Antonietta Di Giulio

Interdisziplinarität und Disziplinarität

Das Thema dieses Bandes — „Universalisierung versus Spezialisierung akademischer Bildung“ — last sich verstehen als Frage nach dem Verhaltnis von Interdisziplinaritat und Disziplinaritat in der akademischen (Aus-)Bildung sowie nach Inhalt und Ziel einer interdisziplinaren (Aus-)Bildung.1 Dieser Frage wird im vorliegenden Beitrag nachgegangen.

A Typology of Tools for Building Sustainability Strategies

This chapter introduces and describes a typology of policy instruments that has a dual purpose. It serves (1) as a conceptual tool for integrating the findings of the different studies that were part of our inter-and transdisciplinary research and (2) as a useful frame of reference for political actors when choosing appropriate sets of instruments for policy strategies. The instruments we have included in the typology focus on the ecological dimension of sustainability; they are applied primarily to promote environmentally responsible action. However we believe that the five basic types of instruments — command and control instruments economic instruments service and infrastructure instruments collaborative agreements and communication and diffusion instruments — are of a general character that would allow for the inclusion of specific groups of instruments for promoting economic and social sustainability. Future work will tackle the issue of complementing the typology so that it covers the full range of instruments available for promoting all three dimensions of sustainable development. The chapter consists of five sections.

Conceptualizing Sustainable Consumption: Toward an Integrative Framework

Abstract Consumption and sustainability are complex issues—they cannot be reduced to the choice of consumer goods or to “green consumption.” Doing so would neglect the multifaceted embeddedness of consumer acts and the multidimensionality of sustainability. To understand patterns of consumption and move them toward sustainability means dealing with this double complexity. A coherent reference framework is therefore needed, to enable locating and correlating research questions, theories, and findings. Such a framework should provide a basis for interdisciplinary under-standing, mutual acknowledgment, and collaborative knowledge creation. Therefore, it needs to be the result of an integrative approach; otherwise it would not allow a wide variety of disciplines to work with it. This article presents such a framework, developed in the course of an interdisciplinary process in a research program. In this process, the researchers of the focal topic asked four questions: 1) How can consumption be conceptualized? 2) How can consumption and sustainability be related? 3) How can sustainable consumption be assessed? and 4) How can changes to individual consumption be motivated? The article condenses the researchers’ overall answers to these questions into four complementary core statements capturing the key elements of the reference framework and concludes by sketching the framework’s benefits for future research.

Voraussetzungen zu interdisziplinärem Arbeiten und Grundlagen ihrer Vermittlung

Interdisziplinares Arbeiten bietet Schwierigkeiten sowohl im Hinblick auf Organisation und Struktur von Projekten als auch in der konkreten Zusammenarbeit. Fragen der Organisation und Struktur werden hier nicht behandelt; vielmehr geht es darum, die Probleme darzulegen, mit denen Forschende in der interdisziplinaren Zusammenarbeit konfrontiert werden, und die Voraussetzungen fur diese Arbeit aufzuzeigen. Des weiteren wird das Konzept eines Vorschlags vorgestellt, wie diese Voraussetzungen in der universitaren Lehre vermittelt werden konnen.

A tough egg to crack: recreational boats as vectors for invasive goby eggs and transdisciplinary management approaches.

Abstract Non‐native invasive species are a major threat to biodiversity, especially in freshwater ecosystems. Freshwater ecosystems are naturally rather isolated from one another. Nonetheless, invasive species often spread rapidly across water sheds. This spread is to a large extent realized by human activities that provide vectors. For example, recreational boats can carry invasive species propagules as “aquatic hitch‐hikers” within and across water sheds. We used invasive gobies in Switzerland as a case study to test the plausibility that recreational boats can serve as vectors for invasive fish and that fish eggs can serve as propagules. We found that the peak season of boat movements across Switzerland and the goby spawning season overlap temporally. It is thus plausible that goby eggs attached to boats, anchors, or gear may be transported across watersheds. In experimental trials, we found that goby eggs show resistance to physical removal (90 mN attachment strength of individual eggs) and stay attached if exposed to rapid water flow (2.8 m·s−1for 1 h). When exposing the eggs to air, we found that hatching success remained high (>95%) even after eggs had been out of water for up to 24 h. It is thus plausible that eggs survive pick up, within‐water and overland transport by boats. We complemented the experimental plausibility tests with a survey on how decision makers from inside and outside academia rate the feasibility of managing recreational boats as vectors. We found consensus that an installation of a preventive boat vector management is considered an effective and urgent measure. This study advances our understanding of the potential of recreational boats to serve as vectors for invasive vertebrate species and demonstrates that preventive management of recreational boats is considered feasible by relevant decision makers inside and outside academia.

