Interdisciplinarity
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Interdisciplinarity is the act of drawing from two or more academic disciplines and integrating their insights to work together in pursuit of a common goal. "Interdisciplinary Studies", as they are called, use interdisciplinarity to develop a greater understanding of a problem that is too complex or wide-ranging (i.e. AIDS pandemic, global warming) to be dealt with using the knowledge and methodology of just one discipline.
Interdisciplinary programs sometimes arise from a shared conviction that the traditional disciplines are unable or unwilling to address an important problem. For example, social science disciplines such as anthropology and sociology paid little attention to the social analysis of technology throughout most of the twentieth century. As a result, many social scientists with interests in technology have joined science and technology studies programs, which are typically staffed by scholars drawn from numerous disciplines (including anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology, and women's studies). They may also arise from new research developments, such as nanotechnology, which cannot be addressed without combining the approaches of two or more disciplines. Examples include quantum information processing, which amalgamates elements of quantum physics and computer science, and bioinformatics, which combines molecular biology with computer science. In a sense, those who pursue Interdisciplinary Studies degrees or practice interdisciplinarity in their lives are seen as pioneers (and even risk-takers) at the cutting edge of scholarship, science, and technology. In this way, interdisciplinarians are able to acknowledge and combat the present and future problems of humanity.
At another level, interdisciplinarity is seen as a remedy to the intellectually deadening effects of excessive specialization. On some views, however, interdisciplinarity is entirely indebted to those who specialize in one field of study--that without specialists, interdisciplinarians would have no information and no leading experts to consult. Others place the focus of interdisciplinarity on the need to transcend disciplines, viewing excessive specialization as problematic both epistemologically and politically. When interdisciplinary collaboration or research results in new solutions to problems, much information is given back to the various disciplines involved. Therefore, both disciplinarians and interdisciplinarians must work complementary to each other in order to solve problems.
However, French sociologist and interdisciplinary scholar, Mattei Dogan has criticized the widely held view that interdisciplinarity, despite its etymology, involves merging two traditional disciplines. As demonstrated in his article “The New Social Sciences: Cracks in the Disciplinary Walls,” interdisciplinary research does not, in fact, entail crossing whole disciplines, but in crossing specialties. In Dogan’s view, by attempting to cross disciplines so vast as political science and sociology, for example, the research can only become lost in a ocean of literature. In this sense, any researcher seeking to cross whole disciplines is doomed from the outset. For him, the true meaning of interdisciplinarity lies in crossing specialties within disciplines, or the hybridization of disciplinary fragments (see below: hybridization of specialties).
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[edit] Varieties of disciplinarity
There are several types of inquiry that may erroneously be referred to as "interdisciplinarity." Many of the following descriptions in this section are based on Becoming Interdisciplinary: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies by Tanya Augsburg of Arizona State University.
[edit] Interdisciplinarity
In a sense, interdisciplinarity involves attacking a subject from various angles and methods, eventually cutting across disciplines and forming a new method for felicitious understanding of the subject. A common goal (understanding) unites the different methods and acknowledges an entire subject or problem, even if it spreads to other disciplines.
Interdisciplinarity as the term is most often used in educational circles occurs when researchers from two or more disciplines pool their approaches and modify them so that they are better suited to the problem at hand, including the case of the team-taught course where students are required to understand how a given subject (for example, land use) may appear differently when examined by different disciplines (e.g., biology, geography, and economics).
Interdisciplinarity is a typical trait of holistic approaches in science and other fields. Not all those who are committed to interdisciplinarity consider themselves holists, however, as they may not embrace the connotations of the term.
[edit] Multidisciplinarity
Multidisciplinarity examines multiple subjects from different disciplines but only uses the methods of one discipline in its examination. This approach is related to the think tank model, where the objective is likely to be the solution of an immediate problem, rather than exploration of disciplinary perspectives.
[edit] Transdisciplinarity
A transdisciplinary approach dissolves boundaries between disciplines. Transdisciplinarity becomes necessary when the concept or method cannot be understood from within a single discipline and requires the input of many disciplines to be understood. An example is the field research method called ethnography, which was originally developed in anthropology but is now more fully understood with insights from psychology, philosophy, sociology, and other disciplines.
