Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research


Book Description

Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research examines current interdisciplinary research efforts and recommends ways to stimulate and support such research. Advances in science and engineering increasingly require the collaboration of scholars from various fields. This shift is driven by the need to address complex problems that cut across traditional disciplines, and the capacity of new technologies to both transform existing disciplines and generate new ones. At the same time, however, interdisciplinary research can be impeded by policies on hiring, promotion, tenure, proposal review, and resource allocation that favor traditional disciplines. This report identifies steps that researchers, teachers, students, institutions, funding organizations, and disciplinary societies can take to more effectively conduct, facilitate, and evaluate interdisciplinary research programs and projects. Throughout the report key concepts are illustrated with case studies and results of the committee's surveys of individual researchers and university provosts.




Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies


Book Description

The Second Edition provides a comprehensive introduction to interdisciplinary studies with an approach that is succinct, conceptual, and practical. Completely updated to reflect advances in the literature on research, learning, and assessment, the book describes the role of both disciplines and interdisciplinarity within the academy, and how these have evolved. Authors Allen F. Repko, Rick Szostak, and Michelle Phillips Buchberger effectively show students how to think like interdisciplinarians in order to facilitate their working with topics, complex problems, or themes that span multiple disciplines.




Interdisciplinary Research


Book Description

Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory offers a comprehensive, systematic presentation of the interdisciplinary decision-making process by drawing on student and professional work from the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and applied fields. Designed for active learning and problem-based approaches, the Fourth Edition includes expanded discussion of epistemology, creativity within the interdisciplinary research process, confirmation bias and social media, the philosophy of integration, and student work patterns, mapping, and the importance of performing independent research while working through this book. An Instructor website for the book includes a test bank, PowerPoint slides, and tables and figures from the book.




Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Socioecological Challenges


Book Description

This book explores interdisciplinary perspectives on socioecological challenges and offers innovative solutions at both a European and global level. This book critically reflects on the latest scientific knowledge regarding the increasing instability of the Earth System caused by human activities during the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration. It focuses on the global and European challenges regarding climate, resources, bio-integrity, and environment. The authors assess the obstacles to overcoming these challenges and examine the risks posed by path dependencies, lock-ins, and trade-offs between global and regional goals. They also drill down into the complexities of the European Green Deal, specifically the similarities and differences between the scientific analyses and recommendations from the European Environment Agency and the content of the Deal. Finally, the book looks at the Just Transition put forward by the European Green Deal. The authors discuss this in a context of global and European ecological and socioecological challenges and put the question of equality, recognition, and democratization at the center. Outlining new pathways to broaden the scope of scientific collaboration between the natural and technical sciences and the social sciences and the humanities, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable development, environmental policy and governance, and environmental justice.




Research in Education


Book Description




Long-Term Ecological Research


Book Description

Ecosystems change on a multitude of spatial and temporal scales. While analyses of ecosystem dynamics in short timespans have received much attention, the impacts of changes in the long term have, to a great extent, been neglected, provoking a lack of information and methodological know-how in this area. This book fills this gap by focusing on studies dealing with the investigation of complex, long-term ecological processes with regard to global change, the development of early warning systems, and the acquisition of a scientific basis for strategic conservation management and the sustainable use of ecosystems. Within this book, theoretical ecological questions of long-term processes, as well as an international dimension of long-term monitoring, observations and research are brought together. The outcome is an overview on different aspects of long-term ecological research. Aquatic, as well as terrestrial ecosystems are represented.