Interdisciplinarity among Academic Scientists: Individual and Organizational Factors Fang Xiao 139 Pages Directed by Dr. Julia E. Melkers Drawing on a wide variety of social science theories, this study investigates the effects of tenure system, university climate for interdisciplinary research (IDR), gender, and industry experience on academic scientists’ engagement in IDR in different disciplines. Using survey and bibliometric data, two dependent variables are generated to measure production aspects of IDR: the self-reported percentage of IDR papers which is from researchers’ own estimate of their IDR papers responding to one survey question, and the calculated percentage of IDR papers which is a combination of two bibliometric indicators of scientists’ borrowing and boundary crossing activities. Results find that our conventional wisdom about the effects of some individual and organizational factors on scientists’ propensity to engage in IDR is outdated, and their effects depend on the disciplinary contexts. These findings suggest science policy makers, funding agencies and university administrators to keep fresh and informed about scientists’ research activities and underlying context and take full into account of distinct characteristics of different disciplines when they make or reform policies to encourage IDR work.

Drawing on a wide variety of social science theories, this study investigates the effects of tenure system, university climate for interdisciplinary research (IDR), gender, and industry experience on academic scientists’ engagement in IDR in different disciplines. Using survey and bibliometric data, two dependent variables are generated to measure production aspects of IDR: the self-reported percentage of IDR papers which is from researchers’ own estimate of their IDR papers responding to one survey question, and the calculated percentage of IDR papers which is a combination of two bibliometric indicators of scientists’ borrowing and boundary crossing activities. Results find that our conventional wisdom about the effects of some individual and organizational factors on scientists’ propensity to engage in IDR is outdated, and their effects depend on the disciplinary contexts. These findings suggest science policy makers, funding agencies and university administrators to keep fresh and informed about scientists’ research activities and underlying context and take full into account of distinct characteristics of different disciplines when they make or reform policies to encourage IDR work.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Education. / This thesis critically investigates how student writers cope with interdisciplinarity in business studies at postgraduate level. The corpus of knowledge student writers have to grapple with today seems to distance itself from the traditional mono-disciplinary contexts. Texts as well as the students who construct them are being continuously informed and conditioned by new values and imperatives of relatively new discursive practices. Hence, student academic writing(henceforward ‘student writing’) especially at postgraduate level can be regarded as a complex academic endeavour where students have to take up multiple writing positions. Analyzing student texts against the backdrop of the enormous intertextual and interdiscursive resources pertaining to interdisciplinarity is a major component of this thesis. Electivization of the curricula, on the other hand, while providing student writers with a wide range of choices, has created yawning gaps between what is commonly known as prior knowledge and what is yet to be learnt in the form of new knowledges. These epistemological considerations, i.e., how disciplinary knowledge is acquired, evaluated, contested, and strategically used also constitute an integral part of this research. Also of importance in the above contexts are the often lengthy and generically diverse assessment tasks students are required to accomplish within specific deadlines. The nature and structure of assignment topics and assessment tasks have in the past two decades or so undergone tremendous changes owing in large measure to disciplinary as well as socio-economic imperatives. Student writing has several dimensions in terms of the mode of assessment, egg. examination-based, presentation-based, research-based, observation-based. This thesis, however, will focus on research-based writing tasks. Based on the findings of this thesis, a paradigm called critical interdisciplinarity has been proposed in the concluding chapter of this thesis. Pedagogical and curricular considerations play a vital role in critical interdisciplinarity. By virtue of their encyclopaedic dimensions, knowledge domains relating to academic interdisciplinarity in student writing lend themselves to a wide range of future research projects. An attempt has been made here to critically explore only a tiny proportion of this inexhaustible repertoire of knowledge.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio University, June, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-306).