Inter and Transdisciplinary Processes — Experience and Lessons Learnt

The aim of this contribution is not to present a theoretical discussion but to report on the procedures of and experience with inter and transdisciplinary processes in a project group, and recommendations resulting from these.’ The Integrated Project, “Strategies and instruments for sustainable development: Bases and evaluation of applications, with special regard to the municipality level” (IP), was a group of nine research projects (cf. List of Projects at the end of this book). Four of these sub-projects were located at the Swiss universities of Bern, Geneva, and Zurich; five were carried out by private institutions. The IP was managed by the Interdisciplinary Centre for General Ecology (IKAO) of the University of Bern. The project group was formed in the context of the 2nd stage of the Priority Programme “Environment” of the Swiss National Science Foundation, and funded from 1997 to 2000. The terms of this programme demanded proposals by project groups, in which individual sub-projects were to make a contribution to the objectives of the project group while pursuing their own research objectives.

Enabling university educators to equip students with inter- and transdisciplinary competencies

Purpose Inter- and transdisciplinarity are core concepts in almost all education for sustainable development (ESD) competence frameworks and curricula. To equip students with inter- and transdisciplinary competencies is highly demanding for educators. Educators must not only know how to teach students such competencies, but need to be experienced in inter- and transdisciplinary research and must have some technical knowledge about inter- and transdisciplinarity. This paper aims to show how university educators can be supported in their teaching. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a case study based on research and on experiences in interdisciplinary teaching and in supporting educators in their interdisciplinary teaching. Findings The paper presents a competence framework of interdisciplinary competencies to guide university teachers that has been developed, implemented and refined in interdisciplinary study programmes belonging to the field of ESD. It shows how the professional development of educators could be addressed referring to the experiences in these programmes. The measures presented consist for one thing of interdisciplinary processes among the educators and of measures directly supporting educators in their teaching for another thing. Originality/value The case study the paper refers to is of special value, first, because the experiences are based on long-standing research and on two decades of experiences. Second, because considerable efforts were made to deliver coherent and consistent interdisciplinary teaching in which interdisciplinarity was not only a teaching subject for the students but showed by the educators as well so that the educators involved did not only talk about competencies for inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations but also set an example in their own doings.

Methodische Gestaltung transdisziplinärer Workshops

Personliche Arbeitstreffen, an denen gemeinsam Wissen produziert wird, spielen eine grose Rolle fur eine gelingende inter- oder transdisziplinare Zusammenarbeit. Dennoch wird das methodische Design solcher Workshops oft vernachlassigt. Vor dem Hintergrund des Anspruchs, den inter- und transdisziplinare Forschung einlosen sollte, wird im Beitrag die Bedeutung von Workshops fur diese Forschung erortert. Darauf aufbauend werden allgemeine Prinzipien skizziert, die sich bei der Konzipierung solcher Treffen bewahrt haben. Den Fokus des Beitrags bildet die transdisziplinare Forschung, an der Anwenderinnen und Anwender punktuell als „externe Beteiligte“ mitwirken. Deshalb werden die besonderen Charakteristika von personlichen Arbeitstreffen erortert, an denen externe Beteiligte teilnehmen, und die Prinzipien, die fur solche transdisziplinaren Workshops von besonderer Bedeutung sind, werden vertieft. Die Darlegungen werden illustriert anhand konkreter Methoden aus verschiedenen Forschungsprojekten, die vom Autor und der Autorin mit Erfolg eingesetzt wurden. Folgerungen fur den Umgang mit Workshops in transdisziplinaren Forschungsvorhaben schliesen den Beitrag ab.