Different, Difficult, and Local: A Review of Interdisciplinary Teaching Activities

The review has been guided by the following question: If a faculty member from any given discipline, with no prior experience in interdisciplinary teaching, is planning an interdisciplinary course, what can he or she learn from previous, internationally available empirical examples?

The article reports on the wide array of purposes, approaches and designs of interdisciplinary teaching and learning found in the review, but an important, more general, point is that interdisciplinary teaching is, consistently, considered different from normal practices, hence positioning interdisciplinary teaching and learning as the ‘other’. This othering could be detrimental to establishing sustainable interdisciplinary educational provision. Our analysis suggests a need for stressing interdisciplinary practices as local, rather than as generalizable propositions.

Reference:

Lindvig, K., & Ulriksen, L. (2019). Different, Difficult, and Local: A Review of Interdisciplinary Teaching Activities. The Review of Higher Education 43(2), 697-725. doi:10.1353/rhe.2019.0115.

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