Transdisciplinarity and Microbiology Education

Transdisciplinarity offers interesting insights into the scientific educational environment. According to Max-Neef, multidisciplinary indicates the simultaneous or sequential study of more than one area of knowledge, without making any connections between them; pluridisciplinarity contemplates cooperation between disciplines, without coordination; interdisciplinary implies disciplinary cooperation between two hierarchical levels; transdisciplinarity indicates a disciplinary cooperation among the four levels of a pyramidal hierarchical discipline organization. From the bottom to the top of the pyramid we can find: i) disciplines of the empirical level, ii) disciplines that constitute the pragmatic level, iii) disciplines of the normative level, and iv) disciplines of the value level. Disciplines at the bottom of the pyramid refer to what exists, describing the world as it is. Disciplines of the second level ask and answer the question: “What are we capable of doing?” Disciplines of the third level represent the normative level (“What do we want to do?). Finally, the top level (disciplines of the value level) asks and answers the question: “How should we do what we want to do?” As Max-Neef describes it, “we travel from an empirical level, towards a purposive or pragmatic level, continuing to a normative level, and ending up at a value level.” A transdisciplinary action creates multiple vertical relations encompassing all four levels.