Creating Inspiring Workshops and Courses in Transdisciplinarity: A Guide - Manual / Resource - Page 104
Generating impact
A key imperative to adopting TDR projects is the expectation
that their impacts will be socially relevant and sustained over
the longer term, resulting in beneficial social-ecological change.
For this expectation to be fulfilled, TDR researchers need to be
aware that pathways to generate impacts can be multifarious. To
achieve meaningful and sustained social impacts, TDR projects
need to integrate three aspects: (a) indicators, dimensions, and
criteria for assessing impacts and change; (b) the difference
and relationship between process and outcomes; and (c) a lucid
identification of impact-generation pathways, and the analytical
tools to assess and refine them.
Mechanisms for generating relevant impacts include:
•
Knowledge promotion;
•
Social learning and changes in mindsets;
•
Competence or capacity building; and
•
Changes in actor constellations and relationships (e.g.,
power dynamics).
These mechanisms can lead to changes in behaviors, practices,
policies, and resource flows that can ultimately lead to changes
in social and environmental conditions. These mechanisms
must then be broken down into strategies that can be adopted
depending on the context and scale of the project, and the
expected impact or output. In doing so, TD project teams need
to be clear in their choice of pathways for impact generation,
to critically engage with their own assumptions and to develop
indicators to monitor processes and impacts. This requires using
a relevant, contextual, and applicable theory of change.
p. 99
TD researchers advocate the use of “outcome spaces,” which
offer a structured approach to goal-setting pertaining to desired
changes, knowledge advancement, knowledge co-production,
and hybrid alliances. The outcome-spaces framework aligns
multiple or contrasting objectives of societal actors and helps
to clearly articulate and define project objectives in terms of
intended impacts. This framework also has the potential to
design processes that can be sustained and contribute to desired
goals. An awareness of key actors with the ability to influence
impacts is important (see discussion on identifying potential
relevant societal partners, page 89).
Further reading
•
Lam, David P. M., Berta Martín-López, Arnim Wiek, Elena
M. Bennett, Niki Frantzeskaki, Andra I. Horcea-Milcu, and
Daniel J. Lang. 2020. Scaling the Impact of Sustainability
Initiatives: A Typology of Amplification Processes. Urban
Transformations 2 (1).
•
Mitchell, Cynthia, Fam, Dena, Cordell, Dana. 2017.
Designing for impact in transdisciplinary research.
Integration and Implementation Insights. February 16,
2017.
•
Penfield, T., M. J. Baker, R. Scoble, and M. C. Wykes. 2014.
Assessment, Evaluations, and Definitions of Research
Impact: A Review. Research Evaluation 23 (1): 21–32.
•
Schneider, Flurina, Markus Giger, Nicole Harari, Stephanie
Moser, Christoph Oberlack, Isabelle Providoli, Leonie
Schmid, Theresa Tribaldos, and Anne Zimmermann.
2019. Transdisciplinary Co-Production of Knowledge
and Sustainability Transformations: Three Generic
Mechanisms of Impact Generation. Environmental Science
& Policy 102 (December): 26–35.
Practices Generating impact
