Interdisciplinary Teaching ....

Interdisciplinary Teaching
Interdisciplinary instruction entails the use and integration of methods and analytical frameworks from more than one academic discipline to examine a theme, issue, question or topic. Interdisciplinary education makes use of disciplinary approaches to examine topics, but pushes beyond by: taking insights from a variety of relevant disciplines, synthesizing their contribution to understanding, and then integrating these ideas into a more complete, and hopefully coherent, framework of analysis.

In dealing with multi-faceted issues such as teenage pregnancy, new drug development, genetically modified foods, and health care access, interdisciplinary perspectives are needed to adequately address the complexity of the problems and to forge viable policy responses.

Interdisciplinary teaching is different from multi- or cross-disciplinary teaching in that it requires the integration and synthesis of different perspectives rather than a simple consideration of multiple viewpoints

Resource book for students and professionals working in the field of Pedagogy of Economics.

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The Power Of Effective Questioning

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UNDERSTANDING THE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE : CONCEPT OF ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

Concept of Academic Discipline 

The concept of a discipline is not a straightforward one. The nature of disciplines is so different from each other that it is not easy to come up with a concise definition that would fit all of them to the same degree. The term discipline‘ may be used for many things at the same time and it is necessary to examine the various meanings of the word. Let us start with an exploration of the etymology of the word discipline.

The term discipline‘ originates from the Latin words discipulus, which means pupil, and disciplina, which means teaching.5 The term discipline is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "a branch of learning or knowledge". It defines a discipline both as a noun and as a verb as follows6:

As noun

1. the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedience: a lack of proper parental and school discipline.

2. the controlled behaviour resulting from such training: he was able to maintain discipline among his men.

3. activity that provides mental or physical training

4. a system of rules of conduct: he doesn’t have to submit to normal disciplines. 

5. branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education: Sociology is a

fairly new discipline.

As verb

1. develop (children's) behavior by instruction and practice; especially to teach self- control; "Parents must discipline their children";

2. punish in order to gain control or enforce obedience; "The teacher disciplined the pupils rather frequently".

Definitions in different dictionaries give a whole range of quite different meanings of the term from training to submission to an authority to the control and self-control of behaviour. As a verb, it means training someone to follow a rigorous set of instructions, but also punishing and enforcing obedience. In this study, the term discipline has been used in academic sense to refer a particular area of knowledge or study, especially a subject studied at a college or university.

Dogan, (2001) "The term ―discipline refers both to organizational units in educational programs (for example, in schools) and to organizational units in knowledge production. The term  ̳discipline‘ is inherited from the vocabulary of nineteenth century and is understood as a branch of instruction for the transmission of knowledge and as a convenient mapping of academic administration.

S. Yadav and T.K.S Lakshmi (1995), discipline refers to a specific area of study- a branch of knowledge recognized by a certain distinctness it reveals in its substance and methodology. A discipline is a deliberate differentiation of the knowledge base with a specific perspective in order to gain better understanding of the phenomenon under focus.

According to them, the knowledge base represents the sum total of the human understanding of environment. Disciplines are derived from the knowledge base but get formulated in recognizable differentiated forms of both substance and methodology due to further specialization, diversification and differentiation.

the term academic discipline‘ certainly incorporates many elements of the meaning of  ̳discipline‘ discussed above. At the same time, it has also become a technical term for the organization of learning and the systematic production of new knowledge. Often disciplines are identified with taught subjects, but clearly not every subject taught at university can be called a discipline. In fact, there is a whole list of criteria and characteristics, which indicate whether a subject is indeed a distinct discipline. A general list of characteristics would include:

1. Disciplines have a particular object of research (e.g. plants, law, society, politics), though the object of research may be shared with another discipline.

2. Disciplines have a body of accumulated specialist knowledge referring to their object of research, which is specific to them and not generally shared with another discipline.

3. Disciplines have theories and concepts that can organize the accumulated specialist knowledge effectively.

4. Disciplines use specific terminologies or a specific technical language adjusted to their research object.

5. Disciplines have developed specific research methods according to their specific research requirements.

6. Disciplines must have some institutional manifestation in the form of subjects taught at universities or colleges, respective academic departments and professional associations connected to it.

The evolutionary history of disciplines can be explained by the following path:

A Knowledge

(Sum total of human experience- culture, traditions, skills, concepts and principles etc.)

