ASTRONOMY IN THE FRAME OF THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION

Magda Stavinschi

Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy

E-mail: magda_stavinschi@yahoo.fr  / Web: www.astro.ro/magda 

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Mirela Mureșan

Institutional Filiation Moise Nicoara College, Arad, Romania

E-mail: mirela_muresan@hotmail.com 

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ABSTRACT

This paper aims to point out the unexpected and generous perspectives the transdisciplinarity approach can bring to the astronomical education. 1. What does transdisciplinarity really mean? Will try to clarify the distinction among inter-, pluri-, and transdisciplinarity. Transdisciplinarity– TD is a term and a concept largely used today, in many fields and all over the world. Presumably, it is most frequently used in the educational area. Yet, unfortunately, this term is used in various meanings which bring about conceptual deviations, semantical slippings that give rise to dangerous confusions. The most frequent and inconsistent uses of this term and concept, entailing errors in understanding and application – aim at the confusion between inter-, pluri-, and TD, on the one hand; on the other hand, on the relation among them as well. Therefore, we do consider that a minimal updating of the concept of TD is absolutely necessary. 2. TD education –the key for the integral education of the human being. Taking into account the three axioms the TD is based on (the multiples levels of Reality, the logic of the included middle and the knowledge as an emergent complexity) it is obvious that this methodology offers a different new key of understanding the present world. The most important is the fact that the Subject is recovered in the process of knowledge. The “integral education” means in this perspective the education of an integrated human being (mind, body, soul) in order to achieve the inner harmony of the individual and the harmony with the society and the big universe. The TD education seems to be the solution the mankind was looking for in order to solve the complex crisis which the 21^st century society is confronted with.As the author of TD – Jean Piaget – claimed, “only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual”. 3. The benefits the TD methodology could bring to the astronomical education. Today the astronomical education must face some major constraints. On the one hand, the information about the cosmos are invading all media channels, on the other hand, young people are not getting, in most countries of the world, systematic education in this field, astronomy being removed from school curricula. Or we need to educate young people in this area, proving its role in environmental protection, its utility to save Earth resources and supplement them with other cosmic ones, in the intellectual development of the child, in fighting against the superstition and pseudo -sciences, in the knowledge of ethnic traditions in relation to a globalized world. We must face the ever decreasing number of hours in the curriculum, simultaneously with the unprecedented diversification of the scientific disciplines, which are already over 8000. In these circumstances, students must be prepared to choose the closest one to their talent and expectations. We believe that, from this point of view, a TD approach on astronomy will help them to face the challenges of modern society. We will point out some arguments for the imperious necessity of changing the educational approach on astronomy in the field of public education. And this major mutation has to be the TD methodology.

Key-words: transdisciplinarity, education, astronomy.

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“The telescope at one end of his beat,

And at the other end the microscope,

Two instruments of equal hope …”

Robert Frost

ARGUMENT

After decades of disappointing educational outcomes, it’s time to work on some educational solutions based on a solid philosophical background. To simply proclaim the existing “crisis of education”, the confusions and alteration of the human values, “the death of the history” is not enough. Something more has to be done. The educational system has to be reinvented, restructured and reoriented according to the new cosmological model the science and philosophy has discovered. The paradigm of knowledge and the paradigm of education must be correlated in order to achieve the ideal of the perfect harmony between the inner and outer world.

The fundamental problem underlying the actual disjointed curriculum (all over the world) is the fragmentation of knowledge itself. Education has atomized knowledge by dividing it into disciplines, sub disciplines, and sub-sub disciplines—breaking it up into smaller and smaller unconnected fragments of academic specialization, according to the exponential increases in information brought about by technological advances. Understanding the nature of knowledge, its unity, its varieties, its limitations, and its uses and abuses is necessary for the success of nowadays education. It became an emergency to reconstruct the unity of knowledge and understanding in order to recuperate the meaning of Universe and the meaning of our life too.

“The solution to “disconnected ideas,” “dry facts,” and the “fragmentation of knowledge” may well be in recognizing that the history of the universe, the evolution of life, and the rise of human civilizations are in fact a unified story and best taught that way.”¹

In this respect, the trans-disciplinary approach of education could be the proper solution; in its generous frame, the astronomical education could reach new and amazing perspectives and the most desirable benefits.

WHAT DOES TRANSDISCIPLINARITY REALLY MEAN?

Transdisciplinarity is a relatively young approach; it emerged seven century after disciplinarity in the writings of the Swiss philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget. He indicates that „transdisciplinarity will not be limited to the interactions and reciprocities between the specialist researches but will locate these links inside of a total system without stable boundaries between the disciplines.”²

The concept of “transdisciplinarity” will be used in this paper as it is defined by Professor Basarab Nicolescu and CIRET group as it has been developed in the last years.³ This concept and its definition are well known all over the world.

Transdisciplinarity is a term and a concept largely used today, in many fields and all over the world. Presumably, it is most frequently used in the educational area. Yet, unfortunately, this term is used in various meanings which bring about conceptual deviations, semantical slippings that give rise to dangerous confusions. The present day scientific community has not yet a terminological and conceptual consensus on „transdisciplinarity”. The most frequent and inconsistent uses of this term and concept, entailing errors in understanding and application – aim at the confusion between pluridisciplinarity/interdisciplinarity/transdisciplinarity, on the one hand; on the other hand, the confusion persists on the relation among them as well. Therefore, we do consider that a minimal updating of the concept of transdisciplinarity is absolutely necessary.

Pluridisciplinarity aims to study a topic from multiple perspectives offered by various disciplines. It concerns studying a research topic not in only one discipline but in several at the same time. For example one can study the famous sculpture of Brancusi – The endless column from several perspectives: history of art, philosophy, religion, mythology, psychology, different sciences as chemistry, physics etc.

In other words, the multidisciplinary approach overflows disciplinary boundaries but its goal remains limited to the framework of disciplinary research.

Interdisciplinarity has a different goal from multidisciplinarity. It concerns the transfer of methods from one discipline to another. According to Nicolescu definition, “one can distinguish three degrees of interdisciplinarity: a) a degree of application; b) an epistemological degree; c) a degree of the generation of new disciplines⁴. For example, when the methods of nuclear physics were transferred to medicine it led to the appearance of new treatments for cancer or when methods from mathematics were transferred to physics mathematical physics was generated. It’s the same like the methods of mathematics are transferred in astronomy. But we have to keep in mind that like pluridisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity overflows the disciplines boundaries but its goal still remains within the framework of disciplinary research.

Transdisciplinarityis something different. Firstly transdisciplinarity is not another discipline. According to Nicolescu’s consecrated definition, ”Transdisciplinarity concerns what is at the same time between disciplines, inside various disciplines and beyond any discipline. Its aim is the understanding of the current world and one of its imperatives is the unity of knowledge” ⁵

These assumptions are not very easy to understand. Is there something between and across the disciplines and beyond all disciplines in the same time? Yes, there is. What could it be? It cannot be explained without taking into account the three axioms the transdisciplinarity is based on:

a. Levels of Reality and the Hidden Third

b. The Logic of the Included Middle

c. Knowledge as an emergent complexity⁶

Transdisciplinarity cannot be understood and applied in the absence of full consideration given to the above mentioned axioms. To ignore or to eliminate one of them triggers about the risk of a falsification of the TD concept, the risk of erroneous slippings, and applications.

The explanation professor Nicolescu offers is very clear: “In the presence of several levels of Reality the space between disciplines and beyond disciplines is full just as the quantum vacuum is full of all potentialities: from the quantum particle to the galaxies, from the quark to the heavy elements which condition the appearance of life in the universe. The discontinuous structure of the levels of Reality determines the discontinuous structure of transdisciplinary space, which in turn explains why transdisciplinary research is radically distinct from disciplinary research, even while being entirely complementary. Disciplinary research concerns, at most, one and the same level of Reality; moreover, in most cases, it only concerns fragments of one level of Reality. On the contrary, transdisciplinarity concerns the dynamics engendered by the action of several levels of Reality at once.”⁷ It’s also important to understand the fact that, disciplinary and transdisciplinary research are not antagonistic but complementary.

The conclusion emerged by this explanation could be metaphorically put as follows: “disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are like four arrows shot from but a single bow: knowledge.”⁸

Briefly we can repeat the principal statements: transdisciplinarity must not be wrongly understood as new “discipline”; transdisciplinarity must not be wrong understood as being another method as it happens many times when one tries to apply it, mostly in education. Reducing TD to a method implies a flagrant amputation of its own essence – transdisciplinarity is a methodology – Methodology is the philosophical basis for method. Method and methodology are sometimes used as though they were synonyms -but they aren’t. Methodology is the study of methods and deals with the philosophical assumptions underlying the research process, while a method is a specific technique for data collection under those philosophical assumptions. A methodology is a system of methods and principles for doing something, for example for teaching or for carrying out research. Being a methodology based on a solid philosophical and scientific background, transdisciplinarity is capable to offer unexpected solutions for several fields of research and for all consecrated academic disciplines.

