Interdisciplinary Communication

Students will often in their lives need to communicate with people from different disciplines or cultures. They will face two main challenges in doing so. First, people from different backgrounds often attach different meanings to the same word. Second, people bring different perspectives to bear on what they hear, and thus often infer a quite different meaning than was intended. Students should first be aware of these challenges and then learn how to address them.

Each challenge is discussed in some detail in the About Interdisciplinarity pages of the AIS website: Clarifying Concepts and Clarifying Perspectives

Communication challenges are addressed in the textbooks listed under Teaching Interdisciplinary Integration

O'Rourke, M., Crowley, S., Eigenbrode, S. D., Wulfhorst, J. D., eds. Enhancing Communication and Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2013 This book discusses both types of communication challenge.