Western and Chinese Dialogue About the Origins, Evolution, and Meaning of Transdisciplinarity and Some Implications for Learning Experience Designers

This article describes the origins and main streams of thought regarding transdisciplinarity in academic literature in both Western and Chinese cultures. We describe some useful ways of differentiating operationally and via metaphorical language among disciplinarity, cross-disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity in scholarly and societal pursuits. We identify divergences and convergence and report evidence of a considerable lack of current understanding of transdisciplinarity in the Chinese academic literature, attributable in part to terminology used in Mandarin over time. We urge learning experience designers to take more account of potential linguistic, conceptual, and cultural differences regarding transdisciplinarity when engaging in learning experience design development efforts as well as in their own research endeavors. Further readings on transdisciplinarity are provided.