BULETIN ğTIIN IFIC - Universitatea George Bacovia

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Liviu DRUGU, Toader GHERASIM, Camelia Mihaela CMECIU
thinking and from modern logic to postmodern logic. Of course, this curriculum may be
improved, changed, completed or simply applied to. The authors’ opinion is that “there are
no real standards in developing transdisciplinary studies. There are only means, concepts
and a transdisciplinary vision” (ibidem.).
c. Thomas J.P. Thijssen and Wim Gijselaers from Prima Vera Research Group,
University of Amsterdam published an article entitled Dynamics in Business and its
Consequences for Learning Business. Learning by Sharing as a Model for Revitalization.
Although the authors do not use the word transdisciplinarity, they give a direct
answer to Basarab Nicolescu’s notice that universities do not share information. They
made a plea for creativity, innovation and learning by sharing. We do believe that this is a
postmodern and transdisciplinary thinking.
The authors underline the idea that “researchers, teachers and students” are required
to engage with practitioners in specific business contexts and need to develop a common
language, test their mental models, learn from each other, create fresh knowledge and
develop new learning practices to create academic and business value”. (idem., pp. 18-19)
d. The authors of this article are promoting the transdisciplinary model of
thinking, called EMMY, which has been already described in Chapter I. We make here a
proposal of interconnecting all the above mentioned models and theories in a kind of
alternative to modern and disciplinary thinking. More concrete, this way of interconnecting
should be performed by sharing all these views to all structures interested in reforming
education. So, instead of promoting individual visions (such as EMMY – Liviu Drugus,
learning by sharing – Thomas J.P. Thijssen, the transdisciplinary school – Mircea Bertea et
al., the transdisciplinarity PhD – Basarab Nicolescu ) we do propose to reciprocally know,
criticize/comment and interfere for a common and stronger one. There is a real chance for
education reformers to receive and interfere with all these models in order to create the
transmodern universities, based on transdisciplinary thinking, following a real
transdevelopment in a general and global transformation economy. In the following chapters
we will try to define the components of such reformative measures. One of these is
promoting a better communication between theoretical analysis and social economic reality,
and generally speaking, using communication tools in the very complex and global process
for bridging the gap between the social needs and the university offer/supply to meet them.
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Unless there is communication between the social actors who act within this triadic
structure of reality (education – transdisciplinary education, education policy –
transdevelopment and business – transformation economy), every of the three
components will be weak and this weakness will generate negative consequences to the
other two. The process of transmitting this lack of strength could be explained in terms of
coding and decoding information, which is, actually, a part of Umberto Eco’s definition of
semiotics (theory of codes 9 = the semiotics of signification and the theory of sign
production = the semiotics of communication).
9 Daniel Chandler (2002: 147 - 150) defines codes as “a set of practices familiar to users of the medium
operating within a broad cultural framework”. Codes organize signs (“something that stands for something
else, to someone in some capacity” – Ch. S. Peirce) into meaningful systems which correlate a referent to
signifiers (F. de Saussure)/ representamen (Ch. S. Peirce) and signifieds (concept)/ interpretant (Ch. S.
Peirce).