[edit] Crossdisciplinarity
Crossdisciplinarity describes a method that crosses disciplinary boundaries but does so from a foreign angle and with no cooperation. Basically, crossdisciplinary approaches attempt to explain a subject in the terms of a foreign method. Some good examples of such interaction would be describing the physics of music or the politics of literature.
[edit] Non-disciplinarity
Finally, there is "non-disciplinarity," which differs from dilettantism mainly in that it is a conscious and deliberate rather than ignorant disregard of the expectation that one should remain within the subject matter and methodology of a defined discipline; the approach may be taken by those working from a postmodern model of bricolage, and may proceed from subversive intent or from an ambition to pursue larger questions.
Hybridization of Specialties Hybridization occurs when sub-domains within disciplines intersect giving rise to, for example, fields such as political economy, social ecology, social psychology, historical sociology, etc. But, the hybridization process does not stop there as “hybrids beget further hybrids” (Dogan, “The New Social Sciences: Cracks in the Disciplinary Walls”), which is especially true in the natural sciences since they have reached relatively high degrees of fragmentation and specialization. The following breakdown illustrates a second generation hybrid: physiology begat endocrinology and neurophysiology, which in turn begat neuroendocrinology.
[edit] Barriers to interdisciplinarity
Because most participants in interdisciplinary ventures were trained in traditional disciplines, they must learn to appreciate differing perspectives and approaches. For example, a discipline that places more emphasis on quantitative "rigor" may produce practitioners who think of themselves (and their discipline) as "more scientific" than others; in turn, colleagues in "softer" disciplines may associate quantitative approaches with an inability to grasp the broader dimensions of a problem. An interdisciplinary program may not succeed if its members remain stuck in their disciplines (and in disciplinary attitudes).
From the disciplinary perspective, much interdisciplinary work may be seen as "soft," lacking in rigor, or ideologically motivated; these beliefs place barriers in the career paths of those who choose interdisciplinary work. For example, interdisciplinary grant applications are often refereed by peer reviewers drawn from established disciplines; not surprisingly, interdisciplinary researchers may experience difficulty getting funding for their research. In addition, untenured researchers know that, when they seek promotion and tenure, it is likely that some of the evaluators will lack commitment to interdisciplinarity. They may fear that making a commitment to interdisciplinary research will increase the risk of being denied tenure.
Interdisciplinary programs may fail if they are not given sufficient autonomy. For example, it is a common practice to recruit new interdisciplinary faculty to a joint appointment, with responsibilities in both an interdisciplinary program (such as women's studies) and a traditional discipline (such as history). If the traditional discipline makes the tenure decisions, new interdisciplinary faculty will be hesitant to commit themselves fully to interdisciplinary work. Other barriers include the generally disciplinary orientation of most scholarly journals, leading to the perception, if not the fact, that interdisciplinary research is hard to publish. In addition, since traditional budgetary practices at most universities channel resources through the disciplines, it becomes difficult to account for a given scholar or teacher's salary and time. During periods of budgetary retraction, the natural tendency to serve the primary constituency (i.e., students majoring in the discipline) makes resources scarce for teaching and research comparatively far from the center of the discipline as traditionally understood. For these same reasons, the introduction of new interdisciplinary programs is often perceived as a competition for diminishing funds, and may for this reason meet resistance.
Due to these and other barriers, interdisciplinary research areas are strongly motivated to become disciplines themselves. If they succeed, they can establish their own research funding programs and make their own tenure and promotion decisions. In so doing, they lower the risk of entry. Examples of former interdisciplinary research areas that have become disciplines include neuroscience, biochemistry and biomedical engineering. These new fields are occasionally referred to as "interdisciplines."
[edit] New interdisciplinary programs
Interdisciplinary programs may be founded in order to facilitate the study of subjects which have some coherence, but which cannot be adequately understood from a single disciplinary perspective (for example, Women's Studies or Medieval Studies). More rarely, and at a more advanced level, interdisciplinarity may itself become the focus of study, in a critique of institutionalized disciplines' ways of segmenting knowledge. Perhaps the most common complaint regarding interdisciplinary programs is the lack of synthesis -- that is, students are provided with multiple disciplinary perspectives, but given insufficient guidance in resolving the conflicts and achieving a coherent view of the subject. Critics of interdisciplinary programs feel that the ambition is simply unrealistic, given the knowledge and intellectual maturity of all but the exceptional undergraduate; some defenders concede the difficulty, but insist that cultivating interdisciplinarity as a habit of mind, even at that level, is both possible and essential to the education of informed and engaged citizens and leaders capable of analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information from multiple sources in order to render reasoned decisions.
