Interdisciplinary Studies Defined: Concepts, Definitions, and Metaphors

Chapter Objectives and Learning Outcomes

• Core Objectives:   - Define interdisciplinary studies and interdisciplinarity.   - Identify commonalities among widely recognized definitions to construct an integrated definition.   - Explain the differences between four key approaches: disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity.   - Examine the critical and instrumental approaches to interdisciplinarity.   - Critically analyze common metaphors used to describe interdisciplinary studies (e.g., bridge-building, bilingualism, boundary crossing, smoothies).
• Learning Outcomes:   - Define interdisciplinary and interdisciplinarity.   - List differences between the four primary disciplinary approaches.   - Identify differences between critical and instrumental forms and recognize examples.   - Explain the usefulness and limitations of descriptive metaphors.

The Importance of Definitions

• General Significance: How a word is defined is critical to understanding it. Definitions matter when individuals or groups use the same word but hold different understandings based on politics, values, or faith traditions.
• Examples of Varied Definitions:   - Justice: Meaning varies depending on political or religious backgrounds.   - Sustainability: Has different meanings for an economist compared to a biologist or historian.   - Fairness in Tax Policy:     - One group may define a "fair tax" as requiring "the wealthy" to pay more to fund social programs.     - Another group may define it as spreading the tax burden evenly so high earners retain more of their income.     - These conflicting notions are rooted in disciplinary worldviews regarding democracy, capitalism, and the role of government (Szostak, 2019).
• Reasons for Clarity in Interdisciplinary Studies:   1. To encourage quality interdisciplinary analysis by establishing what it is and how it is pursued.   2. To assist universities in deciding how much to encourage interdisciplinarity within an academy organized around traditional disciplines.

Defining Interdisciplinary Studies

• Interdisciplinary Studies vs. Interdisciplinary:   - Interdisciplinary studies refers to the field as a whole.   - Interdisciplinary denotes a particular approach distinct from disciplinary ones.
• Disciplinarity Comparison: A disciplinary approach to an environmental problem uses a narrow lens (e.g., biology), while an interdisciplinary approach draws on biology and other relevant disciplines.
• Crucial Components:   - Process: Interdisciplinary studies uses a specific method, the crux of which is the integration of disciplinary insights.   - Insights: Scholarly contributions (e.g., conclusions from papers or conference presentations) to the clear understanding of a complex problem, object, or text.   - Integration: The act of blending or synthesizing insights (e.g., using cognitive psychology, religious studies, and political science to understand terrorism).

Four Widely Recognized Definitions

1. Klein & Newell (1997): "Interdisciplinary studies is a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession… [It] draws on disciplinary perspectives and integrates their insights through the construction of a more comprehensive perspective."
2. Rhoten et al. (2006): "[Interdisciplinary studies] is a mode of curriculum design and instruction in which individual faculty or teams identify, evaluate, and integrate information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, or theories from two or more disciplines… to advance students' capacity to understand issues, address problems, and create new approaches and solutions."
3. National Academies (2005): "Interdisciplinary [studies] integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline."
4. Schneider (2003): "Integrative learning is a shorthand term for teaching a set of capacities—capacities we might also call the arts of connection, reflective judgment, and considered action… lead students to connect and integrate different parts of their overall education… connect learning with the world beyond the academy."

The Integrated Definition and Its Premise

• Integrated Definition: "Interdisciplinary studies is a cognitive process by which individuals or groups draw on disciplinary perspectives and integrate their insights to advance their understanding of a complex problem with the goal of applying the understanding to a real-world problem."
• Five Key Components of the Definition:   1. Cognitive process.   2. Drawing on disciplinary perspectives.   3. Integrating insights.   4. Advancing understanding of a complex problem.   5. Applying the understanding to a real-world problem.
• Underlying Premise: Specialized disciplinary research is the necessary precondition (prerequisite/preparation) and foundation (basis) for the interdisciplinary enterprise.
• Symbiosis: Disciplines provide the perspectives and insights; interdisciplinarity feeds information back to disciplines, helping them evolve in productive directions.

Distinguishing Disciplinary Approaches

• Disciplinarity: A branch of learning or body of knowledge (e.g., physics, psychology).   - Method: Focuses on the specific part of a problem the discipline is interested in.   - Reductionism: The "divide and conquer" strategy of reducing complex things to simpler parts.   - Example: The system of dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, which destroyed the salmon industry because planning was dominated by narrow disciplinary perspectives.
• Multidisciplinarity: Placing insights from two or more disciplines side by side without integration.   - Characteristics: Disciplines retain separate identities. An example is a course with guest lecturers from different fields who do not connect their ideas.   - Status: It is often easier and less expensive than interdisciplinarity.
• Interdisciplinarity: Subsumes multidisciplinarity but transcends it via integration. It creates a more comprehensive understanding by blending insights into a new whole.
• Transdisciplinarity: Integrates insights across disciplines and across nonacademic sources (stakeholders and practitioners).   - Stakeholders: Local businesses, government agencies, non-profits.   - Practitioners: Politicians, bureaucrats, public administrators.   - Characteristics: Focuses on case studies (e.g., environmental degradation in a specific locality) and democratic solutions to societal problems.