Published Article / In their research as well as their teaching, universities of technology (UoTs) expect to be infused by the application of technology and to be integrally related to the world of work. At the same time, research at UoTs is characteristically innovatory, in the specific sense of transforming research discoveries into products or services that are user-oriented and commercially viable. Since practical problems and user needs do not respect disciplinary boundaries it follows, firstly, that such research at a UoT will in some sense not respect disciplinary boundaries, i.e. it will have to connect, cross, or integrate traditional disciplines. This paper seeks accordingly conceptually to differentiate the relevant senses of multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary (MIT) research. It then characterises the fourteen current research programmes at Central University of Technology (CUT) in these regards, comparing the findings from interviews with the programme leaders with the insights of the authors. Secondly, in that most research at UoTs is also expected to be innovatory, it is demanded of researchers that they also master the skill of researching the feasible applications of findings, developing products, and envisaging commercialisation; and handing the stakeholder relationships that arise in these interactions. The interviews further indicate the extent to which the respective programmes have moved down the MIT road. They also reveal that the challenges that are faced by the programmes are overwhelming generic rather than specifically MIT-related. Some strategic recommendations are extracted from the findings.

<p>Studiens syfte är att undersöka om, och i så fall hur dagens elever i grundskolan undervisas om hållbar utveckling enligt riktlinjerna i Baltic 21E.</p><p>Studien är av kvalitativ karaktär och bygger på intervjuer av skolledning samt undervisande lärare i NO- och SO-ämnen vid två högstadieskolor i två kommuner i nordöstra Skåne.</p><p>Baltic 21E:s övergripande mål gäller alla utbildningsnivåer, men anger speciellt för grundskolan att eleverna skall ha ”kompetens, värderingar och färdigheter för att kunna vara aktiva, demokratiska och ansvarsfulla medborgare och för att kunna fatta egna beslut”, samt kunna delta i beslut inom olika nivåer i samhället för att skapa ett hållbart samhälle. Eleverna ska också ha färdigheter, kompetens och relevant yrkesutbildning för sitt framtida arbetsliv.</p><p>Resultatet visar att eleverna når likvärdiga kunskapsmål trots att de två skolorna bedriver undervisningen olika. Läromedlen är samma eller i vart fall likartade och innehåller de punkter Baltic 21E pekar på.</p><p>De använda läromedlen uppfyller de normer Baltic 21E anger, varför alla grundskolor har möjligheten att bereda sina elever en tillfredsställande undervisning om hållbar utveckling, men ämnena bör samordnas bättre. Begreppet hållbar utveckling bör markeras med en ”flagga”, så att den ämnesövergripande kopplingen blir tydligare, och lättare att förstå för eleverna.</p>

<p>The public sector in Norway purchases products and services for more then 300 billion NOK per year.</p><p>This purchasing power can play an important role in leveraging the market share of environmentally</p><p>sound products by increasing the level of environmental requirements in public contracts.</p><p>Environmental considerations in public procurement have been on the international agenda since</p><p>the 1992 conference in Rio, and the OECD, the EU and the Nordic Council of Ministers have also</p><p>placed Green Public Procurement (GPP) on their agendas. Together with statements from the 2002</p><p>World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, they all underline GPP as a tool for</p><p>making a shift to more sustainable production and consumption practices.</p><p>In Norway, the Government launched a Norwegian Action Plan on Environmental and Social</p><p>Responsibility in Public Procurement in 2007. The aim of the plan was to encourage the public sector</p><p>to demand environmentally sound products and services. However, several previous studies that</p><p>have assessed the status of GPP show that, despite efforts to promote environmental considerations,</p><p>there is a long way to go before these are fully integrated into public procurement practice</p><p>The aim of this study was to produce information about how widespread the use of environmental</p><p>criteria are in Norway, and to identify what drivers and barriers are seen to influence the GPP status.</p><p>Based on experiences from other studies, the method design chosen was an analysis of tender</p><p>documents complemented by case studies with interviews. Using both methods provided a way of</p><p>balancing the results so as to get the most objective status scores on GPP together with more</p><p>detailed answers on perceived drivers and barriers.</p><p>The results revealed that almost 60% of all tender documents included some kind of environmental</p><p>criteria, but 1/3 of these were so unclear that it was doubtful as to whether or not they would result</p><p>in any green procurement. Of the product groups that were in focus, the one that included paper and</p><p>print was by far the “greenest” of the groups, with the others both containing less GPP and more</p><p>unclear criteria. Compared to other studies this puts Norway at the same level as Sweden, and shows</p><p>a slight improvement in total GPP compared to previous assessments. Still, taking the high amount of</p><p>unclear criteria into account may lower the overall GPP score.</p><p>The interview results indicated that lack of knowledge, focus on economic considerations and</p><p>product functionality, lack of support and management focus and work pressure were the five main</p><p>barriers preventing GPP. Increased co-operation, increased focus from management, simplification of</p><p>criteria and more available products with environmental labels were identified as drivers. The drivers</p><p>and barriers identified correspond to those of previous studies, with some new finding such as</p><p>identifying the lack of product specific knowledge, where previous studies have focused more on lack</p><p>of procurement knowledge.</p><p>The findings are all important when it comes to working out a strategy to follow up the Norwegian</p><p>Action Plan. They give information about the needs identified by the procurement officers</p><p>themselves, thus giving an indication of what initiatives to prioritise.</p>

