Consolidation Phase 164

The consolidation phase aimed at addressing the analysis of the processes of each team as well as identifying ways and means of sustaining the interdisciplinary process outcomes after the project phase ends. Towards this end, the final FTI workshop, planned along a “write-shop” model was arranged at Bonn in January 2011. As most FTI participants were scientists, who had strong professional urge to publish articles to beef up their curriculum vitae, the write shop model provided a perfect opportunity to write articles.

The challenge for most of the participating scientists was however, to write an article in a non-comfort zone of science- an area of research that did not necessarily emanate from their respective discipline, rather reflecting and analyzing a process. As two of the four participants put it, “…I never thought that writing about FTI experience could qualify as

a publishable scientific article…”, or, “…reporting on an experience is like a story telling…it is difficult to imagine that any scientific journal will publish a story” (Field

Note, May 2010).

These statements signify the epistemological foundations of positivist science prevalent within the Uzbekistan project on one hand, whereby the “true or real” science implied finding appropriate research questions, devising hypotheses to answer the research question, collecting quantitative data using positivist instruments, and then deploying statistical tests to verify the framed hypotheses. The statements also reflect a complete negation of the non-positivist ways of inquiry, where qualitative data is used to explain a phenomenon. The non-positivist science appeared to be perceived nothing more than journalism, or historical accounts. On the other hand, these statements also indicate that though the team members underwent an intensive capacity-building and learning by doing, the actual understanding of interdisciplinarity, its need, and validity of non- positivist sciences remained superficial, at least amongst the scientists who made these statements.

The FTI facilitator, together with the social science coordinator and the FTI consultant explained that such reflexive analyses were quite common in many social science fields, and were considered as valid science by those disciplines. They also pinpointed a few journals that published such reflexive analysis based on practice. They also then provided guiding formats for kick starting the processes of reflexive analysis (van Veldhuizen, 2011). These guiding notes required the authors, with inputs from their team members, to think in advance of an appropriate title for the paper, to prepare a brief main argument of the paper, and to briefly mention sections and subsection, and for each of the sections and subsections, briefly mention key points and arguments. They were also advised to distinguish between conceptual framework, and how this was related to the empirical and

conceptual argument of the paper, empirical section detailing out which data sets were used and why, and include the titles of tables and graphs they intended to use and how these contributed to the main argument. The third part was the key conclusions / sub messages supporting the main message, finding and arguments, as well as briefly pinpointing implications for innovation research or development. The researchers were also requested to mention open questions that the authors would like to discuss during the write shop to get clarity about (Field Note January 2011).

The actual write-shop was organized into four main sessions (van Veldhuizen, 2011). The first session was aimed at presentation of draft papers by authors about the main arguments and structure of the paper, which was followed by brainstorm generating comments and suggestion from peers using meta plan cards. This was then followed by a plenary review and discussion of comments of each of the paper. In the final session, the lead authors carried out individual work on their papers to address comments and suggestions. The last session formed the core of the write shop, during which, brief rounds were organized to give updates on progress in writing and to discuss possible dilemmas. Pair-wise or small group discussions were also organized as needed to help elaborate specific sections of papers or provide other detailed inputs.

Parallel to this process individual interviews were held with the four researchers attending the write shop, who had been part of the FTI teams on the ground. Three of them also attended the first training. This was to assess the extent of learning at their level on FTI since their involvement in the FTI activities and to generate feedback on how they saw the FTI capacity building process organized by the project over the last 3 years and its strengths and weakness. The outcome of these interviews is discussed in Chapter VI as a part of participant learning. Here, those parts of the interview are discussed which are related to participant’s views on the strength and weaknesses of FTI training events.

Generally all the four interviewees expressed considerable personal growth in terms of learning on FTI, stakeholder interaction and trans-disciplinary research ((van Veldhuizen,

2011). The main issues noted on the strength and weaknesses of FTI capacity building are spelled out in Table 5.10. The participant feedback indicates that all of them valued the new knowledge and insights that was not part of their original discipline, for example tools and methods to identify and rank stakeholders, designing, implementing and evaluating monitoring and evaluation. The group work during the training sessions to practice those tools was also appreciated. What also participants found useful was the alternating sequence of capacity-building events followed by implementation, followed by reflection sessions and then the next training event.

