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Overcoming Barriers to Interdisciplinarity

Overcoming Barriers to Interdisciplinarity. Professor Myra Strober Stanford University myras@stanford.edu. Why W ork Across D isciplines?. Complex problems don ’ t respect disciplinary boundaries Disciplinary diversity promotes creativity (new ways of thinking) and innovation

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Overcoming Barriers to Interdisciplinarity

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  1. Overcoming Barriers to Interdisciplinarity Professor Myra Strober Stanford University myras@stanford.edu

  2. Why Work Across Disciplines? • Complex problems don’t respect disciplinary boundaries • Disciplinary diversity promotes creativity (new ways of thinking) and innovation • It is important to think about interdisciplinarity in both research and teaching

  3. Definition of interdisciplinarity • What is a discipline? • What is interdisciplinarity?

  4. Interdisciplinarity and its cousins • Multidisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity • Interdisciplinarity requires integration • Transdisciplinarity • Food metaphors

  5. Working Across Disciplines is Difficult • Rewards tend to come from disciplines • But even when faculty want to work across disciplines, disciplinary frames of references often get in the way

  6. Three Purposes of Today’s Talk • Explain the barriers faculty face when they try to communicate across disciplines • Discuss how to overcome these barriers • Discuss public policy and interdisciplinarity

  7. My study • Helps us to understand the barriers to faculty interdisciplinary work and the ways to overcome those barriers.

  8. My Study • Six faculty seminars at three research universities (Washington, Adams, and Jefferson • 40 faculty interviewees from seminars • Each seminar had 9-18 members from 6-10 disciplines. Met weekly for a year to discuss readings done in advance.

  9. Purpose of seminars was to get faculty to talk with one another about their disciplines’ major puzzles, theories and findings • Hope was that seminars would lead to team-teaching and possibly joint research projects

  10. Despite initial excitement about the seminars, faculty had considerable difficulty talking to one another • The Jefferson consilience seminar was much more successful than the others. • Not true that it is easier to talk within social sciences than across broad fields

  11. Talking across disciplines is talking across cultures • In the course of doctoral training and early career, faculty initiate their “young” into a disciplinary culture. • Disciplinary cultures include beliefs, morals, rules of conduct, and language systems.

  12. Disciplinary Cultures Lead to Disciplinary Habits of Mind • Physical habits have their mental counterpart in habits of mind • Howard Margolis: “Habits of mind…[are] entrenched responses that ordinarily occur without conscious attention, and that even if noticed are hard to change.”

  13. Differences in Cultures and Habits of Mind • Historians and economists • Open and closed paradigms • English faculty and drama faculty • The doubting game vs the believing game • Quantitative and qualitative social scientists

  14. Language is Particularly Important • Vocabulary is only a small part of the problem. • What are the norms of interacting? • Is interrupting okay? • How are turns for speaking arranged? • What is said outright and what is said subtly?

  15. What constitutes a good argument? • What evidence is required to reject or confirm a hypothesis? What if you don’t have a hypothesis?

  16. How to Have More Effective Interdisciplinary Conversations • The first task of cross-disciplinary communication is for each of us to become ethnographers of our own discipline—to NOTICE our disciplinary cultures and habits of mind.

  17. Faculty Leadership • Faculty leaders need to recognize that of necessity they come from a culture. They are not “neutral.”

  18. Pay Attention to Culture! • In the six seminars I studied, there were no discussions about the ground rules of the sociolinguistic system. The leader chose a system simply because he was familiar with it. • Those who came from different cultures had difficulty adapting to the seminar style.

  19. Help Faculty to Broaden Their Comfort Zones • To help faculty work across disciplines requires helping them to accept other cultures and ways of perceiving, helping them to broaden their comfort zones.

  20. Help Faculty to Play the Believing Game • Help faculty to learn to listen sympathetically—to “try on” ideas

  21. Type I and Type II Errors • Explain to faculty what they miss by judging ideas too quickly

  22. Leaders Cannot be Laissez-Faire • Careful selection of faculty participants • Careful structuring of conversations

  23. Productive Conversations Walk a Fine Line • Leaders need to create productive cognitive conflict, create in-depth “uncomfortable” conversations, without allowing the conversations to degenerate into brawls.

  24. Affective Conflict is Inevitable • Leaders need to understand that beneath conversations about content there are efforts to establish status and power. Successful leaders know how to defuse these efforts.

  25. Affective Conflict Needs to be Managed • Leaders need to pay attention to interpersonal dynamics, neutralize anger, and smooth hurt feelings. A successful leader is a bit like a family therapist.

  26. Successful Leaders Engage in Intellectual “Play” • Successful cross-disciplinary collaborations are fun. Faculty enjoy their own disciplines. If they are to engage with people from other disciplines, they need to have at least as much fun as they do interacting with colleagues from their own discipline.

  27. Keep the Importance of the Goal in Mind • Working toward successful cross-disciplinary conversations is worth the trouble and the additional resources because of the high potential for creativity and innovation.

  28. Public policies – government and foundations • Set aside funding specifically for interdisciplinary work • Set aside funding to study what promotes interdisciplinary work

  29. Public policies - Universities • What can universities do to foster interdisciplinarity? • Three part strategy

  30. Part 1- Lower the risk of doing interdisciplinary work • Change faculty reward structures • Salary • Prestige • Prizes • Promotion criteria

  31. How will departments be affected by a change in faculty reward structures?

  32. Part 2 – Make it easier to publish interdisciplinary work • Sponsor new high-quality interdisciplinary journals

  33. Part 3 – Teach interdisciplinary skills • Assist undergraduates to integrate their coursework • Requires in-depth faculty conversations across disciplines • Requires re-education of faculty • Requires additional resources

  34. Should graduate study include other disciplines?

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