Beginning at the end: the outcome spaces framework to guide purposive transdisciplinary research
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Publication Type:
- Chapter
- Citation:
- Transdisciplinary research and practice for sustainability outcomes, 2017, pp. 25-38
- Issue Date:
- 2017-01-01
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Over the last four decades there has been increasing interest in transdisciplinary research. The complex, messy nature of some problems, such as the problem of how to increase sustainability in particular contexts, means they cannot easily be tackled from a single disciplinary perspective, and this makes a transdisciplinary approach valuable (Lawrence 2010, Hirsch-Hadorn et al. 2006). With the increasing literature on transdisciplinarity in the fi eld of sustainability science comes a diverse range of perspectives. In part this diversity refl ects the disciplinary characteristics of the researcher, how transdisciplinary research is perceived, practised and theorised, and the potential infl uence of funding models as well as the disciplinary perspectives and histories of the researchers involved. The majority of literature on transdisciplinary sustainability research tends to focus on the input and/or process of research rather than explicitly acknowledging the outputs or outcomes of the approach. The conceptual model of transdisciplinary research presented in this paper offers a complementary starting point by fi rst acknowledging the normative intent of deliberately creating change toward sustainability and then articulating the desired outcomes through the concept of ‘outcome spaces’.
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