Learning across boundaries. On embedding interdisciplinarity in education
The Educationalist. By Alexandra Mihai
Welcome to a new edition of “The Educationalist”! I hope you had a good transition into the new year and that January has not drained your energy completely. To start off the new year, I thought I’d take a broader perspective on how we educate (and get educated) and zoom in into one particular topic that has been on my mind throughout my career: interdisciplinarity. Coming from a multidisciplinary background myself (political scientist turned educational scientist), I have an intrinsic appreciation for the value of diversity (in terms of actors, perspectives, frameworks…) both in education and in research. But when it comes to implementing genuine interdisciplinarity in our teaching and learning, there are unfortunately still quite a lot of barriers, both individual and institutional. Here I want to share some of my thoughts on why I think we should not give up, why educating our students within interdisciplinarity matters, a few ways to go about it and, as usual, some tips and resources. I hope you find it useful and I would love to hear about your experiences.
Interdisciplinary can be defined as “the fact of involving two or more different subjects or areas of knowledge” (Cambridge dictionary). So far so good. Imagine painting on a white canvas and letting the colours merge and create new shades. Oh, wait. If only areas of knowledge were so permeable and fluid. In fact, they are more like concrete blocks, with sharp edges, and one needs to put in quite some effort to bring them together, by purposefully creating a space for these blocks to interact and reassess their shapes and positions. It’s only normal that we grow within one of these blocks, through our upbringing, studies and work. The important thing is to understand the need to step out now and then, into what may seem alien or unknown. To put on different glasses even if only for a short while. To start a dialogue we would otherwise not have. To start grasping our reality in all its complexity.
Why do we need interdisciplinarity?
It’s simple: the world is not neatly divided into disciplines. Every day we encounter problems that require knowledge and skills pertaining to different disciplinary areas. But our education is built around disciplinary silos that seldom interact. Or at least we are not being taught how and when they can interact. This artificial separation- and often oversimplification-, though useful from a purely pedagogical perspective, does impact the way we learn to think about the world around us. It impacts the way we search for and process information. It influences the language we use to talk about things. It even plays a role in defining our identity as we grow up: am I a STEM or a humanities and/or social sciences type of person? It limits us, in a way, by putting us in boxes that we need to later fight hard to move away from- that is, if we want to.
Our experience in real life is complex and often ambiguous. The answer to most of our challenges is often to be found by combining disciplinary knowledge and perspectives. This can imply working with people with different backgrounds, something we are often not very comfortable with. This is why I find it particularly important to try to incorporate an interdisciplinary lens in our education which is generally discipline-based, often leaving students poorly prepared for the labour market.
Interdisciplinarity in education
Making use of interdisciplinarity in education is not always straightforward. Though the main benefits are clear (even spelling them out here feels like common sense), when it comes to “how” and “where” we often find ourselves stuck, for various reasons I will try to outline below. But first some of the benefits:
Embedding interdisciplinarity in education can:
Help students understand complex issues and become aware of how actions in one area can impact another, seemingly remote area. This also allows them to always keep track of the “bigger picture”, which is often easily lost when we think purely within the limits of one discipline;
Enable students to consider multiple perspectives, so that they can develop a nuanced understanding of the issues at hand and be able to support their opinions with valid and well-founded arguments. This can also help foster a diverse and inclusive learning environment;
Support students in learning how to make connections between what they learn in different subjects, and also with their experience outside university. This can mean applying concepts from one discipline to another and seamlessly accessing information from various domains during their problem-solving process.
Beside the knowledge related benefits, learning in an interdisciplinary environment can also help our students develop some crucial skills and attitudes that can greatly contribute towards their employability. Some examples are:
the ability to talk to and collaborate with people with a different view; this often requires the capacity to “translate” concepts and theories from one’s discipline in a jargon-free way so that peers from other disciplines can understand and make use of them;
the ability to find common ground- this entails going beyond the translation phase into finding ways to merge knowledge and frames of mind from different disciplines in a meaningful and productive way;
discipline humility- knowing the boundaries of your discipline and understanding where and when you can learn from others. And being open to it, of course;
curiosity- keeping an open mind for new and different perspectives, being open to having your opinions and beliefs challenged;
reflection- acknowledging the importance of reflection to internalise the role of interdisciplinary for the learning process.
Notwithstanding the huge benefits, we seldom see courses and programmes grounded in interdisciplinarity, they are rather a much-welcome exception. Why is that?
Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge some institutional barriers:
Education is organised in silos (faculties, departments)- this is in my opinion the biggest obstacle, as it brings about an endless series of logistical problems: students are enrolled in a certain faculty where courses are set up in a certain way, on certain days, with a specific duration and frequency, so, obviously, it is not easy to get students from different faculties together. And then, who is leading the courses, who is grading, who processes the grades… and so on. If you work in a university I don’t need to say more.
Career progression, funding and publishing opportunities- basically they are all created to make you stay within your discipline. I do sometimes see funding streams where one criterion is working interdisciplinarily, and I appreciate these a lot, but the reason stated above makes them harder to access, as our entire network is often within our discipline. Catch 22. One needs to try and break this vicious circle.
And some personal barriers are also worth considering:
The sense of belonging to one discipline;
Lack of experience in working with peers from other disciplines (getting started is the hardest part);
Lack of confidence: we often feel (for good reasons) we need to be knowledgeable enough in a specific discipline first in order to engage in interdisciplinary exchanges.
Varieties of interdisciplinarity
There are different forms of interdisciplinarity: multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity and all of them can find their way in teaching and learning, in various ways. Here are some ideas:
Multidisciplinarity: activities where students get acquainted with other disciplines and come to understand how their discipline can contribute to the analysis or the solution of a given problem. These can be rather low stakes activities such as guest lectures, various resources that provide different perspectives on a topic or assignments that require students to put another disciplinary “hat” on.
Interdisciplinarity: concepts, theories and methods from two or more disciplines are integrated in a unified framework in order to address a complex problem. Here we are talking about activities thar run for a longer period, usually for the duration of a course and can be more difficult to organise (see institutional barriers above). For instance, students from different disciplines (within the same faculty or from different faculties) could work together on organising a conference or a workshop, they could design and prototype a product, or they could work on a consultancy project. The process would be grounded in collaborative learning and the team configuration and meeting sequence and frequency could differ according to the learning goals and desired output. One could have interdisciplinary teams throughout the process, or work in smaller disciplinary teams and then periodically meet in a broader interdisciplinary structure. Thesis supervision could also involve supervisors from different disciplines, enabling students to incorporate various perspective in their work.
Transdisciplinarity: inclusion on non-academic knowledge and collaboration with partners outside academia. Here we could have projects involving practitioners or partner organisations supporting students in their work. This is often an occasion students cherish, as it also provides them with insights into future career opportunities.
Another way of looking at interdisciplinarity is in terms of what disciplines are involved and how close they are to each other. We have:
Narrow interdisciplinarity: there is a higher level of compatibility and even some overlap in terms of concepts and theories; for instance, I feel I can combine my political science and educational science quite well, especially when I look into the governance of higher education institutions. Similarly, I work at a School of Business and Economics, where students combine social science courses with mathematical and statistical knowledge;
Broad interdisciplinarity: bringing together people from STEM on the one hand and social sciences and humanities on the other; they use very different concepts and theories so while the collaboration can be productive in the long run, a longer time to adjust and translate is necessary, as well as a more structured form of dialogue, where everyone comes in when their knowledge fits best.
Ways forward
To sum up, here are some of my tips for embedding interdisciplinarity in your teaching and learning:
Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone: talk to peers from other disciplines, debate differences and find common ground, get them on board for new projects (why not a new course?).
Be curious and stimulate your students to be curious too.
Seriously think about co-teaching or team teaching.
Use collaborative learning and peer feedback to leverage the different disciplinary backgrounds.
Look outside academia for new partners to bring into the classroom.
Resources
Interdisciplinarity and the 21st century research-intensive university (2016), report by LERU (League of European Research Universities) offering insights into the implications of implementing interdisciplinarity for university governance;
Knowledge dossier: Interdisciplinary education and community engaged learning, by Utrecht University- a collection of interesting articles on how to teach, assess and develop skills in an interdisciplinary context;
Interdisciplinarity Beyond the Buzzword: A Guide to Academic Work Across Disciplines, by the Amsterdam Young Academy (AYA)- insights into the attitudes and practices of more than 20 intensely interdisciplinary researchers from Amsterdam University and beyond;
A practical guideline how to tackle interdisciplinarity—A synthesis from a post-graduate group project, article by Max Oke Kluger & Gerhard Bartzke reporting findings of an interdisciplinary group project;
Interdisciplinarity (Warwick International Higher Education Academy)- a collection of case study on interdisciplinary education;
Interdisciplinary Projects – Moving from Transfer to Transformation in Learning, by Anette Kolmos, Aalborg University;
Special issue on interdisciplinary education in the Journal of General Education, Vol. 45 (2).
Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay
