Griffith Graduate Attributes Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit (A) Knowledgeable and Skilled in their Disciplines 1. Comprehensive knowledge and skills relating to their disciplines 2. An interdisciplinary perspective 3. Capacity to find, evaluate and use information 4. Ability to apply discipline/professional skills and knowledge in the workplace
Table of contents Purpose of this toolkit... 3 Interdisciplinary perspective... 5 Why help students develop an interdisciplinary perspective... 6 Preparing students for interdisciplinary experience... 7 Designing interdisciplinary tasks... 8 Assessing students interdisciplinary perspective... 10 Additional resources... 12 Authorial Attribution: Webb, F., Smith, C., & Worsfold, K. (2011). Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit. (Retrieved from the World Wide Web 4th April, 2011) http://www.griffith.edu.au/gihe/resources-support/graduate-attributes NOTE: The URLs listed in this toolkit were current at the time of retrieval. However, please note these may change with time as websites update. Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 2
Purpose of this toolkit The Toolkits developed by members of the Griffith Graduate Project are intended primarily for academic staff. They offer an overview of some of the main issues related to developing students graduate skills during their degree studies. They draw heavily on existing literature and current practice in universities around the world and include numerous references and links to useful web resources. They are not comprehensive guides or how to booklets. Rather, they incorporate the perspectives of academic staff, students, graduates and employers on the graduate skills adopted by Griffith University in its Griffith Graduate Statement. Griffith University. (2009). The Griffith Graduate Attributes. (Retrieved from the World Wide Web 1st October 2010) http://www.griffith.edu.au/gihe/teaching-learning-curriculum/graduate-attributes This Toolkit, Interdisciplinary Skills, focuses on how you can help students to think about the same issue/s from multiple disciplinary perspectives, in a way that tries to integrate or make holistic sense of the various explanations. This toolkit, together with others in the series (as shown in the following table) can be accessed via the Griffith Institute for Higher Education webpage, the URL of which is listed on the following page. GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES DESCRIPTOR TOOLKIT (1) Knowledgeable and Skilled in their Disciplines (2) Effective Communicators and Team Members Comprehensive knowledge and skills relating to their disciplines An interdisciplinary perspective Capacity to find, evaluate and use information Ability to apply discipline/professional skills and knowledge in the workplace Capacity to communicate effectively with others orally Capacity to communicate effectively with others in writing Capacity to communicate effectively with others using ICTs, multimedia, visual, musical and other forms appropriate to their disciplines Capacity to interact and collaborate with others effectively, including in teams, in the workplace, and in culturally or linguistically diverse contexts. n/a Interdisciplinary Skills Information Literacy Professional Skills Oral Communication Written Communication ICT and Other Discipline-Related Communication Skills Teamwork Skills Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 3
GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES DESCRIPTOR TOOLKIT (3) Innovative and Creative, with Critical Judgement (4) Socially Responsible and Engaged in their Communities (5) Competent in Culturally Diverse and International Environments Ability to use knowledge and skills to devise solutions to unfamiliar problems Ability to analyse and critically evaluate arguments and evidence appropriate to their disciplines (e.g. collect analyse and interpret data and information, generate and test hypotheses, synthesise and organise information) Knowledge of research methodologies in their disciplines and capacity to interpret findings Ability to generate ideas/products/art works/methods/approaches/perspectives as appropriate to the discipline. Ethical awareness (professional and personal) and academic integrity Capacity to apply disciplinary knowledge to solving real life problems in relevant communities Understanding of social and civic responsibilities, human rights and sustainability Understanding the value of further learning and professional development Awareness of and respect for the values and knowledges of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Peoples Respect, awareness, knowledge and skills to interact effectively in culturally or linguistically diverse contexts A global and international perspective on their disciplines. Creativity and Innovation* Critical Evaluation Research Skills Creativity and Innovation* Ethical Behaviour and Social Responsibility* Problem Solving Ethical Behaviour and Social Responsibility* Further Learning To be developed Global and international perspective and awareness* Global and international perspective and awareness* NB: * Toolkit covers two sub-attributes. ** Toolkit development in progress Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 4
Interdisciplinary perspective An interdisciplinary approach is one in which two or more disciplines are brought together, preferably in such a way that the disciplines interact with one another and have some effect on one another s perspectives (Rowntree 1982, p. 135). The teaching and learning for this approach focuses on the methodologies, interpretive tools, and language of several disciplines on a central problem, issue, or theme (Ivanitskaya, Clark, Montgomery and Primeau 2002, p. 108). The term interdisciplinary can often be confused with others such as, multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary. So what is the difference? Disciplinary: what is generally understood by discipline taking a disciplinary perspective on problems is what disciplines do best; research is focused, theoretically informed and internally coherent; answers to questions and issues come from within that perspective. Multi-disciplinary: the world has many different disciplines each of which attempts to explain the same phenomena from their respective disciplinary viewpoints. It is therefore important that students be made aware of this fact, so that they develop a rich, nuanced understanding of their own discipline in a broader context. Interdisciplinary: looking at the same issue/s from multiple disciplinary perspectives, in a way that tries to integrate or make holistic sense of the various explanations of the same phenomona that are generated from each of the disciplinary perspectives; an interdisciplinary perspective might be more than merely multi-disciplinary because of an attempt to think through the relations between the various disparate disciplines explanations. Trans-disciplinary: drawing together the concepts, theories and approaches from different disciplines in a shared conceptual framework, a complete integration of the discipline perspectives (e.g. molecular biology which combines chemistry / bio-chemistry with cellular biology to explain biological phenomena). Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 5
Why help students develop an interdisciplinary perspective Students need an interdisciplinary perspective on their main discipline to provide them with the broad perspective required for becoming an effective citizen and being prepared for the varied and transitional nature of working life. DeZure (1999) provides a list of six reasons to pursue interdisciplinarity: 1. Pressing social problems (crime, poverty) that cannot be resolved by a single disciplinary perspective; 2. Students and faculty asking for more connected learning and coherence in the curriculum; 3. Employers seeking graduates who are prepared to meet the multidisciplinary needs of the work world, integrating what they have learned in disparate fields; 4. Administrators hoping to make more efficient use of resources and equipment by sharing them across disciplines; 5. Dynamic changes in knowledge construction which is blurring disciplinary boundaries across fields, e.g., cultural studies. Scientific breakthroughs, research and funding patterns for research have transformed disciplines such as neuroscience and bioengineering (Klein, 1990); 6. Electronic technology and the Internet which are transforming the way we organise and seek knowledge, replacing linear models with hypertext links that disregard disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 6
Preparing students for interdisciplinary experience Students can be prepared for an interdisciplinary experience by encouraging them to link and integrate all of their learning experiences (e.g. other course content, their experiences in the workplace or at home or general life experiences) into their approach to gaining an understanding about a problem or an issue. Students should: be encouraged to utilise tools and methodologies from disciplines other than their own; be engaged in seeking, obtaining, and utilising knowledge in an organic - not an artificial way i.e. in the context of authentic problems, interests, issues, and concerns by using disciplines of knowledge in an integrated way (Beane 1995, p. 616); recognise that the interdisciplinary experience requires a reference point of discipline knowledge as discipline knowledge includes much (but not all) of what we know about ourselves and our world and about ways of making and communicating meaning but must go beyond that perspective to achieve a holistic view of a problem, phenomena or issue (Beane, 1995, p. 616). Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 7
Designing interdisciplinary tasks Table 1 shows four possible levels of integration of multiple disciplines into curricular. These show varying degrees of explicit and formal commitment to interdisciplinarity from incidental or accidental through to the intentional trans-disciplinary perspective. Level Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Description Students enrol in courses from different discipline areas. At this level there is no formal requirement for the student to connect what they learned in one context to what was learned in another. Students are able to share their insights from the different disciplines in a formal setting such as a capstone seminar course. At this level the student is responsible for integration of this learning. Students are exposed to the different disciplines through multi-disciplinary team teaching. At this level students synthesise knowledge from the different disciplines but interpret the problems and issues through their own discipline. Students and staff make a conscious effort to integrate the discipline perspectives into a coherent framework requiring an understanding of methodologies etc. and building a shared language. An example is biophysics which integrates physics with chemistry and biology. In encouraging an interdisciplinary perspective you might try to discuss with students: what constitutes an interdisciplinary approach (using appropriate examples of issues approached from the multiple perspectives of your own and other disciplines); the skills and traits characteristic of interdisciplinarians (e.g. critical thinking, problem- solving, flexibility, approaching problems from different perspectives); the role of the disciplines in interdisciplinary work (i.e. a reference point which students can use to understand the theme or problem before exploring it through other disciplinary perspectives; something that makes a unique yet equally valuable contribution to our understanding of an issue along with other disciplines); how different disciplines interpret and influence understanding of a problem (e.g. choosing a site for a building, an accountant may look at cost, an environmental scientist may look at environmental impact and an architect may look at the space for the design); the defining elements of disciplines and their relevance to interdiscplinarians (e.g. as an interdisciplinarian not only considering the costs from an accounting perspective but also considering the environmental impact of a decision i.e. recognising the defining aspects of more than one discipline in the exploration of an issue) (Repko, 2008). Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 8
You might choose to ask students to: demonstrate their abilities and active involvement in learning through participation in a group project (e.g. ask students to critically analyse the connections between different discipline areas such as history, sociology and science), and/or Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 9
