The Value of Open-Mindedness and Intellectual Humility for Interdisciplinary Research

Previous work has suggested that the problems hindering the success of interdisciplinarity could be overcome by fostering certain intellectual character strengths in scholars. However, how to assess and cultivate the specific virtues required for interdisciplinarity among researchers is still a matter of inquiry. The general objective of this paper was to develop a psychometric instrument to assess intellectual virtues that are essential for interdisciplinary inquiry among researchers. To achieve this goal, two studies were conducted. Study 1 developed a new scale and studied its correlation with other validated measures. Study 2 focused on conducting a confirmatory analysis of the structure obtained in Study 1 and investigated the relationships between the new scale and the researchers’ levels of (i) experience and productivity in interdisciplinary collaboration and (ii) satisfaction regarding the results of their interdisciplinary inquiry. The EFA conducted for Study 1 identified four dimensions: (1) intellectual empathy, (2) open-mindedness and intellectual humility, (3) intellectual perseverance, and (4) curiosity. Indeed, the pools of items that were initially developed to measure intellectual humility and open-mindedness in a separate way converged into a unique factor or dimension. The confirmatory factor analysis conducted for Study 2 corroborated the four-dimensional structure observed in Study 1 via a new different sample. In addition, Studies 1 and 2 also analyzed convergent validity through the AVE and correlated the IVIRS with other scales that measure intellectual virtues (open-mindedness, curiosity, intellectual humility, and perseverance) in a general epistemic context. The second study demonstrated that researchers with significant experience, productivity, and satisfaction in the context of interdisciplinary investigation also presented elevated levels of the intellectual virtues that we identified as essential for such research. Our analysis demonstrates that the IVIRS is a valid measure of the intellectual virtues needed for interdisciplinarity and paves the way for the future design of interventions to cultivate these character traits in scholars.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for the intellectual virtues in the context of online search. Intellectual virtues are dispositions and skills that enable good thinking and wise reasoning, such as intellectual humility and attentiveness. Despite their importance, today the intellectual virtues tend to be underdeveloped across society. In light of the institutional role that online search plays in life today, there is an opportunity (perhaps an obligation) for online search to facilitate the development of intellectual virtue. The framework presented in this paper locates this development in three areas: the Searcher, the System, and Society. Major issues in information ethics and virtue epistemology are discussed for each of these areas, leading to recommendations for education, design, and research. This paper provides specific suggestions in this regard along with an agenda for future research at the intersection of ethics, epistemology, and online search.

The main objective of this paper is to develop a scale that can facilitate a comprehensive assessment of intellectual virtues. To our knowledge, no instrument has been designed to assess virtuous intellectual character as a global construct, and this article aimed to fill this research gap through two studies. The first study aimed to investigate the construct validity and reliability of the scale, while the second study aimed to confirm the factorial structure observed in Study 1 and to analyze the convergent validity of the new scale. Study 1 included 545 college students (mean age = 19.57 years, SD = 1.41) enrolled in 33 undergraduate degree programs at Argentinean universities. Study 2 included 700 college students (mean age = 18.07, SD = 0.95). The EFA carried out in Study 1 identified five dimensions of the VICS (attentiveness, open-mindedness, curiosity, carefulness, and intellectual autonomy), and the CFA carried out in Study 2 validated the five-factor structure. A bifactor model indicated that each group of items was related to a specific virtue while simultaneously being linked to a bifactor or global construct, i.e., “a virtuous intellectual character.” Our results confirm the existence of a global construct while preserving the specificity of each virtue. The results of Study 2 indicated that the VICS total score and its five factors are associated with intellectual humility, deep thinking, bravery, academic engagement, and social and psychological well-being. However, all intellectual virtues were only weakly associated with emotional well-being. Finally, both studies indicated good reliability of the VICS.

The aim of the research: To describe the intellectual humility of a teacher as strength in the processes of forming and developing knowledge. Intellectual virtues presuppose the objective of deep, factual perception with a possibility to make mistakes. A lot of pedagogues lack the activities important for virtues without dependence on mood or similar supporting means (the total level of virtue). A teacher who distinguishes with intellectual humility, who belongs to the virtues of the first range (the initiation of learning process and its guiding towards the right direction) and has connection with other intellectual virtues, aims for coordinated learning relationship where the sense of equality is present, as well as broaden perspective, distinguishes with flexibility while re-considering convictions, fear which is felt by an intellectually humble person when he/she misses information or something is not understood. An intellectually humble teacher, developing his/her knowledge, distinguishes with the constant pursuit for development, ability to self-evaluate strengths and weaknesses, seeing relationship with others as perspective for development The definition of intellectual humility is usually related with the recognition that your convictions and opinions can be wrong. This virtue is concerned with the strengths of a teacher. Being an intellectually humble person opens possibilities to the independence of a learner while forming or developing knowledge and understanding. In this process the potential of colleagues is recognized, strong and weak points are firmly pointed out, intellectual arrogance is avoided. This presupposes more possibilities for the change of learning both to a learner and the one dependant on him/her.

Objectives Intellectual humility refers to a tendency to recognize and accept that one’s personal beliefs or knowledge may be fallible and limited. The purpose of this study is to examine whether preschool teachers’ intellectual humility predicts self-development needs and teamwork, which in turn, predict professional knowledge. In other words, the current study investigates the dual mediating effects of self-development needs and teamwork in the relationship between intellectual humility and professional knowledge in preschool teachers. Methods A total of 206 teachers across 32 preschools participated in this study. The participating teachers completed questionnaires on intellectual humility, self-development needs, teamwork, and professional knowledge. SPSS 25.0 was used to test the mediating effect of self-development needs and teamwork on the relationship between intellectual humility and professional knowledge in teachers. In addition, PROCESS macro version 3.4 (Hayes, 2017) was used to confirm the indirect effect. Results The teachers’ intellectual humility predicts professional knowledge via self-development needs and teamwork. In other words, teachers who acknowledge their own intellectual limits and are open to new experiences and learning opportunities have a higher level of professional knowledge in teaching, and this relation is mediated by both self-development needs and teamwork. The bootstrapping results also suggest that the indirect effect is statistically significant. Conclusion This study is the first to introduce and apply a new concept of intellectual humility in a Korean sample. By showing the relationship between intellectual humility, self-development needs, teacher teamwork, and professional knowledge, the study highlights the importance of intellectual virtue in preschool teachers. Keywords: intellectual humility, self-development needs, teacher teamwork, professional knowledge

This chapter provides accounts of four character traits: intellectual modesty and acceptance of intellectual limitations (which together constitute intellectual humility); proper pride in one’s epistemic achievements and proper concern for one’s intellectual reputation. It argues that these are intellectual virtues. The main difference between humility (as comprising of modesty and of acceptance of limitations) on the one hand, and pride and concern for esteem on the other, lies in the nature of social comparisons on which they are based. Humility relies on appraisals of the worth of one’s qualities that might be gauged by comparing oneself to other people and which are driven by a concern for accuracy. The chapter also makes a case that overlapping clusters of attitudes serving knowledge and value expressive functions are the causal bases of these character traits.

Intellectual humility (IH), defined as the extent to which one is aware of one’s own intellectual limitations, is an understudied construct in organizational research. As a moral virtue, IH has been studied in philosophy and religion for decades. As a psychological and behavioral tendency construct, IH has gained significant attention among psychology researchers over the past decade due to rising extremism regarding social and political issues in the US and around the world. One reason for the increased research interest in IH includes the potential benefits from IH in terms of reducing social and political polarization and reducing stress and anxiety, which may improve individual overall well-being. This article provides an overview of IH as a multi-dimensional construct, its psychometric properties and nomological network, and its potential benefits in organizations and employee well-being. The article concludes with a call for more interdisciplinary research on improving our knowledge and theories of IH as well as its construct measurement considering the recent coming-of-age adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) models to harness the power of IH in sustaining individual well-being.

Taking into consideration the broad scope of Anthropology as a discipline of the holistic approach, this paper urges for a need of wider coverage of studies in terms of research, projects, and publications in developing tribal state like Arunachal Pradesh. The relevance of Anthropology in the state could be ensured through rigorous research taken up at various levels of standard, support from the government, a collaboration between academic institutions and funding agencies.

