Engaging Science with Philosophy: Best Practices for Fostering Effective Collaboration
This project aims to foster productive engagement between philosophers of science and STEM researchers. In the first phase, we interviewed scientists and engineers who had collaborated with philosophers of science to understand how their collaborations began, what challenges they faced, and what benefits they experienced from working with philosophers of science. In the second phase, we conducted a survey of over 2,000 scientists and engineers regarding their attitudes towards — and experiences engaging with — philosophers of science to get a more representative picture of STEM researchers’ perspectives.
Increasing the Impact of Philosophy of Science in Scientific Domains
This project aimed to generate empirical data on the attitudes, experiences, and values of philosophers of science when it comes to engaging with communities outside philosophy, as well as the impacts of philosophy of science in scientific domains. We used a mixed methods approach involving a citation analysis, survey, and interviews with philosophers of science. We were pleased to find that the majority of philosophers of science highly valued engaged work, but many also expressed frustrations that such work was undervalued within the discipline. This situation is especially unfortunate given that engaged approaches are particularly effective at increasing the impact of philosophy of science, as our data show.
Interdisciplinary Expertise
What makes someone an expert in a discipline? What does interdisciplinary expertise look like — and how can it be developed? We explore these and related questions to advance theoretical frameworks for interdisciplinary expertise. One of the main concepts we examine is ‘interactional expertise’. As we show, this concept can help identify people with relevant knowledge for a given problem as well as highlight the benefits of acquiring such expertise in the first place.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
CoLab is committed to leveraging our research, and related scholarship, in the service of educating and training people how to be effective collaborators. CoLab’s Director, Katie Plaisance, has designed several workshops and university courses that focus on “making collaboration work,” especially in diverse teams. Dr. Plaisance has also collaborated with social scientists to study the effectiveness of these educational interventions as part of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). If you are interested in having Dr. Plaisance consult on a particular training opportunity, please feel free to contact her by email.