Designing a General Education Curriculum

The easiest way to introduce interdisciplinary analysis into a General Education curriculum is to have one to three courses that follow the material in the textbooks mentioned in Teaching Interdisciplinary Integration As noted on that page, these textbooks allow instructors with limited familiarity with the literature on interdisciplinarity to teach such courses. There might be an introductory course that defines interdisciplinarity and discusses how to evaluate insights from different disciplines, an intermediate course that explores how to perform interdisciplinary integration, and/or a capstone course that communicates more advanced research techniques while students perform fairly independent research projects. In all of these courses students will best learn the material if expected to perform research which applies the interdisciplinary strategies being communicated. And students should be encouraged to discuss their research with others through class discussions and presentations.

It is possible, though, to teach such material in conjunction with the Thematic Interdisciplinary Courses which would comprise the bulk of an interdisciplinary general education curriculum. Instructors might then employ both a thematic and interdisciplinary text, and students would be expected to perform interdisciplinary research relevant to the theme. Care would need to be taken to provide the two types of material coherently and without overwhelming students. [The thematic focus will limit the range of class discussions.]

It might be possible -- if a General Education program has a clear progression through a set of courses -- to distribute the interdisciplinary material as modules through several courses. Key elements of this material include:

• • Definitions of disciplines, interdisciplinarity, integration, and a sense of the place of these in the contemporary academy

  • Ideally some sense of the history of disciplines and interdisciplinarity [On these bullets see Defining Disciplines and Interdisciplinarity, Understanding their History]

  • How to ask a good interdisciplinary question

  • How to find and evaluate insights from multiple disciplines

  • How to integrate these insights into a more comprehensive understanding

  • How to communicate to diverse audiences [On these latter bullets see Teaching Interdisciplinary Integration]

There are several other topics that should be addressed as modules either in courses about interdisciplinarity or in other General Education courses. There is considerable flexibility in how this material might be taught, and thus how much curricular time is devoted to it. As with any material, students will learn something if just exposed to information, will learn more if they see how information is connected or applied to other information, and will learn most if asked to utilize the material themselves in class discussions, presentations, or writing assignments. Each of these modules might indeed be expanded into a full course:

Ethics

• • The integrative techniques outlined in Teaching Interdisciplinary Integration can also be applied to conflicts over values. See Integrating across Differences in Values. These techniques allow students to understand the sources of conflicts over values and alleviate these conflicts.

  • Just as students can learn about disciplines and the different perspectives that these bring to scholarly research, students can usefully learn that there are a handful of ways that people make ethical judgments. Philosophers have identified three formal types of ethical analysis: evaluating the consequences of an act, asking whether an act accords with certain rules one values, or asking whether an act accords with one's values. Anthropologists and sociologists note that people often judge acts on whether they accord with their groups' practices and traditions. And psychologists appreciate that our intuition (sense of guilt etc.) plays a critical role in ethical behavior. An interdisciplinary approach to ethics can establish that each approach is valid. It can also point out that all five types of ethical analysis often point in the same direction (though no ethical argument is unassailable). Honesty and responsibility can be urged by all five approaches.

Lewis, Hunter, A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices that Shape our Lives, is a useful resource. Ethical integration is discussed in Repko and Szostak, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory.

Philosophy of Science

• Students should appreciate that philosophers have moved away from the idea that scientific arguments can be proven or disproven. There is always some argument that can be structured against any body of evidence. Yet scientific understanding can improve if we amass argument and evidence in favor of a particular proposition. Many important public debates regarding science -- creationism versus evolution, human-caused climate change -- are plagued by the misconception that scientists should be able to prove their theories.

• Interdisciplinary analysis builds on this philosophical insight, arguing that we should have the greatest confidence in statements that accord with evidence from different methods and arguments from diverse theories.

Rhetoric and Critical Thinking

• Interdisciplinary education guides students both to evaluate the arguments of others and to communicate to diverse audiences. In both activities they can usefully be exposed to the literature on rhetorical strategies. Students should be able to distinguish appeals to emotion from appeals to reason.

• Likewise interdisciplinary analysis can be seen as a particular form of critical thinking. Students can usefully be exposed to the wider literature on critical thinking. They should in particular know how to distinguish the different types of statement -- assertion, evidence, conclusion, etc. -- that they will encounter in their reading.

Creativity

• As noted in Teaching Creativity the interdisciplinary research process can be a very creative process. And creativity can be taught. Special attention should be paid in some course(s) to conveying creative strategies and ideally having students apply these.

Mixed Methods Research

• • Senior students can usefully be exposed to the literature on mixed methods research. This literature overlaps with the literature on interdisciplinarity. It provides practical advice on how multiple methods can best be combined in a research project.

Community Engagement

• Interdisciplinary analysis facilitates both Synergies with Community Service Learning and Integrating Coursework and Campus Life Students can be encouraged to apply interdisciplinary analysis to challenges on campus or in the surrounding community.

Alice K. Johnson Butterfield and Yossi Korazim-Korosy, eds., Interdisciplinary Community Development Binghamton NY: Haworth Press, 2007, discusses both how and why to pursue community development in an explicitly interdisciplinary fashion. It argues that experts trained in many fields need to work collaboratively with community members. They note that these experts rarely receive any training or encouragement to support interdisciplinary interactions.