Metaphors for Understanding Interdisciplinarity

• The Bowl of Fruit (Multidisciplinarity): Different fruits (disciplines) are in close proximity but remain separate and distinct.
• The Smoothie (Interdisciplinarity): Fruits are finely blended so the distinctive flavor of each is no longer recognizable, creating a new, delicious experience (Nissani, 1995).
• Boundary Crossing:   - Comparison: Disciplines are like territories or countries with well-defined borders.   - Action: Interdisciplinarians are travelers who must learn the "language" of a country to access its expertise.   - Weaknesses: Implies disciplines are static/unchanging and overstates the language barrier.
• Bridge Building:   - Comparison: Connecting two points of land (disciplinary knowledge) divided by an obstacle (a complex problem).   - Pros: Highlights the applied orientation and the connection between fields.   - Cons: Bridges do not change the lands they connect; interdisciplinary integration often changes the disciplines. It also lacks the element of "critical reflection" found in interdisciplinary work.
• Bilingualism:   - Comparison: Learning the unique vocabulary of different disciplines.   - Pros: Recognizes that each discipline has its own terminology.   - Cons: Implies a need for "mastery" rather than mere "adequacy"; suggests translation is enough, whereas integration is much more complex.

Critical and Instrumental Interdisciplinarity

• Critical Interdisciplinarity:   - Goal: Questions where disciplines and insights come from. It often adopts an "attitude of suspicion" toward research serving elite interests.   - Focus: Evaluates ethnic and gender biases that may have guided disciplinary development.   - Fields: Women's studies, environmental studies, post-colonial studies.   - Philosophy: Rejects the belief that research can be objective or value-neutral.
• Instrumental Interdisciplinarity:   - Goal: Pragmatic problem-solving in response to societal demands.   - Focus: Borrowing from disciplines to create common ground and integrate insights to reach a holistic understanding.
• Case Study: Metropolitanization (Connor, 2012):   - Context: In 1910, only $28\,\%$ of Americans lived in cities/suburbs. By 2000, $80\,\%$ lived in metropolitan areas.   - Issue: Suburban population reached parity with urban population in 1960 ($31\,\%$ vs. $32\,\%$). By 2000, over half of Americans lived in suburbs.   - Analysis: Connor critiques "metropolitanization" on two levels: a practical public policy/social justice level and a scholarly level, arguing that experts have failed to develop integrative methods, which reinforces social stratification.

The Fable of the Elephant House

• Scenario: A committee (architect, interior designer, engineer, sociologist, psychologist) is formed to build a house for a highly educated elephant.
• Disciplinary Narrowness:   - Architect: Focused on budget and site.   - Engineer: Wanted precast concrete because his computer had a new stress-problem program; noted elephants lean against things.   - Psychologist/Sociologist: Argued over whether one elephant (psychological) or two (sociological) would live there; psychologist noted elephants like the color green.   - Interior Designer: Asked what elephants do at home.   - Sociologist: Claimed elephants mate standing up, requiring high ceilings.
• Outcome: The house was completed for $15\,\%$ over the estimate. It was a failure because the elephant ate outdoors, never leaned on walls, hated green, and did not stand up to mate. The high ceilings produced annoying echoes. The elephants moved out in less than 6 months.
• Lesson: Disciplinary experts often approach complex problems from narrow, unintegrated perspectives, leading to solutions that fail the end-user.

Questions & Discussion

• ID vs. Transdisciplinary Text: Analysis of Tress et al. (2005) suggests that bridging different disciplines AND knowledge communities (interest groups) is transdisciplinary.
• Application Examples:   - Instrumental approach: Likely better for developing green energy technologies.   - Critical approach: Useful for analyzing changes to reproductive rights or policy on undocumented immigrants to understand underlying power structures.
• Sampler Metaphor: For arts students, music sampling can represent interdisciplinary studies by taking existing "insights" (sounds/tracks) and integrating them into a new, comprehensive whole.

Key Terms

• Interdisciplinarity: A cognitive process to advance understanding through integration.
• Insights: Scholarly contributions to understanding.
• Close reading: Analysis of text beginning with individual words and sentence structure.
• Capacity: Cognitive or intellectual ability to think/analyze.
• Discipline: A branch of learning/body of knowledge.
• Disciplinarity: The system of knowledge specialties.
• Multidisciplinarity: Juxtaposing insights without integration.
• Metaphor: A figure of speech likening a word/story to an idea.
• Transdisciplinarity: Integration across disciplines and nonacademic stakeholders.
• Critical interdisciplinarity: An approach questioning the origins and biases of knowledge.
• Instrumental interdisciplinarity: A pragmatic, problem-solving approach.
• Critical reflection: Analyzing and reconsidering one's own cognitive processes.