Transdisciplinarity Action Research workshop for sustainable technology communities

The Research Institute for Sustainability Science and Technology under the Master degree in Sustainability Science and Technology organises the course Action Research Workshop on Science and Technology for Sustainability (5 ECTS). The authors have been coordinating the course during the academic years 13/14, 14/15 and 15/16. The purpose of the workshop is to put together civil society organisations, local administrations, students and educators to collaboratively undertake responsible research, using transdisciplinary Action-Research methodologies, to answer questions such as: Who are we researching for? Who profits from our research? What are the impacts of our research? Which methodologies and tools should be used? While dealing with socio-technological sustainability challenges. Students work on real projects, related to local sustainability problems, represented by a community entity (Service learning and Campus Lab). Action research methodology is used with a two-cycle approach. In each real-life project, students, faculty and stakeholders are asked to follow the ActionReflexion process of action research projects. After three editions, we can conclude that: First, students realized the significance of framing an investigation under a research methodology that allows bringing research to the community, enhancing transdisciplinarity in any initiative or action. They set out the importance of some topics and the difficulty to hold them. Second, the formulation of the problem became one of the most arduous tasks in the process; difficulties were mainly related to the perception of the problem from distinct community group motivations. Third, interaction and communication with stakeholders and the recognition of their role was problematic because, usually, engineering students are not train to work in wicked problems and to work with stakeholders during the whole process. Finally, it is relevant to highlight that during the process students faced conflict and frustration situations, within their team and with stakeholders. To face that, an Emotional Intelligence module was introduced in the workshop and helped students to solve some paralyzing situations, which could have stopped the progress of the project. Hence, we suggest that engineering students need specific training in transdisciplinary research and conflict resolution, otherwise they could collapse in frustration when dealing with real transdisciplinary sustainability transitions.