<p>När användbarheten studeras av den information som presenteras i ett användargränssnitt på en datorskärm kan det framkomma vad som fungerar effektivt och korrekt. I sådana sammanhang förs sällan någon diskussion om hur den information som presenteras kommunicerar med en användare.</p><p>Syftet med detta forskningsprojekt är att på ett generellt plan öka kunskapen om olika analytiska perspektiv för att studera den information som presenteras i ett användargränssnitt på en datorskärm, som ett led till att skapa begriplig information för människor. Mer preciserat är syftet att få en djupare förståelse för hur en informationslämnare kan kommunicera med en informationsanvändare genom den information som presenteras i ett användargränssnitt. Målet med forskningsprojektet är att presentera ett antal relevanta analytiska perspektiv som kan användas för att beskriva hur presenterad information i ett användargränssnitt kan kommunicera med en användare. Forskningsresultatet bidrar med ett ramverk som kan ligga till grund för ett analysstöd. Forskningsresultatet bidrar även med en ansats för framtida forskning inom området.</p><p>Forskningsprojektet bygger på fyra fallstudier. Analysobjekten i fallstudierna utgörs av fyra olika användargränssnitt på datorskärm, vilka används inom olika myndigheter, organisationer och företag. Vartdera användargränssnittet och dess informationsdesign studeras med hänsyn till: informationslämnarnas önskemål och intentioner, informationsanvändarnas upplevelse och förståelse av information och kontexters påverkan.</p><p>De slutsatser som dras är bland annat att informationsdesign i ett användargränssnitt på datorskärm upplevs och förstås av användare i samklang med inre, när och yttre kontext. Dessa kontexter kan studeras utifrån tre olika perspektiv, ett semiotiskt, ett retoriskt och ett narrativt perspektiv. En sådan analys kan framhäva den kommunikation som sker mellan de budskap som informationslämnaren vill berätta, hur den presenterade informationen i användargränssnittet arrangeras och komponeras och hur olika kontexter påverkar användarnas upplevelse och förståelse av den information som presenteras.</p>

<p>The foundation for the thesis is a literature study within two areas: safety and innovation science. In the thesis safety science will revolve around how different methods and various models are used to identify and reduce risks, i.e. to secure the functionality within limited systems. Theories of innovation will among other things revolve around the process of creating ideas and bring them to market. The intention is to present central thoughts and conceptions within these two disciplines. In relation to this stage, theories from innovation will be taken into consideration in order to supplement the general working order of how risks in technical system are handled. The purpose is to enrich the area of safety with inspiration from theory of innovation and to generate hypothesis for continuous research.</p><p>Theory of innovation has a tradition of bringing ideas or changes forward while theory of risk mainly revolves on identifying and acting on problems. This will be expressed as a tendency within risk and safety not to take particular parts developed within theory of innovation into consideration, and therefore you may miss valuable knowledge around the ability to bring change to a successful close. This can for example be expressed as theory of innovation has more detailed knowledge surrounding development of a solution, selection of a solution, and how these solutions are best implemented. The study has shown that theory of innovation can supplement the area of risk and safety and that these two areas, in a collected form, can improve the requirement for working with the reduction of risks. The result can from an organizational perspective be about improved conditions for long term survival by an increased awareness into different work strategies strengths’ and weaknesses’.</p>

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