In this chapter, we identify lessons about cross-disciplinary practice from our experience in the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI). These include (1) the rich variety of ways failure can manifest in projects, (2) the need to learn from failure, especially in the context of cross-disciplinary research
A forthcoming poster by Brian Robinson and Michael O'Rourke, presented at the American Philosophical Association's 2021 Pacific Division meeting, April 5-10, 2021 (virtual).
Environmental problems often outstrip the abilities of any single scientist to understand, much less address them. As a result, collaborations within, across, and beyond the environmental sciences are an increasingly important part of the environmental science landscape. Here, we explore an insufficiently recognized and particularly
We wrote a book! It's the first-ever volume telling the entire story of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative. Cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration is emerging as standard operating procedure for many scholarly research enterprises. And yet, the skill set needed for effective collaboration is neither taught nor mentored. The
Interaction is the distinctive feature of focus groups, yet little attention has been devoted to understanding techniques for enhancing the quality of interactions. We argue that using a quantitative survey instrument with focus groups has specific benefits beyond traditional open-ended topic lists or questions. We
McLeskey, C., Berling, E., O’Rourke, M., Pennock, R. (2020). The evolution of the Scientific Virtues Toolbox approach to responsible conduct of research training. In W. Banzhaf et al. (Ed.), Evolution in Action: Past, Present, and Future (pp. 535–550). Dordrecht: Springer.
Researchers typically embark on interdisciplinarity after the acquisition of disciplinary expertise. This article explores the possibility of teaching interdiciplinarity to undergraduate students who have not yet mastered or are in the process of mastering a discipline or disciplines. It focuses on junior-year students in the
Drawing on Pennock’s theory of scientific virtues, we are developing an alternative curriculum for training scientists in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) that emphasizes internal values rather than externally imposed rules. This approach focuses on the virtuous characteristics of scientists that lead to responsible
This article discusses a formal evaluation of new curricular materials and activities designed to foster understanding of three key issues–expertise, risk, and sociopolitical constraints–related to values and policy in transdisciplinary environmental science. We begin by describing the three issues, along with current thinking about the
The “Values and Responsibility in Interdisciplinary Environmental Science” curriculum (http://eese.msu.edu/) is a modular resource designed to be implemented by environmental science instructors who have no ethics training for the purpose of guiding students through an analytic examination of the values and policy dimensions of their