Browsing by Subject "problematiikka"

In this master’s thesis I examine transdisciplinarity in theory and practice. Transdisciplinarity is seen as an inevitable approach when we strive to understand and solve many of the complex problems of the modern world e.g. the environmental crisis. For this reason it has also quickly increased in popularity in the research funding. With this premise and despite the diverse theory on transdisciplinarity the implementation in practice is often relatively flimsy. This gap between theory and practice has acted as a motivation to the thesis, in which I am interested in how the transdisciplinary expectations based on the theoretical ideals and set on the cross-disciplinary environmental research intersect with the realistic transdisciplinary advancements in the research programs. In addition, I am interested to know why the practice doesn’t meet the expectations. The thesis is solidly theory-oriented. First I shed light on the background, characteristics and motivations of transdisciplinarity as well as disciplines, after which I present an array of the complex challenges of transdisciplinarity. In the results section I examine the manifestations of the challenges on a practical level that is based on three environmental research programs organized over the course of 2011–2014 by HENVI, the Helsinki University Centre for Environment (now HELSUS). In addition to the qualitative analysis based on the interview data, the results section also examines theory on a more practical level of implementing transdisciplinary research programs in general. This presentation thus enables a closer dialogue between the analysis data and practical theory. The primary results of this thesis are five problematics that are the manifestations of theory not meeting the practice properly. They are organized into the themes of funding, knowledge production, administration, socio-culture and education and help to organize and ultimately face the challenges of transdisciplinary research. From a comprehensive set of perspectives the problematics display strongly the highly disciplinary nature of the modern academia. This is the most significant single reason for the difficulties to accomplish transdisciplinarity. In addition, all the five problematics reflect the temporal restrictions that also undermine the potential of an effective transdisciplinary interaction. The essential measures to create solutions and hence also the ideal implementation of transdisciplinarity are mainly beyond the focus of the thesis. However, the problematics provide a problem-based framework that strives to contribute to the further studies focused more profoundly on the actual solutions