Teaching people to think and work across disciplinary and professional boundaries
Organisers and invited discussants: Lina Markauskaite, Peter Goodyear, Marie Carroll, Tina Hinton, Philip Poronnik, Kim Bell-Anderson, Simon Poon
TIME: 11:00-11:45am, Thursday 5, November, STL Research Fest 2015
Developing students’ capacities to work in multidisciplinary teams, communicate effectively with people across traditional professional boundaries, and solve complex real-world issues are a priority area for future enhancements of university teaching. But what is really involved? What kinds of capacities do students actually need for working effectively across disciplinary and professional boundaries? What kinds of interdisciplinary teaching and learning models are effective? What kinds of teaching and learning approaches are most productive for enhancing students’ capacities? How can we validly and effectively assess students’ mastery of various interdisciplinary skills?
In this session, we will share some insights from recent research and teaching, as a stimulus to discussing experiences and practical action in this space. If there is sufficient support, we envisage forming an action research group to collaborate in innovative educational R&D over the next few years.
If you are interested in this challenging area but can’t attend the event, please send us an email and we will keep you informed.
Teaching people to think and work across disciplinary and professional boundaries
1. The University of Sydney Page 1
Teaching people to
think and work across
disciplinary and
professional
boundariesOrganisers and invited
discussants:
Lina Markauskaite, Peter Goodyear,
Marie Carroll, Tina Hinton, Philip
Poronnik, Kim Bell-Anderson, Simon
Poon
The Science of Learning Science Node
Sciences and Technologies of Learning Research
Network
STL Research Fest @ CPC
5 November 2015
2. The University of Sydney Page 2
Our motives and aims
Background
1. Cross-disciplinary, cross-
faculty education is at the
core of the CPC’s education
mission
2. The University plans to
embed interdisciplinary
learning across the
curriculum
3. Avoiding interdisciplinarity
silos
4. Building research capacity
Building on collective “know
how”
1. To share insights from recent
research and teaching
Thinking about practical
actions
1. What can help the rest of the
University in this space?
2. Is there sufficient interest to
collaborate in educational
R&D?
How to get to grips with interdisciplinary teaching and
learning?
3. The University of Sydney Page 3
Today
1. Some shaping ideas (Lina)
2. Insights from teaching (Kim, Simon)
3. Insights from implementation,
research, etc. (Marie, Peter, Tina,
Phil)
4. Open discussion: insights,
suggestions
4. The University of Sydney Page 4
Some shapes of
interdisciplinarities and
interprfessionalisms
6. The University of Sydney Page 6
Interdisciplinarities and interprofessionalisms
Multidisciplinarity
Within disciplines
Close disciplines
Complementing
Methodological
Instrumental
Single man science
Cooperative
Collocated
Knowledge focussed
Professional
Transdisciplinarity
Across disciplines
Remote disciplines
Hybridizing
Theoretical
Critical
Team science
Collaborative
Remote
Problem-focused
Social
Integration
Scope
Proximity
Function
Extent
Sharing
Nature
Mode
Role
Distribution
Space
7. The University of Sydney Page 7
Shapes of interdisciplinary
capabilities
Disciplinary
expertise
Specialised
knowledge
Broad
knowledge
Expertise
Exploration
Execution
Experience
?
8. The University of Sydney Page 8
Some questions
1. What kind of course do you teach?
2. What kinds of interdisciplinary capabilities
do students learn?
3. What pedagogical principles do you use?
4. What and how do you assess?
5. What does work very well?
6. What does not work so well?
9. The University of Sydney Page 9
General questions for discussion
1. What is central for interdisciplinary
expertise?
2. What is central for successful
interdisciplinary learning?
3. What does bother you the most about
interdisciplinary capabilities, teaching and
learning?
