4. What Is the Role of the Disciplines In Interdisciplinary Studies? 8/23/04
CHAPTER LEARNING OUTCOMES:
· Students will be able to define disciplinary perspective.
· Students will be able to identify the perspectives various disciplines and the phenomena embraced by them.
· Students will be able to explain how a discipline’s perspective relates to the phenomena it studies and the theories and methods it uses.
INTRODUCTION
Students are drawn to interdisciplinary studies programs because they provide considerable freedom to design individualized programs of study tailored to their personal academic or career goals. These programs of study generally include coursework in two or more disciplines, but far less coursework than would be required for a “major.” The point of majoring in a discipline is to learn its key elements--its knowledge, theories, methods, and perspective--all of which are essential for researching and writing in the discipline. Though interdisciplinary studies students take less coursework in a particular discipline than those majoring in it, they must know the these key elements for each discipline relevant to the problem, issue or question they plan to investigate. In other words, interdisciplinary students must somehow acquire disciplinary specific knowledge without majoring in the discipline. But how is this possible? How can interdisciplinary studies students achieve both breadth and depth? Admittedly, this is a formidable task and there are no simple solutions. Nevertheless, this chapter presents strategies designed to help students to acquire this essential information in an efficient manner. More particularly, this chapter offers the following:
· a definition of disciplinary perspective
· an explanation of why disciplinary perspective is so important to interdisciplinary studies
· the phenomenon, prevailing theories methods and perspectives of various disciplines
· linking various disciplines to their perspectives, the phenomena they embrace, and
to their favored theories and methods
See Hursh, Haas, 38
I. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE?
A. DEFINING DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
1. The English word “discipline” comes from the Latin word disciplina, meaning both
learning and obedience training (E. L. Cerroni-Long and Roger D. Long, 1995, 47).
The process of learning involved receiving instruction from one’s elders. The object of
learning was knowledge that was specialized and valuable.
Today, the term discipline has two principal usages: it refers to a particular branch of
learning or body of knowledge [i.e., a discipline]; it also refers to maintaining order
and control over an individual or a group, and may include the threat of physical or
other forms of punishment (Moran, 2002, 2). Our interest is in the former meaning.
Specifically we want to know how learning occurs in the disciplines, and how this, in
turn, relates to their perspectives.
2. Perspective means “the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative
importance.” Cerroni-Long (1995, 47) informs us that modern academic disciplines
perform two critical functions, both of which contribute to the development of
perspective:
· they train to systematically use a particular and consistent set of questions for analyzing experience within a coherent frame of reference
· they interpret reality by asking a unique set of what and how questions
B. A DISCIPLINE’S MOST DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC IS THE
PERSPECTIVE BY WHICH IT VIEWS THE WORLD
1. Each discipline has a perspective or way of interpreting and ordering reality. We can
compare a discipline to a lens through which to view the world. Each discipline acts
like a lens when it filters out certain phenomena so that it can focus exclusively on
phenomena which interests it. The discipline of physics, for example, would not be
interested in demographic data that would be of great interest to a sociologist. But the
discipline of physics would be very interested in data that shows how widely varying
temperatures affect the tensile strength of steel cables used to suspend a bridge.
Similarly, the discipline of history would likely not be interested in the regulatory
hurdles involved in the building an oil refinery, but the disciplines of political science
and law would.
2. Ian Hacking (2004) cautions that merely examining the same object or phenomenon
from different disciplinary perspectives does not, by itself, constitute interdisciplinary
work, but only multidisciplinary work (emphasis added, 5). The reason is quite
simple: having five different people from five different disciplines look at an object
will likely yield five different descriptions of the object. This is the nature of
multidisciplinarity. What is lacking, of course, is any attempt to integrate these
perspectives into a more comprehensive understanding of the object, synthesizing,
insofar as this is possible, the various perspectives, into one composite description that
all would recognize as valid but that no single discipline could lay exclusive claim to.
C. REASONS WHY DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE IS SO IMPORTANT TO
INTERDISCIPLINARY INQUIRY
The ability to identify disciplinary perspective is critical at three points in the
interdisciplinary research and integrative process as follows:
· Conducting the initial literature review. The purpose of conducting an initial literature review is to determine if the proposed topic/issue/problem/question is “researchable.” A topic is “researchable” in an interdisciplinary sense when there is sufficient and quality scholarship from at least three disciplines. In this exploratory phase, which scholars call “literature review,” students are reading a variety of materials to gather background information on their topic. There is a pitfall to be avoided here: some students begin their interdisciplinary research by gathering materials on their topic without paying close attention to what disciplines produced the materials. The unintended result of such oversight is to end up with a large amount of material written primarily or exclusively from the perspective of one or two disciplines. Obviously, one cannot conduct true interdisciplinary research under such conditions. In such an event, either the student will have to abandon the topic for want of sufficient material from more than two disciplines, or, the student will have to expand the search to include materials from other disciplines on the topic. We will examine the literature review process in greater detail in a subsequent chapter.
