How and Why to Teach Interdisciplinary Research Practice

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Szostak, R.

• This article addresses the interrelated questions of why it is important to teach students about the nature of interdisciplinarity and how this material might be best communicated to students. It is important to define for students what is meant by disciplines and interdisciplinarity. Having distinguished interdisciplinarity from the disciplinary approach, the advantages and disadvantages of each can be discussed. It is useful to discuss the history of both disciplines and interdisciplinarity. It is also useful to discuss the complex relationship between interdisciplinarity and other intellectual currents: postmodernism, unity of science, complexity analysis, feminism, and others. Critically, students should be guided as to how interdisciplinary research might be best performed. Some potential objections to teaching interdisciplinary research practice are addressed.

• Date created

  2007

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Disciplines
  • Interdisciplinarity
  • Teaching
  • Research process

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R36H4CT35

• License

  © 2007Szostak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.