At this point I can firmly state transdisciplinarity to be the conclusive factor of changing of the knowledge paradigm for the 21^st century. New methodological keys are hence offered by the recuperation of the Subject place in knowledge, by the logic of the included middle, by a new understanding of Reality – according to the ontology of Reality levels and the Hidden Middle – and by the realization of the incompleteness of knowledge. These outcomes open a large opportunity for many applications in various fields: education is a privileged one.

Transdisciplinarity as a methodology offers a viable solution for the 21^st century society, defined as a “knowledge society”. Applied in education transdisciplinary methodology is no doubt capable to solve the actual crisis the mankind is crossing now. “Transdisciplinarity entails both a new vision and a lived experience. It is a way of self-transformation oriented towards the knowledge of the self, the unity of knowledge, and the creation of a new art of living.”⁹

TRANSDISCIPLINARITY EDUCATION–

THE KEY FOR THE INTEGRAL EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN BEING

The increasing number of new pieces of information about the micro and macro Universe, about our mind and soul forces us to a permanent reconsideration of the world we live in. Step by step the pieces of “the great puzzle” the knowledge has to put together reveals new and unexpected possibilities to combine them in order to achieve the perfect total imagine of the “whole”. In fact, the new discoveries in the remote external world, including those made in bio-satellites and the Hubble Space Telescope, have generated a significant revolution in our understanding of our external vis-à-vis internal world; a scientific revolution without parallel in the whole recorded history of mankind; a fresh look at nature, which opens up new horizons and generates new needs to reexamine all previous cosmological, biological, behavioral and philosophical convictions. The new discoveries have triggered a fresh world outlook that illuminates some dark corners of science and forces us to re-assess almost everything that we have so far taken for granted, including the apparent conflict between Genesis via astrophysics, astronomy and modern physics, and Genesis via the Bible. And the examples could continue.

The imperative of nowadays is to find out a way to reconnect these disparate pieces of information and try to reconfigure “the picture in the carpet”, to find an efficient way to make everything meaningful. Only a transdisciplinary education allows every individual to understand both the meaning of his own existence and the meaning of existence in general. It is the only way to “cure” the specific symptoms of the complex crisis mankind is facing today: “the loss of meaning and the universal hunger for meaning”¹⁰

So we urgent need a new philosophy of education capable to achieve these desiderata. Unfortunately the public system of education is far from accomplishing that. It cannot face yet this explosion of new discoveries in sciences and the reassessment of them in the field of philosophy. The education is still anachronistic improper to the new vision of the world which is permanently built on. To achieve the unity of knowledge means to achieve first the “integral education” of the human being and this goal is possible to be reached only through an integrated learning and teaching.

The famous Delors rapport at UNESCO has also revealed the need of changing the education according to the requirements of the 21^st century society.

The International UNESCO High Commission for Education in the 21st Century presided by Jacques Delors has written out a report (1994) where, in Ch. IV, the idea of a new type of education that should focus on four main pillars was stipulated: to learn in order to know, to learn in order to do, to learn in order to live along with others, to learn in order to be¹¹. This program – theoretically possible even in the frame of the traditional educational system – seems to be completely inefficient from the practical point of view. An interesting comparison could be made between these four pillars of education mentioned in Delors’ report and the goals of the transdisciplinary education.

This issue is largely explained in Mirela Mureşan’s article¹². The following table summarizes the changings the transdisciplinary education brings in:¹³

 

The conclusions which emerge from these considerations are the following:

Learning is a complex process which implies equally the mind, the soul and the body; the inner and outer experience

Learning generates an important product: knowledge (ensemble, unity of information, competences, values)

Learning and knowledge is not enough: they have to be integrated in a superior understanding of their meaning

The goals of the traditional education stop at the knowledge level, which is enough for a proper social insertion of the individual. The transdisciplinary education – as an integral one – seeks for more than that: understanding of the meaning of knowledge.¹⁴

According to these beliefs we tried to put into practice a teaching – learning process in order to achieve a transdisciplinary knowledge and understanding. These projects have practically proven that the TD approach of teaching and learning is possible and effective in a real school. From these attempts of applying the theory, serious reflection issues have arisen. Finding proper answers to them means contributing to the enrichment and refinement of the TD methodology itself.