· Ascertaining what theory and method is particularly relevant to the question at hand. Rick Szostak (2003c) defines interdisciplinarity in terms of being open to any suitable disciplinary theory and method (_). Different theories, he adds, are suited to different phenomena. For example, some theories describe group processes; others focus on individual actions, while still others emphasize relationships. Interdisciplinary students, including professional researchers, need guidance as to what sorts of theories to draw upon in particular situations (2004, 6). We provide this guidance later in this chapter. [insert his info from Current Sociology here]
· Synthesizing the discipline-specific research findings, taking into account
disciplinary-based majority and minority views on the issue, problem, or
question at hand. Disciplines are not monolithic. Their members rarely agree
on the controversies of the day. For example, scholars from the discipline of
education (particularly learning theory) disagree sharply among themselves on the
issue of the extent to which teachers should use computers in the elementary
classroom. This debate is replicated in the disciplines of psychology,
communications, and business. The problem for the interdisciplinary student is
formidable and requires integrating the scholarlship first within each discipline
and then among the disciplines. Later in this text we will show examples of how
to achieve synthesis under such circumstances.
II. WHAT ARE THE PERSPECTIVES OF VARIOUS DISCIPLINES AND THE THINKING PROCESSES ASSOCIATED WITH THEM?
· We emphasize that interdisciplinary studies students must have at least a general understanding of the fields of study in which they taking coursework and intend to conduct research. Janet Donald, a leading researcher in the field of learning theory at McGill University, Canada, emphasizes that “to understand a field of study [i.e., a discipline], students must learn its perspectives and [thinking] processes. Intellectual development requires linking domain [i.e., disciplinary] knowledge and processes of inquiry” (2002, xii). Yet, as Szostak (2004) observes, “disciplinary perspectives are hard to pin down,” and “steps involving disciplinary perspective are among the most difficult in the entire [integrative] process” (10). It is significant that most of the leading practitioners of interdisciplinary studies have been thoroughly trained in a discipline before engaging in interdisciplinary scholarship. This disciplinary training sensitizes interdiscipinariarians to the importance of mastering the key elements of a discipline—its learning and thinking processes, its perspectives, the phenomena it embraces, and its favored theories and methods.
A. THE LEARNING AND THE THINKING PROCESSES OF VARIOUS
DISCIPLINES
1. According to Donald (2002), the generally accepted definition of learning is “a
relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of practice” (135).
Interdisciplinary studies students should ponder this definition of learning for two
reasons: (a) to conduct research in a discipline, students should invest sufficient time
in a discipline to be conversant with its thinking process, the phenomena it embraces,
its perspective, and its favored theories and methods, and (b) the more time a student
spends in a discipline, the more difficult it is, generally, to break out of that discipline’s
mold of thinking. Interdisciplinary studies students should strive for balance between
depth in a discipline(s) and breadth among disciplines.
2. The first step in understanding a discipline is to know, at least in general terms, the
thinking process that characterizes it. In the table below we link disciplinary
categories—the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities--with general
statements about the thinking process that characterizes that category.
THE LEARNING AND THINKING PROCESSES OF DISCIPLINARY CATEGORIES
CATEGORY / DISCIPLINE / THE LEARNING AND THE THINKING PROCESSTHE SCIENCES / PHYSICS / “Learning in the sciences is inductive, knowledge-intensive, and analytic, going from specific phenomena to explanation that requires developing an extensive vocabulary to describe elements and relations between them.”
CHEMISTRY
BIOLOGY
GEOLOGY
ENGINEERING
(NCLUDES IT VARIOUS FIELDS)
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / PSYCHOLOGY / Learning in the social sciences involves developing a new abstract vocabulary, theoretical frameworks, analytic reasoning and research methods that emphasize theory construction, measurement, and textual analysis.
LAW
SOCIOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
POLITICAL SCIENCE
HISTORY
EDUCATION
THE HUMANITIES / ENGLISH LITERATURE / “In the humanities, learning is concerned with understanding human culture—with aesthetics, where meaning is found in the contemplative perception of particular significant things, and synoptics, where meaning is comprehensive and integrative.”
