Recently I’ve been talking about the social, behavioural, individual and collective perspectives relating to science communication.
Possibly you’re wondering where on earth this new drive came from?
It’s called the integral approach, and it’s a tool futurists use a lot. (Futurists like Kristin Alford, who tickled me in the right direction).
The integral approach suggests that every sentinel being has, at minimum, four fundamental, simultaneous perspectives that must be taken into account for a deeper and more integral understanding.
Those four perspectives are also referred to as quadrants.
Now I’m not a futurist. But you don’t need to be fully versed in futures studies to obtain value from the integral approach.
I used it very simply as a framework to guide my analysis of a problem which I’ve been thinking about for years, and needed some new perspectives on: how can we best communicate science, and what does it look like when it works?
Have a try at the integral approach yourself: you’ll find lots of great information and some guidelines here.
[image thanks to Andrew Cavell on flickr]
