| The concept of Transdisciplinary Public Knowledge (TPK) is defined and applied to the context of teamwork in the education of children with disabilities. Personal knowledge is defined as the embodied linkage between experience and expression within an individual whereas public knowledge links the experience of one or more humans with the expression of another through symbolic interactions. TPK represents a disciplinary system of symbolic interaction that links together multiple disciplines in the same way public knowledge links together the personal knowledge of multiple people.; TPK was explored by generating a TPK proposal through a research process involving textual archives related to the professional disciplines of occupational therapy, optometry, pediatric medicine, physical therapy, school psychology, special education, and speech-language pathology. A Research Activity System (RAS) was developed to record, via an interrelated web of hypertext documents, the analytical and constructive processes that form the justification for the TPK proposal.; The process resulted in an example of a proposal of TPK called Transdisciplinary Frames of Reference (TFR). The TFR model defines six frames of reference: physical, biochemical, neurological, perceptual, cognitive, and socio-linguistic. These frames of reference are organized into three grouping levels: foundational, experiential, and social. Seven hypotheses are generated that situate each professional discipline within the context of the TFR model.; The possibilities for the TFR model fostering collaborative teamwork are discussed, and future directions for TPK research are posed. The discussion also reflects upon the experience of using an RAS as a means of researching and generating TPK proposals. The limitations and utility of the current iteration of RAS are discussed and design modifications suggested for future versions. |