The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was the first college to provide thematic interdisciplinary programs. Since opening its doors in 1971, Evergreen's entire curriculum has been taught through interdisciplinary studies.
The School of Interdisciplinary Studies, also known as the Western College Program, was created in 1974 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The program allows students to take control of their educational path by designing their own major, incorporating various areas of study at Miami University to form an interdisciplinary focus.
Universities worldwide recognize that, in order to address the problems facing humanity today, they must increase their commitment to interdisciplinarity. For example, a grass-roots effort by faculty and students at Stanford University resulted in a new program called Bio-X, which explores the intersections among biology, computer science, medicine, and engineering. The program is housed in the Clark Center, which opened in 2003. Situated along the pathways between the university and the medical center, the Clark Center is designed to both express and facilitate the concept of interdisciplinarity. Each lab is equipped with at least two scientists from each of the participating disciplines, but they are by no means fixed: for example, walls can be moved (or eliminated), and all equipment is on wheels. The entire building is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary communication and to accommodate new, rapid, and unexpected growth as it occurs.
Truman State University, a liberal arts university in Kirksville, Missouri, has recently taken another approach to interdisciplinarity. A new General Education requirement sees that all students take at least one interdisciplinary course before graduation. The university has also developed a process by which students accepted to the interdisciplinary studies major program may design their own majors with the help of a faculty mentor. The major requires that students take two newly created courses about interdisciplinarity in addition to their regular coursework: an introductory course to interdisciplinary studies (focusing on the theory of interdisciplinarity) and a senior capstone (focusing on synthesis/praxis), while the rest of the student's coursework consists of classes in several of the different disciplinary programs. To help ensure that they are serious about their interdiscipinary major, Truman students are required to take 50 credit hours after the acceptance of their major as well as maintain a GPA of 2.8. The first class of IDSM majors at the school were: Rhetoric and Power, Philosophy in Literature, and Gender in Politics, though recently Biochemistry, Medieval Studies, East Asian studies, and Environmental Studies were proposed. Ten interdisciplinary minors are also available to the student body. However, more majors will undoubtedly follow as students continue to transcend the traditional academic disciplines. Truman is also taking a revolutionary step by combining the principle of interdisciplinarity with the "Four Powerful Pedagogies". This combination allows IDSM undergraduates not only to learn how to think interdisciplinarily but also to apply those principles through internships, research, service learning and study abroad experiences.
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, is a research intensive university with a rapidly growing Interdisciplinary PhD program, now at 70 students. The demographics of this group is dramatically different from all of the other PhD programs on campus, with mature individuals designing their own programs to respond to individual career goals in industry, government and academic.
Increasingly, universities are consciously incorporating elements of interdisciplinarity into their curricula -- within particular courses, especially as part of general education requirements, or by requiring cognate fields in the academic major, and through such devices as the Learning Community, or the "clusters" system at Washington University in St. Louis.
[edit] See also
See Category:Interdisciplinary fields
[edit] Further reading
- Augsburg, Tanya. (2005), Becoming Interdisciplinary: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies.
- Awbrey, S. and Awbrey, J. (1999), "Integrative Universities", Second International Conference of the Journal "Organization", UMASS, Amherst, 17–19 September 1999, Eprint.
- Chubin, D.E. (1976). The conceptualization of scientific specialties. The Sociological Quarterly 17: 448-476.
- Defila, R., and Antonietta Di Giulio. (1999). Evaluation criteria for inter and transdisciplinary research: Project report, instrument. Panorama Special Issue 1.
- Johnston, R. (2003). Integrating methodologists into teams of substantive experts. Studies in Intelligence 47(1).
- Rhoten, D. (2003). A multi-method analysis of the social and technical conditions for interdisciplinary collaboration.
- Siskin, L.S. & Little, J.W. (1995). The Subjects in Question. Teachers College Press. about the departmental organization of high schools and efforts to change that.