Assessing students interdisciplinary perspective In assessing the development of an interdisciplinary perspective the focus is on the development of intellectual capability in the student rather than on a fixed body of information (Field, Lee, and Field,1994, pp. 70 71); that is, assessing their ability to integrate and assimilate knowledge from multiple disciplines rather than simply concentrating on content-specific knowledge from a single discipline. Repko (2008) identifies from the literature four cognitive abilities cultivated by interdisciplinary learning. He summarises these as the ability to: 1. develop and apply perspective-taking techniques; 2. develop structural knowledge of problems appropriate to interdisciplinary inquiry; 3. integrate conflicting insights (i.e., three expert views) from two or more disciplines; 4. produce a cognitive advancement or interdisciplinary understanding of the problem. Examples of the types of learning outcomes/ objectives you could use within your course to capture the interdisciplinary learning outcomes for students include: viewing the course theme, issue, problem, or question from the perspective of two disciplines (i.e., use disciplinary-based [and conflicting] perspectives to better understand a problem); perceiving connections between the two knowledge (i.e., disciplinary) domains that pertain to the course problem or theme; integrating conflicting disciplinary insights and viewpoints; producing a more comprehensive understanding of the course problem or theme and test it by proposing a holistic solution. It is not proposed that you would adopt these as your learning objectives but rather use these to guide you in writing your own objectives (Repko, 2008). With appropriate learning objectives identified you can then choose your assessment tasks and the appropriate weighting of these for your course. Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 10
Examples of interdisciplinary activities and artefacts that could be used for assessment Discipline examples Public Health students work in teams to prepare reports outlining implementation strategies for tackling obesity in their local community. Each team member gathers and summarises information from a different disciplinary perspective: behavioural science; biology; nutrition; and psychology. The team then synthesises information from the different perspectives in the report. Urban planning students research planning issues surrounding the proposed Marina at the Southport Spit and present these in class as if they are making a submission to a Gold Coast City Council Planning Committee. The issues are drawn from sociology, ecology, law, financial planning and environmental studies. Criminology students examine contributing factors to violence against women with reference to biology, psychology, criminology and sociology. They draw on statistics to defend or refute theories they consider. The students research provides content for a class debate on appropriate strategies for working with domestic violence offenders. Environmental studies students explore the sustainability of the Murray-Darling Basin with reference to interdisciplinary research from the social sciences, humanities, business studies, environmental and health sciences. They present their findings in an assignment written in the style of an article for The Australian Weekend Magazine. Cross-disciplinary teams of animators, filmmakers, composers and digital media creators work together in teams, to produce video and digital media programs for community clients such as Riding for the Disabled or the Royal Brisbane Children's Hospital in-house TV. Midwifery students participate in a debate in which they prepare arguments on home birth from both the medical and midwifery perspectives. They are randomly allocated to either side of the debate by a lottery system. Assessing for an interdisciplinary perspective In their report assess students ability to accurately and effectively integrate the different disciplinary perspectives to provide a more holistic solution to the problem. Assess the students ability to recognise and incorporate in their presentation issues from different disciplines pertaining to the proposed development of the Marina at Southport. Assess the debate for the students ability to provide a comprehensive argument that recognises and integrates more than one disciplinary perspective. Assess the students ability to demonstrate an understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of the research drawn on for their articles. Assess the students ability to effectively integrate the different disciplinary elements in their final production. Assess the debate for the students ability to identify connections and disparities between the different disciplinary perspectives. Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 11
Additional resources Print resources Beane, J. A. (1995). Curriculum integration and the disciplines of knowledge. Phi Delta Kap-pan, 76, 616-622. Boix Mansilla, V. (2005). Assessing student work at disciplinary crossroads. Change, 37 January/February, 14-21. Edwards, A. (1996). Interdisciplinary undergraduate programs: A directory (2nd ed.). Acton, MA: Copley. Field, M., Lee, R., & Field, M. L. (1994). Assessing interdisciplinary learning. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, 58, 69-84. Gabelnick, F., MacGregor, J., Matthews, R., and Smith, B.L. (1990). Learning communities: Creating connections among students, faculty and disciplines. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Gaff, I. G. & Ratcliff, J.L. (Eds.). (1997). Handbook of the undergraduate curriculum. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Haynes, C. (1998, March). Interdisciplinary teaching and learning across the curriculum. Paper presented at the Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Association for Integrative Studies. Chicago, IL. Ivanitskaya, L., Clark, D., Montgomery, G. And Primeau, R. (2002) Interdisciplinary Learning: Process and Outcomes, Innovative Higher Education, 27(2), 95 111. Klein, J.T. (1996). Crossing boundaries: Knowledge, disciplinarities, and interdisciplinarities. Charlottesville and London: U of Virginia Press. Klein, J.T. & Doty, W. (Eds.). (1994). Interdisciplinary studies today. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Klein. J.T. (1990). Interdisciplinarity: history, theory and practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Newell, W. (1998, March). The place of interdiscliplinary studies in higher education today. Paper presented at the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Association for Integrative Studies. Chicago, IL. Repko, A. F. (2008b). Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Rowntree, D. (1982). A dictionary of education. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books. Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 12
Web resources Boix Mansilla, V and Gardner, H. (2003). Assessing interdisciplinary work at the frontier. An empirical exploration of symptoms of quality, in Rethinking interdisciplinarity [moderators C. Heintz and G. Origgi], at http://www.interdisciplines.org DeZure, D. (1999) Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Viewed, 26 March 2010, http://oregonstate.edu/ctl/articles/packet1/interdisciplinary%20teaching%20&%2 0Learning.htm. The Center for teaching and Learning, Oregon State University. Repko, A. F. (2008a). Assessing Interdisciplinary Learning Outcome, Viewed 1 April 2010, www.uta.edu/ints/faculty/repko_outcomes_aeq.pdf University of Texas Arlington. Interdisciplinary Perspective Toolkit Page 13