Relevant to: Practice, Community
Sector: multi-sectoral

Summary

In this book chapter, Schooneveldt argues that an integrative method, which he describes as a collaborative forensic approach, is required to create knowledge, solve wicked problems, resolve conflicts, or make collective decisions. This approach is useful for integrating the fragments of specialized knowledge into larger, and, hopefully, more useful pieces. His method identifies and sorts bits and pieces of scientific and other pre-existing forms of specialized knowledge through three processes:

– Systems mapping
– Context analysis
– Jigsaw hypothesis formation

In this approach, there is no pre-existing framework; the evidence creates both the framework and the solution. Each piece of knowledge only has meaning within the mindset and methodology in which it was created. Thus undertaking transdisciplinary work uses the forensic approach as the contextual framework or mindset.

This summary was developed from the following book chapter:
Schooveldt J. (2010) ‘Applying specialized knowledge’. In V.A. Brown, J.A. Harris and J.Y. Russell (eds) Tackling wicked problems through the transdisciplinary imagination. Earthscan Ltd, London, pp 139 -147.