4. What should we do next?
10. The University of Sydney Page 10
If you would like to stay informed, put
your name on the list or email us:
Lina.Marakauskaite@sydney.edu.a
u
Editor's Notes
Teaching people to think and work across disciplinary and professional boundaries
Organisers and invited discussants: Lina Markauskaite, Peter Goodyear, Marie Carroll, Tina Hinton, Philip Poronnik, Kim Bell-Anderson, Simon Poon
TIME: 11:00-11:45am, Thursday 5, November, STL Research Fest 2015
Developing students’ capacities to work in multidisciplinary teams, communicate effectively with people across traditional professional boundaries, and solve complex real-world issues are a priority area for future enhancements of university teaching. But what is really involved? What kinds of capacities do students actually need for working effectively across disciplinary and professional boundaries? What kinds of interdisciplinary teaching and learning models are effective? What kinds of teaching and learning approaches are most productive for enhancing students’ capacities? How can we validly and effectively assess students’ mastery of various interdisciplinary skills?
In this session, we will share some insights from recent research and teaching, as a stimulus to discussing experiences and practical action in this space. If there is sufficient support, we envisage forming an action research group to collaborate in innovative educational R&D over the next few years.
If you are interested in this challenging area but can’t attend the event, please send us an email and we will keep you informed.
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A brief session on interdisciplinarity at the Research Fest held by STL. The Science of Learning Science node at the Charles Perkins Centre will be tackling the issue of how to really get to grips with interdisciplinary teaching and learning. After discussing the issues, we will decide whether to initiate something that can really help the rest of the university as it starts to implement the plan to embed interdisciplinary learning across the curriculum.
Our motives for this session
How to really get to grips with interdisciplinary teaching and learning?
Background
1. Cross-disciplinary education in a research-intensive, technologically rich, collaborative environment is at the core of the CPC’s education mission
2. The University plans to embed interdisciplinary learning across the curriculum
3. Building expertise in interdisciplinary teaching. Interdisciplinary education is not new. And over the recent years, interdisciplinary curricula have been proliferating. And there is a substantial number of already existing interdisciplinary postgraduate and undergraduate units and programs in various faculties.
However, there has been little sharing of experiences and know how. It feels that without noticing we could move from disciplinary silos that we aim to overcome by introducing interdisciplinary education to interdisciplinary silos. What do we mean by interdisciplinarity and how to teach it are far from well understood issues.
4. Building research capacity in researching interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary learning
Our aim is to explore
1. How we could we assist with challenges implementing interdisciplinary T&L by smarter drawing on each other experiences and know how?
2. How could we build collective research capacity in this area?
Our specific today’s aims have been
1. To create a space for sharing some insights from recent research and teaching in this space.
2. Discuss needs and possible practical action in this space.
Specifically we would like to know:
What can really help the rest of the university as it starts to embed interdisciplinary learning across the curriculum?
If there is sufficient support, we envisage forming an action research group to collaborate in innovative educational R&D over the next few years.
Over the last few months there has been increased attention to interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary education. One of the hallmarks is the Nature’s supplement on Interdisciplinarity.
The strongest theme is the lack of researchers and students capacities to work across the boundaries of diverse knowledge domains (disciplines, professions, etc). Aka. social struggle
Yet, what these capacities are and how to develop them is, in essence, a “blackbox”. As one paper says figuring out how to work in multidisciplinary teams came “trough a decade of trial and error”.
So what do we mean by interdisciplinarity?
Some typical taxonomies:
Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity (Degree of integration)
Within discipline Across disciplines
Close disciplines vs remote disciplines
Complementing vs hybridizing (Partial integration vs full integration)
Methodological vs theoretical
Instrumental vs critical
Single man vs team science
Shared/cooperative vs collaborative
Collocated vs remote
Knowledge focussed (Basic Mode 1) vs problem focussed (Applied Mode 2)
Professional/endogenous vs Social/exogenous
What bothers me:
The issue is then what do we mean “teaching interdisciplinarity” “interdisciplinary experiences” and “interdisciplinary teaching”?
How could we decide what we should teach and create/choose productive pedagogies?
What does it involve?
How could we teach?
How could we assess?
Most importantly we even hardly know/understand what is really involved in Interdisciplinary expertise.
? – or may be a set of special interdisciplinary capacities: such as Epistemic fluency (integration of different kinds of knowledge, coordination of different ways of knowing etc.)
What should we teach?
How should we teach?
What should we assess?
How should we assess?