Hazards and disasters arise from interactions between environmental and social processes, so interdisciplinary research is crucial in understanding and effectively managing them. Despite support and encouragement from funding agencies, universities, and journals and growing interest from researchers, interdisciplinary disaster research teams face significant obstacles, such as the difficulty of establishing effective communication and understanding across disciplines. Better understanding of interdisciplinary teamwork can also have important practical benefits for operational disaster planning and response.Social studies of science distinguish different kinds of expertise and different modes of communication. Understanding these differences can help interdisciplinary research teams communicate more clearly and work together more effectively. The primary role of a researcher is in contributory expertise (the ability to make original contributions to a discipline); but interactional expertise in other disciplines (the ability to understand their literature and communicate with their practitioners) can play an important role in interdisciplinary collaborations. Developing interactional expertise requires time and effort, which can be challenging for a busy researcher, and also requires a foundation of trust and communication among team members. Three distinct aspects of communication play important roles in effective interdisciplinary communication: dialects, metaphors, and articulation. There are different ways to develop interactional expertise and effective communication, so researchers can pursue approaches that suit their circumstances. It will be important for future research on interdisciplinary disaster research to identify best practices for building trust, facilitating communication, and developing interactional expertise.

The transformation of critical infrastructure such as energy systems toward sustainability imposes a multitude of challenges that are social-technical in nature and require interdisciplinary collaboration. Resilience has received growing attention as a concept to bridge different scientific disciplines in research on energy systems, given their social, ecological, and technical elements. However, a resilience framework that is suitable for merging notions of resilience as a measurable property with notions of resilience as a social construction or an observatory scheme is still a desideratum. Against this backdrop, we present a cross-epistemic resilience (CER) framework for interdisciplinary research on energy and other social-ecological-technical systems. In particular, we introduce the distinction between positivist first-order and constructivist second-order observations and identify four modes of inquiry in resilience research. Our CER framework contributes to interdisciplinary resilience research by pointing out how assumedly incompatible perspectives are able to inform and constructively irritate each other and, hence, enhance the overall understanding of energy systems. The framework has been tested in a radically interdisciplinary research project. We draw on electricity systems as our prime example to illustrate the application of our arguments and concepts.

There are increasing calls for academics to abandon "traditional" disciplinary research and to engage in multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary research. The argument is that this will serve to break down working in "silos" and somehow lead to more innovative research. This article examines the concepts of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to determine if this kind of research is possible in legal research. The basic premise is that science is unified by the need for some kind of justification, arguably in the form of falsifiability of theories. But science is also divided into natural, social and human sciences and this article argues that this division is based on methodological differences. Whilst the natural sciences employ a mostly empiricist methodology and the human sciences employ a mostly rationalist methodology, the social sciences seem to employ a mixture of the two methodologies. Law is a human science and moreover a professional discipline. Some argue that this professional nature militates against multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary (MIT) research as it requires law students to be taught how to "think like a lawyer". The article concludes that most law researchers engage in multidisciplinary research on a regular basis, but that interdisciplinary research is highly unlikely and transdisciplinary research almost never happens.

The NSFC is the largest government funding agency in China, with the primary aim to fund and manage basic research. The agency is made up of seven scientific departments, four bureaus, one general office, and three associated units. The scientific departments are the decision-making units responsible for funding recommendations and management of funded projects. Selection of research projects is an important and recurring activity in many organizations such as government research funding agencies. Current method of grouping proposals are based on manual matching of similar research discipline areas but it fails to be accurate. Text clustering methods those are not having semantic approach provide less accuracy. A novel ontology based text mining approach to cluster proposals is proposed. Research project selection is an important task for government and private research funding agencies. When a large number of research proposals are received, it is common to group them according to their similarities in research disciplines. The grouped proposals are then assigned to the appropriate experts for peer review. The review results are collected, and the proposals are then ranked based on the aggregation of the experts' review results.

To address gaps in knowledge and to tackle complex social-ecological problems, scientific research is moving toward studies that integrate multiple disciplines and ways of knowing to explore all parts of a system. Yet, how these efforts are being measured and how they are deemed successful is an up-and-coming and pertinent conversation within interdisciplinary research spheres. Using a grounded theory approach, this study addresses how members of a sustainability science-focused team at a Northeastern U.S. university funded by a large, National Science Foundation (NSF) grant contend with deeply normative dimensions of interdisciplinary research team success. Based on semi-structured interviews (N = 24) with researchers (e.g., faculty and graduate students) involved in this expansive, interdisciplinary team, this study uses participants’ narrative accounts to progress our understanding of success on sustainability science teams and addresses the tensions arising between differing visions of success present within the current literature, and perpetuated by U.S. funding agencies like NSF. Study findings reveal that team members are forming definitions of interdisciplinary success that both align with, and depart from, those appearing in the literature. More specifically, some respondents’ notions of team success appear to mirror currently recognized outcomes in traditional academic settings (i.e., purpose driven outcomes – citations, receipt of grant funding, etc.). At the same time, just as many other respondents describe success as involving elements of collaborative research not traditionally acknowledged as a forms of “success” in their own right (i.e., capacity building processes and outcomes – relationship formation, deep understandings of distinct epistemologies, etc.). Study results contribute to more open and informed discussions about how we gauge success within sustainability science collaborations, forming a foundation for appreciation and exploration of the disciplinary and normative dimensions of this work.

