Contexts and Complexities: A Case Study in Evolving Participatory Watershed Stewardship

The Scholarship of Transdisciplinary Action Research: Toward a New Paradigm for the Planning and Design Professions

“…The geographic facet asks plural design practitioners to contribute their hard-won knowledge about the processes, tools, and protocols most effective in local scale projects to the development and implementation of regional, state, and global sustainability initiatives. Chanse (2011) discusses the organizational development challenges inherent in coordinating a large-scale participatory watershed stewardship program composed of multiple local watershed volunteer groups 2. The cognitive facet recognizes that the subtleties and complexities of the iterative and refl ective processes involved in the development, testing, and evaluation of plural design tools, processes, and protocols often require use of autonomous as well as nonautonomous design decision making heuristics (Stanovich et al 2008).…”

“…Rios (2011) develops and tests a framework for analyzing transdisciplinary action research informed by social ecology in the context of an obesity prevention initiative in Pennsylvania. Chanse (2011) analyzes approaches to organizing and managing multiple small-scale volunteer groups in a regional watershed stewardship initiative in Contra Costa County, California.…”

“…While all the case studies describe multiple plural design projects set within larger-scale and cross-scalar sustainable landscape planning and design initiatives, three differences relative to the delineation and scope of the larger scales are evident: (a) The boundaries of the larger scale may be delineated by political (Bowns 2011) or biophysical boundaries (Carlson, Koepke, and Hanson 2011). (b) The cross-scalar dimensions may involve contiguous space as exemplifi ed by Chanse (2011), who investigated small-scale projects within a set of contiguous watersheds, and by Doble and King (2011), whose investigation of waterfront redevelopment cases in individual cities in New York State exemplifi es cross-scalar comparisons involving discrete space. (c) The progression of projects from a specifi c place to a geographically more extensive area is exemplifi ed in Thering (2011) discussion of a statewide initiative that began in response to a request for assistance from one community, while others focus entirely on a broader geographic scale (Rios, 2011).…”

“…In some instances, the partnerships existed at the outset of the initiative, while others evolved as the cases unfolded. Chanse (2011) describes how different nonautonomous decision making heuristics (Stanovich et al 2008). A taxonomy of heuristics is particularly useful inasmuch as it simultaneously captures the duality of action research while it "refutes the positivist epistemology of research that separates means from ends" (Schon 1983, 165).…”

Multi-stakeholder process of co-designing small-scale fisheries policy in South Africa

“…The principles of effective transdisciplinary collaborations must be derived on a case-by-case basis through the collaborative field experiences of researchers and practitioners as they occur and are documented over extended periods of time (Stokols 2011, Rios 2011. Based on a number of case studies on TDAR (Carlson et al 2011;Chanse 2011;Schroth et al 2011) Stokols (2011 suggest adding the temporal scope of research-practitioner collaborations by arguing, "The longer partners from multiple community sectors work together, the more they are likely to achieve and sustain productive collaborative 7 processes and outcomes." In the South African case, the paradigm shift from ITQ rights allocation to collective rights in the new Small-Scale Fisheries Policy -had a temporal dimension to this process.…”