What was also clear from their feedback was the lack of actual practice with the tools while the participants were undertaking their research within their FTI teams. Though the participants complained about lack of opportunities for practicing those tools, what they did not realize was that it was actually them who had to adapt those tools while working with their teams and stakeholders. This shows that they required much more instructions, push, and facilitation from the FTI facilitator during the implementation, or a prescriptive model together with tools, whereby steps, methods and content of work is already spelled out by someone else, for example the FTI facilitator. However, given the participatory and collaborative nature of the intended IDR, it would be useful, for example, that the FTI facilitator would work together with individual teams to adapt the taught tools and methods to their team specific needs.

Also, three of the four evaluating participants indicated the need for making the content of the training more relevant to actual FTI practice and introducing tools and topics closer in terms of timing of actual need during the implementation. This implies that if a training theme is introduced too early in the process, it might remain too abstract for the participant, and if too late, it would not be useful as some actual work would have already taken place within the teams without adequate tools. This was clearly indicated by one of the participants who commented about the literature discussions, which to his/her perception did not add to clarity about FTI, rather proved to be confusing. Since the literature discussions were organized early in the process, some of the participants at that stage did not realize the adaptive and process nature of interdisciplinarity.

Table 5.11 SWOT analysis of FTI Capacity-Building by Selected FTI Participants

Strengths Weaknesses/ Suggestions for improvement Participant I

- The games used in the first FTI workshop were very instructive (for example Puzzle game)

- Many of the tools and concrete formats were useful (ranking, stakeholder selection, criteria analysis for PME. Good opportunity to practice them during the training

Participant I

- More opportunities for practicing tools were needed.

- In Uzbekistan it would have been an incentive if at the end of each training a sort of test, assignment (or a game) was done that would show participants how much they had learned

Participant II

- Good informative and relevant content - Sharing between the FTI teams during the workshops on what they experienced helped a lot

- The overall design, rhythm, of the capacity building alternating training with trying this out and practice followed again by reflection/discussion on this in next workshop

- Concrete forms/formats for use of tools, planning and PME were useful (could have been given more? E.g. on process documentation)

Participant II

- Not enough opportunity for practicing most of the tools during training

- It would have been useful to have more concrete case studies and illustrative (video) examples (of e.g., joint experimentation) from other countries, see how it worked there - The FTI workshops often had a considerable number of participants that a) had not followed previous FTI training b) had only sideways something to do with FTI and c) remained often passive. Reduce workshop participants to active FTI participants

Participant III

- Generally good quality of training workshops

- Materials, tools and techniques used were relevant

Participant III

- There was not always enough opportunity to internalize topics from the training; it could have been easier if topics given were more immediately linked to the actual FTI process on the ground at the time

- Process documentation and its role were not fully clear to all and many felt it to be too much work (maybe done to help others with data collection?)

- Further localization of facilitation and its skills is still needed to fit the Uzbek context.

- Involvement of farmer stakeholders in the FTI workshops was it always useful? AF farmers were never bothered with concepts such as FTI but knew about the interest of the project to collaborate.

Participant IV

- Generally good and solid methodology Participant IV -Introduction of tools and methods more closely linked to the actual FTI process as it was developing. Case in point is the PME training part when a framework was suggested and used during the training but used much later. Fortunately notes from the training could be retrieved.

- Generally there was a need to follow-up the training with assistance to the FTI teams to put what they learned into practice; the training alone was not always enough for the teams to implement and use all on their own.

- During FTI 2 it could have been useful to have the innovations selected and teams formed earlier in the workshop so that there would be more time in the rest of the training to practice various tools within the newly formed teams.

- Literature discussions confused more than clarified. Source: Authors compilation based on (van Veldhuizen, 2011)