Graduate Curriculum and Education

Further information is provided under the following headings:

Transmission of Skills

Developing Independent Researchers

Benefits of Research Collaboration

Encouraging an Interdisciplinary Orientation

Questions for Students

A Note on Empirics

Graduate education presents its own particular challenges. One important possibility is that an interdisciplinary undergraduate education may facilitate positive results from an interdisciplinary graduate education. [Kessel, F.S., Rosenfield, P. L., & Anderson, N. B. (Eds.). Interdisciplinary research: Case studies from health and social science (2nd ed.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.]

Maura Borrego, Lynita K. Newswander Definitions of Interdisciplinary Research: Toward Graduate-Level Interdisciplinary Learning Outcomes The Review of Higher Education

Volume 34, Number 1, Fall 2010 found that the learning outcomes of graduate level interdisciplinary programs as expressed in grant proposals written by science and engineering faculty were remarkably similar to the learning outcomes stressed by scholars of interdisciplinarity located in the humanities and social sciences:

· disciplinary grounding

· integration

· teamwork

· communication, and

· critical awareness.

There is lots of practical advice regarding graduate education in both chapter 5 “Permit to Travel” of Catherine Lyall, Ann Bruce, Joyce Tait, and Laura Meagher, Interdisciplinary Research Journeys (Bloomsbury Academic 2011; http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/Interdisciplinary-Research-Journeys/book-ba-9781849661782.xml ) and Gunilla Oberg’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies: A Primer (Wiley-Blackwell 2011). The article by Gardner in Issues in Integrative Studies 2011 provides some practical advice on graduate individualized programs. See also A Short Guide to Supervising Interdisciplinary PhDs by Dr Catherine Lyall, Dr Laura Meagher and Professor Joyce Tait.

The Kessel et al. book cited above, as well as

Kirst, Maritt, Nicole Schaefer-McDaniel, Stephen Hwang, and Patricia O'Campo, eds. Converging Disciplines: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Urban Health Problems. Springer, 2011.

discuss the challenges of training students to participate in transdisciplinary research endeavours.

Derek Briton, From Integrated to Interstitial Studies, in Raphael Foshay, ed., Valences of interdisciplinarity: Theory, Practice, Pedagogy (Athabasca University Press, 2011), explores some of the challenges in developing a curriculum for the MAIS at Athabasca University.

Tanya Augsburg, Becoming Transdisciplinary: The Emergence of the Transdisciplinary Individual, World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 70:3-4, 233-247, 2014, discusses how individuals come to develop an interdisciplinary attitude.

The training module on interdisciplinary teaching provided by Julie Thompson Klein here emphasizes graduate education.