ART & ART HISTORY
MUSIC
THEATER
Based on Donald, 97, __, 232
In the second table, we link specific disciplines with specific thinking processes. Students who have had coursework in these disciplines will, no doubt, recognize these learning and thinking processes.
THE LEARNING AND THINKING PROCESSES OF VARIOUS DISCIPLINES
CATEGORY / DISCIPLINE / THE LEARNING AND THE THINKING PROCESSTHE SCIENCES / PHYSICS / “Ability to represent physical phenomena in different modes, from graphic representation to equations.”
ENGINEERING / “Representation is important but must be applied to understanding [real-world] problems.”
CHEMISTRY / “Conceptual problem-solving, laboratory work, concept-mapping and algorithmic application of formulas to solve problems.”
BIOLOGY / “Learning involves progress through alternating patterns of inductive and deductive thinking, with the use of inferential skills, particularly changing perspective. Students need to understand the process behind the derivation of biological information.
SUMMARY
STATEMENT: / Physics, engineering, and chemistry place a priority on learning to problem-solve; in biology, more general reasoning and induction are important because of the complexity of the field.
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / PSYCHOLOGY / Empirical analysis and theory construction, use of metaphors, paradigms
LAW / “The methods of analysis depend on a history of practice that must be learned.”
EDUCATION / Students need to understand the disciplines they are responsible for teaching, and how to design instructional practices to fit learners’ needs.”
THE HUMANITIES / ENGLISH LITERATURE / “Analyze texts for their meaning and apply an aesthetic criterion in addition to others.”
Based on Donald, 104, 122, 127, 272
B. THE PHENOMENA EMBRACED BY VARIOUS DISCIPLINES
1. The second step to understanding a discipline is knowing the phenomena it embraces.
Armed with this knowledge, interdisciplinary studies students will be able to identity
disciplines relevant to the topic they wish to investigate. For example, a student
wanting to research the topic, computer-assisted education, would identify disciplines
dealing with the following phenomena: classroom teaching, communication
technology, and learning theory. The relevant disciplines in this example would
include, education (because it deals with classroom teaching), communications
(because it deals with computers), psychology (because it deals with learning theory)
and business (because of the importance of the education software industry).
2. The following table shows the linkage between various disciplines and disciplinary
categories and to the phenomena each embraces.
THE DISCIPLINES AND DISCIPLINARY CATEGORIES LINKED TO THE PHENOMENA THEY EMBRACE
DISCIPLINES / PHENOMENA EMBRACEDPHYSICAL SCIENCES (physics, chemistry) / NON-HUMAN ENVIRONMENT:
Soil, Topography, Climate, Flora, Fauna, Resource Availability, Water Availability
NATURAL SCIENCES (biology, geology) / HUMAN & HEALTH:
Genetic Predisposition, Nutrition, Disease/Injury
ENGINEERING (includes its various subfields) / BUILT ENVIRONMENT:
Transport Infrastructure, technologies (communication, computational, entertainment)
LAW / LAWS & LEGAL AGENCIES:
Government regulations, court rulings, legal relationships
BUSINESS (includes its various subfields) / ECONOMY:
Income distribution, economic ideology, economic institutions
(ownership, production, exchange, trade, finance, labor relations, organizations)
PSYCHOLOGY / INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES:
Abilities (physical, physical appearance, energy level, intelligences), Personality (sociability, Emotionality, Consciousness, Affection, Intellectual orientation, Disorders, Sexual Orientation, Schemas, Interpersonal Relationships
EDUCATION / LEARNING:
SOCIOLOGY / SOCIAL STRUCTURE:
Genders, family types, kinship, classes, ethnic/racial divisions, social ideology, occupations
ANTHROPOLOGY / CULTURE:
Languages, religions, stories, expressions of culture, values
HISTORY / PAST:
Events, personalities, developments
COMMUNICATIONS (includes its subfields) / ALL FORMS OF COMMUNICATIONS:
Technical communications,
POLITICAL SCIENCE (includes its various subfields) / POLITICS:
Political institutions, political ideology, nationalism, public opinion, crime, regulatory issues
LITERATURE / PROSE & POETRY:
ART, ART, MUSIC, THEATER / NON-REPROCIBLE ART:
Painting, sculpture, architecture
REPRODUCIBLE ART:
Photography, film, music, dance, theater.
ART HISTORY:
Period art
Based, in part, on Szostak 2001, 217-219