We have in many places on this website described the challenges faced by researchers in performing interdisciplinary analyses, and the strategies that have proven useful in addressing these. Yet countless interdisciplinary teaching programs provide little or no guidance to students on how to perform interdisciplinary analysis. Students are exposed to analyses from diverse disciplines and left to put the pieces together on their own. Such a curricular approach is incoherent and irresponsible. It may have been excusable decades ago, but there are now textbooks available that can communicate interdisciplinary research strategies to students at any level. We can and should teach students how to perform interdisciplinary analysis.
One unsurprising but critical insight of the literature on interdisciplinary teaching is that students should actively apply interdisciplinary research strategies as they learn these. Only as they struggle themselves with the challenges of interdisciplinary research will they appreciate the value of these strategies. I had students write an interdisciplinary research paper while we worked through the research steps and strategies in (earlier editions of) Repko and Szostak, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory (2017); we had great class conversations about the challenges they faced and overcame. I was rewarded with the best research papers I ever had the pleasure to read. Other instructors instead develop smaller assignments that force students to grapple – sometimes individually, sometimes in groups – with particular research challenges. It is often useful, for example, to have students in groups discuss how to visually map an interdisciplinary research question.
Less obviously, we should appreciate that there are a set of traits (values, skills, attitudes) that support interdisciplinarity, including curiosity, creativity, intellectual courage, openmindedness, tolerance of ambiguity, appreciation of diversity, perspective-taking, humility, initiative, and patience. These can and should be encouraged as interdisciplinary students are exposed to interdisciplinary strategies. These various traits, notably, have value beyond Interdisciplinarity: They encourage critical inquiry more generally, and the respectful discourse that is central to democratic citizenship (see our discussion of Anti-Intellectualism.) (The About Interdisciplinarity pages of the website of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies provide more discussion of the skills and values associated with interdisciplinary education.)
The website of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies includes a discussion of pedagogy (under Scholarship of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning), peer reviewed course syllabi, and rubrics for the assessment of the interdisciplinary nature of student research papers.
There is also a section on Interdisciplinary General Education which discusses why and how Interdisciplinarity should infuse General Education curricula. In particular it notes that (only) Interdisciplinarity provides curricular coherence to such programs and to university education more generally. The About Interdisciplinary pages provide advice on interdisciplinary majors, among other topics here.