

This book is not just about thinking or acting in transdisciplinary ways, but about being transdisciplinary. To achieve this requires a deconstruction of our current way of acting within the definition of being that others impose upon us. Transdisciplinarity is a phenomenological perspective of reality and its manifestation in the world in which we exist. The volume develops a widely based transdisciplinary understanding of the issues faced by higher education institutions and those who work within and with these institutions to educate professionals. It incorporates international contributions from organisational theory, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, social sciences, philosophers and practitioners to create a volume that makes an important and distinct contribution to the literature on higher education and professional practice. “Transdisciplinarity provides one of our greatest challenges in higher education, both to the way it is organized and to the nature of the curriculum. This book is an important contribution to the debate about its implications.” “Higher education is being challenged by the nature of knowledge and how it is organized—the world is transdisciplinary but out institutions are constrained by the disciplines. This book contributes to the important debates about the challenges transdisciplinarity provides to our institutions.” Professor David Boud Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney

This exciting new state-of-the art book reviews, explores and advocates ways in which collaborative research endeavours can, through a transdisciplinary lens, enhance student, academic and social experiences. Drawing from a wide range of knowledges, contexts, geographical locations and internationally renowned expertise, the book provides a unique look into the world of transdisciplinary thinking, collaborative learning and action. In doing so, the book is action orientated, reflective, theoretical and intriguing and provides a place for all of these to meet and mingle in the spirit of curiosity and imagination.

Accessible and comprehensive, this text introduces a transdisciplinary framework for literacy instruction in grades K–12. This cutting-edge volume addresses the need for literacy instruction that crosses disciplines to provide students with a skillset that is not constrained or siloed, but rather knowledge that students can apply to existing and emerging fields. The text begins with a clear, theoretical understanding of literacy instruction, delves into practical aspects of select instructional practices by grade level, and expands to the creation of schoolwide Multi-Tiered Systems of Support to ensure a continuous improvement system. The authors’ inviting and innovative approach walks through real-world pathways for meaningful and inclusive literacy practices at distinct grade levels and includes authentic examples that show what the successful implementation of a K–12 transdisciplinary framework looks like. Covering key topics such as MTSS, RtI, Professional Communities of Practice, national and state standards, this book supports pre-service ELA teachers, literacy coaches, reading specialists, and administrators, and is ideal for courses in literacy instruction and content area literacy.

Given the emphasis on transforming professional work through the adoption of enquiry-based and trans-disciplinary approaches to service development, there is an urgent need for those involved in professional education to develop a robust understanding of how changes in practice occur. A more inclusive approach to the analysis of the processes involved across the varied and interrelated contexts in which they occur is thus very timely. In this book, Jenny Reeves sets out to explore the gap between the experience of professional learning as an interactive, dynamic and socially contextualised process, and descriptions that are often individualistic, overly linear and largely context-free. She makes the claim that this disjuncture is the outcome of modes of enquiry that concentrate on limited selections of the available data. Adopting a relational approach to describing practice-based professional development, including graphical means for exploring the spaces produced by the activity, provides a very different picture. It creates a basis for representing the complex movements, relationships and interactions between people and things that occur during professional learning. It also provides a productive approach to describing the exchange and creation of professional knowledge across different contexts over time. By building a picture of the ephemeral spaces and connections that educating activities produce, mapping relational space allows those engaged in professional education to think rather differently about how professional learning and changes in knowledge and practice may be understood, supported and developed.

What is transdisciplinarity - and what are its methods? How does a living lab work? What is the purpose of citizen science, student-organized teaching and cooperative education? This handbook unpacks key terms and concepts to describe the range of transdisciplinary learning in the context of academic education. Transdisciplinary learning turns out to be a comprehensive innovation process in response to the major global challenges such as climate change, urbanization or migration. A reference work for students, lecturers, scientists, and anyone wanting to understand the profound changes in higher education.

The book explores various facets of transdisciplinarity in mathematics education and its importance for research and practice. The book comprehensively outlines the ways that mathematics interacts with different disciplines, world views, and contexts; these topics include: mathematics and the humanities, the complex nature of mathematics education, mathematics education and social contexts, and more. It is an invaluable resource for mathematics education students, researchers, and practitioners seeking to incorporate transdisciplinarity into their own practice.

The profound changes that we are experiencing at the political, environmental, economic, social, and cultural levels of our “postmodern” society pose immense challenges to education. In order to empower students to analyze, reflect, and take action for a sustainable world, the learning and educational process must be experienced in the context of citizenship; that is, it must be designed, planned, and implemented having global sustainability as a framework, thus developing societal awareness, values, and principles. Teaching and Learning Practices That Promote Sustainable Development and Active Citizenship is an essential research book that provides comprehensive research on education as a fundamental factor in empowering citizens to understand and act on the multiple risks and challenges to the sustainability of our society and world. Highlighting a range of critical learning strategies such as global and critical education, development education, and transformational education, among others, this book is ideal for academicians, education professionals, researchers, policymakers, and students.