What Teachers Would Like to Know About Interdisciplinary Learning

Part 2: Teacher training / Professional Development

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So, intra-disciplinary learning is on its way out, and interdisciplinary learning is knocking on the doors of two of Singapore’s largest universities, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS). (I discuss the different definitions of ‘interdisciplinary’ in my previous article.)

NUS announced that its Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences will be merged with its Faculty of Science in 2021 — in two months — to form the College of Humanities and Sciences. Too soon? Never fear — NUS President Tan Eng Chye reported that “NUS has been pioneering interdisciplinary teaching and learning over the last 20 years,” according to the Straits Times. So NUS faulty know how to teach interdisciplinary courses, great, but what about the rest of us?

What does interdisciplinary teaching look like? Certainly not like regular teaching, if the research on interdisciplinary teaching and learning is to be believed.

In their book Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines, Tony Becher and Paul Trowler argue that academic disciplines have so developed over the years, been so shaped and moulded by their communities of scholars and professionals, that each discipline has cultivated it own culture and characteristics. I’m sure you can think of some examples immediately. Love of aesthetics, finely crafted arguments and persuasive writing are likely more characteristic of the arts faculty, whereas focus on empirical evidence and well-reasoned research methods come to mind when thinking of the ‘hard’ sciences.

It would be logical then, that the teachers who have been nurtured in their specific disciplines would teach differently, and many, I dare say, would be very proud of those differences. This is a challenge, or at the very least, a real problem, for the drive towards interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

In 2009, Spelt, Biemans, Tobi, Luning and Mulder published Teaching and Learning in Interdisciplinary Higher Education: A Systematic Review. 13 research papers were studied by Spelt et. al (2009) to describe the subskills related to interdisciplinary thinking and the learning conditions in which interdisciplinary thinking can be developed. One of the learning conditions described by the research papers reviewed was the teacher. Specifically, it was found that interdisciplinary thinking in students occurred more often if their teachers were part of an intellectual community focused on interdisciplinarity, if they were expert teachers on interdisciplinarity, if there was consensus on interdisciplinarity amongst the teachers, and if there was team development and team teaching.

Spelt et. al (2009) propose that these findings show how important “teacher teams and their professional development in interdisciplinarity” are in creating conducive environments where cross-disciplinary knowledge and understanding can be developed effectively in students (p. 374).

In other words, for successful interdisciplinary teaching and learning to occur, teachers need to know what ‘interdisciplinary’ means and experience interdisciplinary teamwork.

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If you have to teach interdisciplinary courses, and learn how to do it on your own, what could you do? Applying Spelt et. al’s (2009) findings,

1. Start reading about the other discipline(s) you have to or want to integrate with your ‘home’ discipline. Liza R. Lattuca, in her 2001 book Creating Interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching Among College and University Faculty, interviewed university teachers about their interdisciplinary teaching and research. She reported that “[every] faculty informant claimed to read widely and portrayed reading as a major dimension of interdisciplinary work” (p. 120). Perhaps, since reading can be done at the individual level, it is the easiest way to get started on your interdisciplinary teaching journey. Lattuca (2001) also found that “[preparation] for interdisciplinary teaching and research projects generally began with reading and collegial conversation” (p. 119), so then
2. Reach out and find teachers from other disciplines to talk to. Where could you go to find those potential teaching / research partners? Many of the respondents interviewed by Lattuca (2001) stated that smaller sized cross-disciplinary meetings produced great discussions. “Workshops and institutes focused on specific topics were particularly useful to faculty with interdisciplinary interests”, showing that thinking in terms of issues that interest you rather than subjects or disciplines could help you find a colleague to talk to and perhaps work with at the interdisciplinary level (Lattuca, 2001, p. 128).

Sidenote: I would very much like it if someone could build me an app / create software that helped me connect with potential collaborators — like Coffee Meets Bagel — but for teaching, not romantic, partners. Perhaps this technology exists already?

Finding a colleague whom you can work with seems challenging due to different work ethics, communication styles and teaching / course goals; often successful collaborations are serendipitous events (Lattuca (2001). If you have managed to find a collaborator you like working with, congratulations and be ever so grateful. Also, do go meta on your collaborative efforts:

1. Take note of how you work with that colleague and reflect on how you two (or three, or four, or many) worked together and why it was successful — this will surely be helpful when you mentor students from different disciplines who have to work together on assignments.
2. Ask other teachers about their interdisciplinary collaborations and maybe collect information about best practices — again, this would be useful when you have to point out ways students can collaborate across discipline cultures effectively.

Interdisciplinary teaching certainly looks daunting. Not only will you have to teach out of your comfort zone and beloved discipline, you will have to start getting to know an entire other discipline quite well. And talk to people from a wholly different academic world. Work closely with them.

One could say those are problems, but problems, as Kobi Yamada wrote, hold opportunities. Opportunities “to learn and to grow. To be brave. To do something” (Yamada, 2016).

The problem of interdisciplinary teaching is also an opportunity for teachers to grow and learn. Can we be brave and do something about interdisciplinary teaching?

References

Becher, T., & Trowler, P. R. (2001). Academic tribes and territories. Buckingham: Society for Research in Higher Education/Open University Press.

Lattuca, L. R. (2001). Creating interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary research and teaching among college and university faculty. Vanderbilt university press.

Spelt, E., Biemans, H., Tobi, H., Luning, P., & Mulder, M. (2009). Teaching and Learning in Interdisciplinary Higher Education: A Systematic Review. Educational Psychology Review, 21(4), p. 365–378. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-009-9113-z

Yamada, K. (2016). What Do You Do with a Problem? Compendium Kids.