The first complex TD experiment started in 2008 at the “Moise Nicoară” National College, from Arad, Romania and it was carried out as it is described in the book published in 2010.¹⁵ The project was carried out for two years, involving activities attended by high school students and teachers. The target-group consisted of 23 students from the 9^th, 10^th, 11^th and 12^th grades. These activities took place in parallel with the official curriculum that was taken as a reference frame. The activities extended over 10 weeks every Saturday morning. The 17-teachers team (Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Literature, Music, Drawing, Geography, Religion) designed a transdisciplinary syllabus which was applied to the target group of the students.¹⁶

The main idea, which was progressively born during the workshops, was the fact that, behind the mask, the essence of both the human being and the world is the same, but in most cases it looks like a “Great Anonymous” due to the lack in our capacity to adequately understand the truth. Sciences, arts, religion, mythology and phiosophy they all assert the one and the same truth. In this respect, through the information they provide, and through their specific investigation methods, the disciplines are also “forms / patterns” of knowledge, and the truth always stays in, among and beyond them. Progressively building this idea during the workshops helped the students to develop their abilities to understand fundamental truths (about nature, humankind etc.)¹⁷

Many other projects and experiments followed:A Transdisciplinary “Reading” of the Water¹⁸, The Mysterious Letter in the Painting, The Faces of the Infinity, The Mobius strip etc.

The most difficult thing in performing these experiments consisted not in finding out the proper strategies and methods to conceive the steps of the didactic enterprise, but in what way should the wonder be awaken, and determined the students to live an inner experience which is a fundamental component of understanding. “If we sometimes succeeded to push the “inner button”, we have also to accept that it was a random or spontaneous or momentary case. It could not be controlled in any way, and, even less, could be not valuated in its depth, dimension or its consequences. All this was exclusively due to the didactical vocation and skillfulness of the teacher, to his empathy and not to some previous planning. In sum, we are not able to build up a pattern scheme or script to replicate the effect or to decide on any didactical method or strategy”¹⁹. This proves once again that the TD learning is something alive, has no previous rules: “being” has no patterns.

Another difficulty was to design the syllabus. Setting up competences was the most difficult challenge for the teachers’ team. From a TD point of view, competences should cover all the three levels: individual, social and cosmic, in order to build the ultimate human being. On the other hand, these competences should also harmonize the dimensions of to know, to understand and to create. How can one achieve the “trans-relation” that could connect to know, to understand and to create?In the transdisciplinary vision, “there is a transrelation which connects the four pillars of the new system of education and which has its source in our own constitution as human beings. A viable education can only be an integral education of the human being. An education which is addressed to open totality of the human being and not to just one of its components.”²⁰ This is one of the main challenges for a transdisciplinary curriculum design.

The most important challenge these experiments revealed was getting the students beyond their usual way of thinking. The students were used to think in terms of yes or no, correct or incorrect, true or false terms. They were uncomfortable with the lack of a rational conclusion or a clear, definitive, precise answer. They found it hard to accept that there might also be answers of yes and no, true and false at the same time, and the fact that reality was in a continuous dynamics. The intuition of the fact that we are and we are not the same at a certain moment, the universe is and is not the same, a thing is not only what we know about it at a given moment but also all its potentialities , unpredictable actualized was – maybe- the most important step we made in the dialogue with them²¹.

At this point we can draw a partial conclusion. The transdisciplinary education is the perfect frame to integrate astronomical education in. The astronomy could became an important key to a deep understanding of the Universe and of ourselves as well; a key which could complete the dynamic imagine of “the great puzzle“ of the Reality we are trying to accomplish using the transdisciplinary methodology.

WHICH ARE THE BENEFITS THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGY COULD BRING TO THE ASTRONOMICAL EDUCATION?

One never could be able to understand the Universe and its laws without a proper background of information coming from different fields of knowledge: philosophy, history of civilizations and cultures, cosmology etc. One never could investigate the Universe without a proper knowledge and solid competences in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Astronomy, by definition, requires all these instruments. To study and to understand astronomy and its outstanding discoveries in the late years clams for a proper approach based on a valid methodology. An intuitive image of the multitude of domains and disciplines astronomy implies could be seen in the following picture:

The astronomy covers many domains starting from the primary education to the astronomical research or public outreach. These fields of knowledge are just apparently different or separated; in fact they are deeply related and astronomy integrates and crosses them all. Also the transfer of methods from a discipline to another is compulsory needed in order to archive the astronomical knowledge. So far the pluridisciplinary and the interdisciplinary character of astronomy itself are obviously demonstrated. But only the transdisciplinary approach could achieve the authentic understanding of all astronomical information and discoveries concerning the Universe; only through a TD methodology the role of the Subject is recuperated and the Subject and the Object of knowledge could be unified in order to understand the deep meaning of existence. Otherwise everything is useless.

Transdisciplinarity requires a different approach based on a different methodology as it is reflected in the picture below:

Resource: Synopsis of Integral Leadership Review’s Series on Transdisciplinarity in Higher Education, by Sue L. T. McGregor and Russ Volckmann

A problem still remains: how to reach the transdisciplinary dimensions of astronomy and how could it be done in the field of education? A lot of ways were experimented but the transdisciplinary teaching and learning still are obstructed by the disciplinary structured system of education and the poor knowledge of the teachers about the transdisciplinary methods (didactics). In spite of the fact a lot of teachers have already experimented the transdisciplinary teaching without knowing it! – according to their native feeling – Astronomy especially cannot be taught in another way.

Ignoring the disciplines structured curriculum the practical solutions for studying astronomy were founded in different other contexts such as: workshops, forums, centers of astronomical observations, debates, contests, pilot ateliers for TD & cyberspace etc.

The way the astronomy could be proper implemented in the curriculum from the primary level to the university one is still in the attention of the „Education and Development Commission” of the International Union of Astronomy as well as for The Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD)²²

An unexpected but generous opportunity to apply the transdisciplinary methodology will be The International Year of Light (IYL), celebrated in 2015 on the whole planet. „The International Year of Light is a global initiative which will highlight to the citizens of the world the importance of light and optical technologies in their lives, for their futures, and for the development of society. It is a unique opportunity to inspire, educate, and connect on a global scale. In proclaiming an International Year focusing on the topic of light science and its applications, the United Nations has recognized the importance of raising global awareness about how light-based technologies promote sustainable development and provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture and health. Light plays a vital role in our daily lives and is an imperative cross-cutting discipline of science in the 21st century. It has revolutionized medicine, opened up international communication via the Internet, and continues to be central to linking cultural, economic and political aspects of the global society.”²³

As one can observe, IYL covers a large field of knowledge: health, communications, economy, environment, society and last but not the least education. Science of light; physics and light (electricity, speed of light, fiber optics, laser, holography); Light – natural phenomena (Sunlight, Moonlight, aurora); Astronomy and light (at different wavelengths, light-year, invisible light); Light and blind people; Light technology; Light pollution; Light in nature (animals, plants, a.s.o.) Light and culture; Light and art (literature, painting, music, architecture, lightning design, light jokes); Light and human psychic; Light and medicine (sunlight and cancer, blindness) ’Light and religion; Lightning and history, archeology (early optic and lenses, oil pottery lamps, gas lightning); Enlightenment through education.

It’s obvious that all these topics will offer the unique opportunity for a transdisciplinary approach due to the multitude of issues regarded; it will be a chance to find out what they have in common and what is beyond all of them.

CONCLUSIONS

The benefits to the astronomical education brought by the transdisciplinary approach are obvious. Using the transdisciplinary methodology both in the astronomical research and astronomical education become an imperious necessity.

In the system of public education astronomy has to regain its lost position. It has to reappear in the curriculum in the frame of the scientific aria. But mostly it has to be approached according to the transdisciplinary methodology- building bridges between science-religion-philosophy-arts and the social needs. The resistance, opposition force of the collective mentality to any kind of change, actually the fear of the new has to be overpassed. The refusal to change a structured curriculum that was practiced disciplinary for centuries is understandable but not efficient; the fear to lose the disciplinary specialization because of the Td opening is not justified. This kind of fear comes obviously from the lack of a right understanding of the TD methodology. But opposition may be generated, on the other hand, by some social-political circumstantial interests which refuse to see the educational benefit in the long run.

REFERENCES

Grassie,W., (2010), Reinventing Science Education in the 21st Century, http://www.grassie.net/articles/2010_educate.html,

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http://basarab.nicolescu.perso.sfr.fr/Basarab/Docs_articles/InterviewAlvarengaENG.ht

Nicolescu, B. (2006). Transdisciplinarity – Past, Present and Future. In B. Haverkott and C. Reijntjes (Eds.), Moving Worldviews,Moving Worldviews, Leusden, the Netherlands: ETC/Compas, 4, Retrieved from http://basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_articles/Worldviews2006.htm,

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www. http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/index.php

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http://www.unesco.org/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_5103980EA9B7368319D2734 Mureşan, M.,(2013) Practicing Transdisciplinary Methodology within the Frame of a Traditional Educational System, Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering § Science, Vol. 4, CE965F8B9C7FF0600/filename/delors_e.pdf

NOTES