Transdisciplinarity – a beautiful new car!

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Transdisciplinary learning and research are taking up an increasing space in vocational education and training.  Transdisciplinary learning is already well known in primary and lower secondary education as shown by a recent presentation on Open Space.  It is self-evident that transdisciplinary problem solving and theorizing are vital in high technological development and in tacking complex problems in industry, society and the environment. In this blog I want to draw attention to the opportunities for transdisciplinary learning offered by work-based learning (WBL).  Of course, WBL provides opportunities for experiential learning, but it also has rich potential for transdisciplinary learning.

We can understand this through the example of my own part-time students, following a training programme in "Quality Management" whilst at the same time working in a household chemical company as a specialist in the quality control department of a mediums sized company.

I set my student the learning task of developing a Quality Management System (QMS) for the company in accordance with the requirements of ISO 9001 and approved by the company's management. Although my student had extensive disciplinary knowledge, of quality standards, human resources, production systems and etc., this project encountered considerable resistance. Employees of the company, who were the student's colleagues, expressed to him their lack of understanding of the need to implement a quality management system and, in general, distrusted the student's ability to do the job correctly. Their view was: “We already have everything”, “We don’t need the new good, leave us the old bad”, “All this is fiction,” etc.

To solve this problem, an innovative solution was required because knowledge outside the disciplines and the university was required. My student, with my support, decided to develop a one-day training so that the student himself could communicate to the company's employees all the advantages that would result from the implementation of the QMS. It was critical that it should not be a university teacher who explains and tells, but the employee of the company who can explain and advocate the necessary knowledge to the team in a language they understand. A neutral description of the successes of other companies that have implemented a quality system, the consistency and strength of the quality management concept in accordance with the requirement along with the international status of ISO 9001 would have been less persuasive because it would have lacked the direct connection to the particular company, its culture and its personnel. 

However, transdisciplinary learning may require not only a boundary crossing ‘advocate’  but also going beyond the boundaries of disciplines – to discover a "hidden third" as proposed by  Basarab Nicolescu.  In this particular case, the employees of the company needed a new way to imagine

how a production system can consist of interrelated components, and consequently, how any management system also consists of interrelated subsystems. The most potent, beloved and easily imagined system turned out to be a car – the personal cars of employees!  During the training provided for the company, personal experience of driving a car was used to show how non-disciplinary knowledge - a hidden third -  makes sense to everyone and to explore how it might open up thinking to systemic approaches and innovation.   Table 1, below, was built together by the participants providing them with a credible model for any management system as a set of four interrelated subsystems: the main business process, resource management processes, monitoring and measurement processes, and processes for ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the quality management system. From the example with a car, it becomes clear that the main production business process is directly associated with driving a car, resource management processes are refueling a car with gasoline, oil and other consumables, and driver training, etc.

Table 1

Management system components and their analogues from the “driving a car” situation

After a fascinating journey in an imaginary car, the employees returned to discussing the issue of QMS implementation. It became obvious to them that the result of the project of the QMS implementation will be the same organization as at the start, but now employees will have new competences and the quality management processes will be certified – externally approved – making it a better experience for achieving goals and increasing efficiency.  In short, no longer just a car but a beautiful new car!

In this case, the greatest barrier to innovation was the barrier to the emergence of transdisciplinarity.  Together, through boundary crossing between work and study and through drawing upon personal experiences rather than academic theories, we were able to find a way to change our thinking and our actions.

Open Space Resources

Aleks Drozdowska

Benefits of a Transdisciplinary Education

Vitaly Kopnov

A Review of the Basic Elements, Organizational and Theoretical Foundations of Work-Based Learning