This paper applies a virtue epistemology approach to using the Internet, as to improve our information-seeking behaviours. Virtue epistemology focusses on the cognitive character of agents and is less concerned with the nature of truth and epistemic justification as compared to traditional analytic epistemology. Due to this focus on cognitive character and agency, it is a fruitful but underexplored approach to using the Internet in an epistemically desirable way. Thus, the central question in this paper is: How to use the Internet in an epistemically virtuous way? Using the work of Jason Baehr, it starts by outlining nine intellectual or epistemic virtues: curiosity, intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, open-mindedness, intellectual courage and intellectual tenacity. It then explores how we should deploy these virtues and avoid the corresponding vices when interacting with the Internet, particularly search engines. Whilst an epistemically virtuous use of the Internet will not guarantee that one will acquire true beliefs, understanding or even knowledge, it will strongly improve one’s information-seeking behaviours. The paper ends with arguing that teaching and assessing online intellectual virtues should be part of school and university curricula, perhaps embedded in critical thinking courses, or even better, as individual units.

<p indent="0mm">Along with the development of natural science at current stage, interdisciplinary scientific research is an inevitable trend and destiny in pursuit of innovations in science or technologies. Much more evidence (global positioning system, internet, national security, integrated circuit, and robot technology, etc.) has proven that interdisciplinary cooperation is necessary and significant in solving important and complicated scientific problems. Thus, the United State of America (USA) built the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1958. European Union (EU) started the interdisciplinary scientific research plan of Horizon 2020 and built the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in 2008. As well, the developed countries (Germany, United Kingdom, and Nordic countries) established interdisciplinary scientific research agencies sequentially and promoted a series of interdisciplinary scientific research projects. In China, the concept of interdisciplinary scientific research was put forward by Dr. Xuesen Qian at National Interdisciplinary Conference in 1985. In 1997, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) initiated the Major Research Plan, which aims at solving the key fundamental problems in national strategy and exploring the scientific frontier in understanding the natural world with the assistance of interdisciplinary cooperation. Besides, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China also started the National Key Research and Development Program (SKRD Program) in 2015 to break through the bottleneck of science and technology. Although the concept of developing interdisciplinary science is widely accepted all over the world, interdisciplinary research is still in the initial stage. Due to the division of different disciplines formatted in past decades, the barrier and prejudices between disciplines are inveteracy, which imposes the impediment on interdisciplinary cooperation. Further, the complexity of interdisciplinary scientific research reduces the willingness of scientists, especially young scientists, to work on interdisciplinary science. Even worse, the funding mechanism that conforms to the characteristics of interdisciplinary scientific research has not been formed and is still under exploration. How identifying the characteristics of interdisciplinary research and guiding/fostering its development with funding methodology are challenging. Established in October 2020, the Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences (DIS) at NSFC has clear mission and responsibility of promoting interdisciplinary scientific research in China. Since its establishment, DIS has experienced a process of pioneering explorations in a series of aspects to create the culture for accelerating interdisciplinary cooperation, such as initiating “top-down” design of projects, summarization of scientific issues, selection of outstanding projects, and training of potential talent, etc. To encourage more scientists to get involved in interdisciplinary scientific research, this article mainly introduces the operation mechanism of DIS including its duty, organizational structure, work culture, project settings, development goals, etc. Moreover, to better elaborate the difference between DIS and other departments in NSFC, the novel attempts in funding project management are also carefully summarized, such as the innovations in the proposed project application, proposal evaluations, and project management in the past two years. At last, this article provides the outlook on developing interdisciplinary scientific research, the difficulties encountered in the operation that are difficult to solve under the existing funding mechanism, and the challenges in promoting the development of interdisciplinary science in future. We hope this article can pave the way for developing interdisciplinary science and encouraging interdisciplinary talents in China.