Specialization and Fragmentation of knowledge

(Due to man’s curiosity and efforts to understand the environment more comprehensively and specifically)

Discipline

(Separate/ Specific area of knowledge/ Independent field of study having more focused approach)

Diversification and further specialization 

of knowledge within the discipline

Breaking of disciplinary boundaries and emergence of more specialized new disciplines by one of the following ways:

# Two or more branches of knowledge merge and develop own distinct characteristics and form a new discipline. For e.g. Bio-chemistry and Bio- physics.

# A social and professional activity becomes an area of application for several disciplines and recognized as an independent field of study. For e.g.Education, Social Work, Management, Medical Sciences, Agriculture,

Technology and Engineering etc.

# When a no. of discipline converge into an important field of activity and resulting in two way flow of ideas for the enrichment of both. It is an interdisciplinary approach in different disciplines.

Understanding Academic Discipline: Evolution and emerging trends in academic discipline

EVOLUTION AND EMERGING TRENDS IN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

The education is in a process of continuous changes. Myriads of changes and challenges are facing the by the scenario. In teacher education, the modern trends favour for emerging of academic disciplines and allied school subjects. The necessity of teachers with proficiency in academic disciplines and professionalism in school subjects are accounted as essential quality of prospective and ongoing teachers.

Teacher education sector seriously focusing on the necessity of emerging academic disciplines. Academic disciplines are in the making in the field. Some sort of new disciplines like ‘curriculum development’, ‘technology of education’; educational sociology and etc are emerged as new disciplines. Hence it is relevant to have a clear understanding on the academic discipline and its various factors by teachers and prospective teachers.

Academic Discipline

            The term academic discipline originates from the Latin words ‘discipulus’ which means ‘pupil’ and ‘disciplina’ which means ‘teaching’. Related to it, there is also the word ‘disciple’ as it is in the ‘disciple of Lord Budha’. The lexicon will give a whole range of quite different meaning of the term; from training to submission to an authority or to the control and self- control of behavior. The term discipline as a verb means training someone to follow a rigorous set of instructions and also imposing and enforcing obedience.

The term academic (scientific) discipline can be defined as the academic studies that focus on a self-imposed limited field of knowledge. It is the subject that one teaches and researches as part of higher education is the academic discipline of that person

It can also be defined as form of specific and rigorous scientific training that will turn out practitioners who have been disciplined by their discipline (subject) for their own good.

Academic Discipline: Special Features

            The term academic discipline becomes a technical term for the organization of learning and the systematic production of new knowledge. Disciplines are identified with taught subjects. But every subject taught at school or at university cannot be called a discipline. There are more to a discipline that the facts and concepts of a subject taught in academic setting. There are many criteria and characteristics which indicate whether a subject a distinct discipline (Biglan, 1973). Some of the essential characteristics of an academic discipline are given below:

1.      Disciplines have a particular object of research (eg: politics, society, human behavior)

2.      Disciplines have a structure  of accumulated specialist knowledge referring to their object of research

3.      Disciplines have theories and concepts that can organize the accumulated specialist knowledge effectively

4.      Disciplines use specific terminologies or specific languages adjusted to their research objects

5.      Disciplines have developed specific research methods according to their specific research requirements.

6.      Disciplines must have some institutional manifestation in the form of subjects taught at colleges or universities. It means a discipline will have academic departments and professional associations connected to it.

All these criteria may not be fulfilled by all disciplines. But an academic discipline must be perfect and should be able to accumulate more knowledge through the process of research. It must be dynamic.

Academic Disciplines: Classifications

Biglan (1973) has developed a classification for disciplines according to the beliefs held about them by the academic members. It most generally divides disciplines into ‘hard’ or ‘paradigmatic’ disciplines and ‘soft’ or ‘pre-paradigmatic disciplines’. Hard disciplines mean they are difficult to transcend. They are developed with certain peculiar academic area and may not be occurred any change from that peculiar areas. Soft disciplines are able to change. They are in the making and give birth to new academic areas. At the same time they will be able to keep their own academic identity.  

Another classification is that pure or theoretical disciplines (eg: Mathematics) and disciplines that engage with ‘living systems’ (eg: zoology) and disciplines that engage with ‘nonliving systems’ (eg: history).

            Tony (1981) classified academic disciplines as rural disciplines and urban disciplines. These classifications are based up on the scope and applicability of the disciplines. He also considered a classification of pure and applied disciplines to explain the functions of the disciplines.

 Academic Discipline: Some Insights

Academic discipline is vast accumulation of knowledge in a specific area. For eg: History is discipline. It can also consider Medieval Indian History a discipline. Physics is a discipline. Astro- physics is a discipline. Robotics is a discipline.

