4. What Is the Role of the Disciplines In Interdisciplinary Studies? 8/28/04
CHAPTER LEARNING OUTCOMES:
- Students will be able to explain the importance of the disciplines to interdisciplinary inquiry
- Students will be able to identify the key elements of a discipline
- Students will be able to define disciplinary perspective.
- Students will be able to identify the perspective of various disciplines
- Students will be able toexplain 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. Sometimes these programs are mostly comprised of interdisciplinary courses. Sometimes these programs are comprised of a few core interdisciplinary courses supported by traditional coursework from three or more disciplines. In either case, the interdisciplinary program is likely to include far less coursework in a discipline than would be required by a traditional “major.”
The point of majoring in a discipline is to learn its key elements--its learning and thinking processes, the phenomena it studies, its favored theories, its method of acquiring new knowledge, and its perspective--all of which are essential for researching and writing in that discipline. Interdisciplinarians agree that interdisciplinarity is defined in terms of disciplines and requires solid mastery of the disciplines to be integrated.
This requirement poses a serious challenge to interdisciplinary students who generally take far less coursework in a particular discipline than those majoring in it. Nevertheless, interdisciplinary studies students must somehow acquire a working knowledge of the key elements of the disciplines relevant to the issue under investigation without having to take extensive coursework in those disciplines. But how is this possible? How can students achieve both breadth and depth? Admittedly, this is a formidable task, and there are no simple solutions.
Our purpose in this chapter is to lay the disciplinary foundations so essential to the conduct of interdisciplinary research and integration. These foundations must be explored before students engage in integrative process. Svetlana Nikitina (2002) warns that “instructor’s commitment to integration [must] not come at the expense of rigorous or critical consideration of the disciplinary knowledge” (36). The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to provide this essential disciplinary knowledge.
I. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE?
A. DEFINITION OF DISCIPLINE
The English word “discipline” comes from the Latin word disciplina, meaning learning
andobedience training (E. L. Cerroni-Long and Roger D. Long, 1995, 47). The process
of learning has traditionally involved receiving instruction from one’s elders. The object
of learning was to acquire 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 control over an individual or a group, and may include the threat of physical 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. Disciplinary perspective is the most distinctive characteristic of disciplines because interdisciplinarians have defined it to include most/all other distinctions.
B. DEFINITION OF DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
1. 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 trainto 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
2. 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. Eachdiscipline acts
like a lens when it filters out certain phenomena so that it can focusexclusivelyon
phenomena which interests it. In the sciences, disciplines are most easily distinguished
by the phenomena they study. 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.
Students should be aware that some disciplines have a more “narrow” worldview than
others. That is, while it may be fairly easy to define the phenomena, theory, and
method of economics, it is much harder to do for sociology. We will show examples
of this difficulty later in this chapter.
3. 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.
This synthesized perspective is validated by all the disciplines involved, but is not
“owned” by any of them.
C. WHY DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE IS SO IMPORTANT TO
INTERDISCIPLINARY INQUIRY
We have identified disciplinary perspective as including most/all other disciplinary distinctions—a discipline’s learning and thinking process, the phenomena it studies, its favored theories, its method of acquiring new knowledge. The ability to identify disciplinary perspective is critical at two points in the process of interdisciplinary research and integration:
1. 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]
2. Synthesizing the discipline-specific research findings, taking into account
disciplinary-based majority and minority views (perspectives) on the issue,
problem, or question at hand. Researchers are individuals. Just as people in general
are constrained by their culture but nevertheless are distinct individuals, so scholars are
deeply (and subconsciously) influenced by disciplinary perspectives but may well—
consciously and unconsciously—reject certain elements of these perspectives (Szostak,
2004, 1).
Consequently, 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 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 first
within each discipline and thenamong the disciplines. Examples of how to achieve
synthesis under such circumstances appear later in this text.
.
II. WHAT ARE THE PERSPECTIVES OF VARIOUS DISCIPLINES AND THE THINKING PROCESSES ASSOCIATED WITH THEM?
We emphasize that interdisciplinary studies students must know the key elements of the disciplines from which they taking coursework and in which 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 interdisciplinariarians 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.
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A. THE LEARNING AND 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. As these reasons are at cross purposes, interdisciplinary 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:
Academic skills, social skills, recreation skills.
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, rhetoric
POLITICAL SCIENCE (includes its various subfields) / POLITICS:
Political institutions, political ideology, nationalism, public opinion, crime, regulatory issues
LITERATURE / FICTION:
Novels, plays, poems, stories
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
C. THE PERSPECTIVE OF VARIOUS DISCIPLINES
1. The third step to understanding a discipline is knowing its perspective. Earlier in this
chapter we stated three reasons for knowing a discipline’s perspective. We now
introduce a fourth reason: disciplinary perspective reveals the kind of evidence that a
scholar uses to support his/her argument for or against the topic/issue/problem/question
under investigation. To illustrate the close connection between disciplinary
perspective and the kind of supportive evidence used in scholarship produced by the
discipline, we examine three essays by experts from three different disciplines on the
question, “Should schools adopt computer-assisted education?” When investigating
complex and controversial issues, the interdisciplinary studies student should expect to
encounter conflicting views from a variety of disciplinary perspectives as exemplified
here.
a. DISCIPLINE #1: COMMUNICATIONS/INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
Clifford Stoll argues in The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand
(1999) that schools should not adopt computer-assisted education. His expertise in
the field of information technology extends to the business aspect of it, and this is
reflected in the kind of evidence he presents to support his case: the hidden
financial costs of computers, reference to the disciplinary journal, Education
Technology News, examples of schools having to make hard choices between
making needed repairs and buying technology, and careful examination of the
mythical cost savings derived from automating education administration (Torr,
2003, 16-21).
b. DISCIPLINE #2: PSYCHOLOGY (LEARNING THEORY). The National
Research Council (NRC) is the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, a
private, nonprofit scholarly society that advises the federal government in scientific
and technical matters. It’s study, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and
School (1999) argues that computer-assisted education can enhance learning. The
kind of supportive evidence used by the NRC includes references to state-of-the-art
learning software, and several experimental projects like GLOBE that are gathering
data from students in over 2,000 schools in 34 countries. The NRC report is also
full of disciplinary (learning theory) jargon such as “active environment,” “problem-
solving environment,” “technology environment,” and “computer scaffolding”(Torr,
2003, 22-36).
c. DISCIPLINE #3: EDUCATION. In 1999, The Alliance for Childhood, a
partnership of individuals and organizations, published a report, Fool’s Gold: A
Critical Look at Computers and Childhood, that argued that computer-assisted
education does not benefit young children. The kind of evidence presented by The
Alliance was entirely reflective of the discipline of education, and included the
Education Department’s own 1999 study of 9 troubled schools in high poverty areas,
and extensive references to studies by a host of education experts, including
Stanford Professor (Education) Larry Cuban, John Dewey, Rudolf Steiner, and MIT
professor Sherry Turkel.
2. This linkage between discipline and evidence, used by members of a community of
scholars, is common and natural. We want interdisciplinary studies students to be
aware of this linkage as they conduct their literature review and when they begin
the challenging process of integrating these conflicting sources, evidences, and
perspectives. The integrative process (the subject of two later chapters) is the most