This article examines questions initially raised at a meeting that took place 50 years ago on the topic of the development of knowledge in higher education where Jean Piaget coined the term “transdisciplinarity” and distinguished it from interdisciplinarity. We consider the question of why transdisciplinary scholarship has been so challenging for the field of developmental science. We argue that shifts in the guiding metatheoretical framework of theory and research, away from split-mechanistic paradigms and towards process-relational ones, do not always align with the conceptual frameworks used in educational practice. Using the example considered by Piaget and others at the original conference on higher education and the development of knowledge and also examining the domain of identity development, we find support for ways developmental scholarship has embraced the shift to a relational-developmental metatheory. In contrast, we argue that the relational-developmental paradigm has not been fully adopted by practitioners, with evidence of some using the Cartesian-split-mechanistic paradigm and others using some aspects of the relational-developmental paradigm. We highlight the importance of examining the conceptual frameworks guiding developmental scholarship and practice, suggesting that alignment of conceptual frameworks is an essential ingredient for progress in transdisciplinary scholarship and practice to take place. Conceptualizations at the metatheoretical level condition each and every aspect of theory, research, and practice, giving meaning to both theoretical and empirical activities and guiding practice-based work. Debates often occur at the metatheoretical level, and thus are not open to empirical adjudication. We conclude that metatheoretical alignment between scholars and practitioners is critically important to transdisciplinary efforts in developmental science and therefore more attention to the metatheoretical assumptions of the process-relational paradigm is critical for work with practitioners to succeed.
Human Development

中文翻译：

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探索指导高等教育发展研究与实践的概念框架：跨学科工作的一些挑战

本文研究了50年前在一次会议上最初提出的有关高等教育知识发展的问题，在该会议上让·皮亚杰（Jean Piaget）创造了“跨学科性”一词并将其与跨学科性区分开。我们考虑以下问题：为什么跨学科奖学金在发展科学领域如此具有挑战性。我们认为，理论和研究的指导性元理论框架从分裂机制范式向过程关系范式的转变并不总是与教育实践中使用的概念框架一致。使用伯爵（Piaget）等人在原始的高等教育和知识发展会议上考虑的例子，并研究了身份发展的领域，我们发现支持发展学术已经接受了向关系发展元理论的转变。相反，我们认为，关系-发展范式尚未被从业人员完全采用，有证据表明，有些人使用笛卡尔拆分机制范式，而另一些人则使用关系-发展范式的某些方面。我们强调检查指导发展性学术和实践的概念框架的重要性，并建议概念性框架的统一是跨学科学术和实践取得进展的重要组成部分。在元理论层面上的概念化为理论，研究和实践的各个方面提供了条件，对理论和实证活动都具有意义，并指导以实践为基础的工作。辩论经常发生在超理论水平上，因此无法进行经验性的裁决。我们得出的结论是，学者与实践者之间的元理论一致性对于发展科学中的跨学科工作至关重要，因此，更多地关注过程关系范式的元理论假设对于与实践者合作成功至关重要。
人类发展