A discipline incorporates experts, people, projects, communities, students, inquiries, researches and etc that are strongly associated with the given discipline. For Eg: Micro economics or Bio Informatics or Educational Psychology or Human value education. Individuals associated with academic discipline are referred to as experts or specialists.

Educational institutions originally use the term discipline to list and record the new and expanding bodies of knowledge and informative procedure by the society or community. In 1980s there have an explosion of academic disciplines such as media studies, journalism, women studies, gender studies, black studies, pollution, oceanic pollution, hospitality management, hotel management and etc.

The Historical Perspective of Academic Discipline

Kenneth (1974) observes that like any other social phenomena academic disciplines do have a history. Every discipline can be analyzed by looking at its historical development. Historians of science can look at the specific historical conditions that led to the foundation of an academic discipline and at how it changed over time, or in other words, its evolution. The historical perspective helps to understand the great continuity of disciplines, but also the points of discontinuity or departure from obsolete practices and ways of thinking. Sometimes this leads to the disappearance of an older discipline and the creation of a new one that can replace it. In other words, the historical perspective captures the great dynamics of the development of science and the academic disciplines.

Historians will generally look for the wider societal context and the overall conditions that influenced the development of a specific discipline, for example the political climate or any particular needs society had at a particular time, as well as internal factors that shaped its development. For example, Julie (1990) has pointed out that the academic discipline was an invention of the late Middle Ages. The term was first applied to three academic areas for which universities had the responsibility of producing trained professionals: theology, law and medicine.  Julie argues that this early disciplining of knowledge was a response to external demands, while the specialization into disciplines that emerged in the 19th century was due to internal reasons.

The historical perspective shows that the development of academic disciplines cannot be understood without reference to historical context. It also helps understanding the evolutionary path taken by specific disciplines. Often new disciplines have been set up to meet particular political and societal needs. For example, Roger (2002) has shown that the social sciences were set up and prospered because of the political need of getting more information on the population, which could be used for more effective government and which helped to stabilise emerging political and societal structures. The new discipline of area studies was set up in the US after the Second World War in order to train ‘area specialists’ who could assist in shaping the increasingly global US foreign policy of the beginning Cold War era. Similarly, new disciplines like computer science and artificial intelligence were closely linked to military applications and prospered because of military funding. Once these new disciplines had been set up they developed a life of their own, possibly freed from their original purpose if they managed to diversify their funding and main stakeholders.

The formation of a new discipline thus requires talented scientists who can take over the burden of intellectual leadership by defining what the new discipline is about and by giving it a clear agenda for research, which can inspire followers. In other words, founding a new discipline needs adventurous pioneers who are willing to leave their original discipline behind and to cover new ground, which always includes a certain risk that they and their new discipline will possibly fail.

This means that practically every new discipline starts off necessarily as an interdisciplinary project that combines elements from some parent discipline(s) with original new elements and insights. Once the discipline is established a new type of researcher is needed. The new discipline needs people who can consolidate it by filling in the gaps left by the pioneers.

concept attainment model

CONCEPT ATTAINMENT

Background

It seems that most of what we do in science is categorize or classify objects or events for the purpose of generalizing.  To do this, scientists must observe carefully.  Although scientists are certainly not the only people who classify, scientists often classify in different ways than the rest of us do.  Note that there is nothing about the ways in which scientists classify that is better than the ways others classify.  It is a different way, not better.  However, in science class, we want the students to learn to classify in similar ways to scientists.  We want them to be familiar with science categories so they can follow a scientific conversation – at least a little bit.  We want them to be able to read a newspaper science article and understand what they have read.  Better yet, they would be able to guess at some of the mistakes the journalist has made in interpreting what the scientists have learned.  Even better, they might also be able to critique the conclusions that scientists themselves have made.

A concept attainment method involves students learning to classify a set of objects or events in a way that scientists classify.  The students will be using the categories that scientists use, and will be attempting to determine the rationale behind the categories.

The Concept Attainment Method has a high tolerance for ambiguity.  This means that the students might seem to be following the wrong path, but eventually, they will come up with the expected answer.  You would use this method when the concept the students are expected to learn is fairly clear.  You would use this method instead of just telling the students or having them read, because students will learn the material much better when they figure it out for themselves.  As your students learn more about the classification, you will also learn more about it.  As well as learning the material better, and remembering it longer, the students will learn how to learn by using this model.  We want students to become independent learners and critical thinkers.  This method will help them with both these goals.

This method encourages certain of the Common Essential Learnings.  The most obvious are critical and creative thinking, communication, and of course, independent learning.  Personal and social values and skills might be included if you help your students work in a positive way with their peers.  As well, if the particular concept involves mathematical relationships, the students could use their numeracy.  If the particular concept involves understanding a technology, technological literacy might also be addressed.  Of course, as the students classify in the ways that scientists do, they will be learning a technique of science, and understanding techniques can be part of technological literacy.

Practicalities

Set up:

• Give your students sets of materials that have been classified.  You also tell them the names of the categories.  For example, you could give your students fifteen rocks, and organized into three groups:  five sedimentary rocks, five igneous, five metamorphic.
• Tell the students to find the characteristics that members of one group have in common that are different than the characteristics of members of other groups.  In other words, they should try to figure out why the five sedimentary rocks have been put in one group, and why the five metamorphic rocks have been put in a different group than the sedimentary rocks.  Etc.
• You might or might not have activities for the students to do with the materials so the students will study them in different ways.  If you want them to focus on the results of these activities for attaining their concepts, you will ask them to focus on these results.  For example, you might have them spill a little vinegar on their rock samples, you might have them hit their samples with another rock, etc.
• You will probably put your students into small groups.  Choose groups so they will work effectively together.
• If you wish to minimize your supervisory role, choose materials that are relatively safe to work with.  If there will be some danger in working with the materials, visualize what sorts of mistakes your students are likely to make.  Then warn them of the dangers in advance.

Carry out:

• The students study the materials, compare and contrast those that are in the same group and those that are in the different groups, attempting to determine the rationale that was used for the classification.  As the students are comparing and contrasting, they will develop different hypotheses, and will have opportunities to test their hypotheses by further examination of their materials, and by discussion in their small groups.
• The teacher's role at this stage is to meander through the classroom, observing the students at work.  You will act as referee and coach.  If students are hesitant about Ataking initiative", or if they are not testing the materials in a way in which they could, you might encourage them to go on with more tests.
• During this time, you could make anecdotal records, or fill in checklists of student actions.

Debrief:

For every teaching strategy involving a debrief, I will suggest a different method.   There are a number of ways in which debriefs can be done.  Please mix and match the different forms of debriefs you use.  In all large group (six or more students), encourage your students to use their conversation skills.  (Don't overteach this, though.  Tell them only once or twice in the year.  Remind them only when you see that they are really forgetting.)  Their conversational skills are to listen carefully to what other speakers say.  Then when they talk, they build on what others have said, and demonstrate this by using phrases such as "What I think is similar to what (another student) said", or "I disagree with what (another student) said, because ..."  Encourage them also to speak tentatively with phrases such as "I thought" or "it seems".

• Put pairs of small groups together, so that if you originally had ten small groups of 3 students, you now have five small groups of six people.  The groups are to discuss their observations and the reasons they think the objects have been classified together.  Limit the time they will have for this discussion.  When their time is up, give them a limited amount of time to come up with a ten word (or twenty, whatever you think is appropriate) phrase to summarize what they think the rationale is for the classification scheme.  Tell the group that they should select one member to be the presentor.
• Have each of the larger groups present their results to the class.
• If your students have not come up with the rationale they should have, think of why they haven't.  What background knowledge were they lacking, or what background knowledge contributed in a non-science way?  What other materials might have helped them to form the concept you wanted them to form?

Check up:

• Once your students have come up with their rationales for the classification scheme, give them a sample which is not labelled.  They are to choose which category this non-labelled sample fits in, and explain why they have classified it with this group.
• You could then ask how many groups changed their categories.

Hints

• For this teaching model to work well, the teacher should ensure that the initial samples given to the students are the clearest possible prototypes.  In other words, if you had given the students samples of vertebrate animals:  mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, you would not give them whales and duckbilled platypuses amongst the mammals.  These mammals are not generally what is expected of mammals.  After the students have come up with the description of Abasic" mammals, then you could supply the exotic ones.
• Give the students time to develop their definitions of each category.  Do not interrupt them when their first hypotheses are wrong.  If you have set the model up correctly, the students will come up with the correct rationales eventually.

Examples of concept attainment models:

• Give your students pictures of animals which are classified as mammals, fish, reptiles, birds.  If you add skin samples to your selections, you could also include amphibians.
• Give your students a magnet, and let the magnet choose the materials which are magnetic and which are not, and then the students attempt to determine what the qualities of magnetic materials are vs. non-magnetic.
• Any two or more categories, and science is full of them, will be appropriate.