2
involved in planning and delivering instruction for a particular class. They attend
each other’s classes and provide feedback and support for each other in their
teaching. They agonize together over grading and evaluation procedures. When
the course is evaluated they sink or swim together. The degree of collaboration is
high and the amount and kind of interdisciplinary integration is extensive. The
enrichment that comes from the synthesis of their multiple perspectives is what
gives the course its distinctive character.”
5
Interdisciplinary courses are differentiated from multidisciplinary courses which usually
have disciplinary components, often taught separately, but little or no integration between
them.
6
Interdisciplinary courses are not anti-disciplinary, and in fact disciplines are what
Newell calls the “raw materials of an interdisciplinary course.”
7
Disciplines have been
enormously successful interdisciplinary courses build on disciplines, but do not replace
them.
There are a number of reasons for both interdisciplinary course work and team
teaching. Much of the literature on interdisciplinarity points to problems associated with
too much specialization within disciplines. Steve Fuller argues that “too much
specialization means disciplines serve themselves and their disciplinary community more
than anything else.”
8
Szostak argues that disciplinary boundaries are arbitrary and reflect
“historical evolution rather than logical division of scientific labor.”
9
Davis notes that the
disciplinary structure creates problems such as creating isolation and to “absolutize
method” by ignoring that disciplines are constructed, have limits, and downplay broader
issues and holistic perspectives. Specialization “can lead to trivialization.”
10
Disciplines
define every aspect of academic life, influencing “faculty appointments; hiring,
promotion and tenure practices; teaching assignments; student recruitment and
enrollment; and even accounting practices.”
11
The problem is not that we have
disciplines; rather, disciplines cannot do everything, there are issues that are best
approached through interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, interdisciplinarity can promote
reflection on and improvement of ones’ own discipline. As Lattuca notes, “All ways of
seeing are, of course, selective. They emphasize a particular perspective over others and
in doing so limit our field of vision.”
12
Most authors agree that the strongest reason for teaching interdisciplinary courses
is pedagogical, and especially useful for undergraduate work. Indeed, interdisciplinary
courses have become mainstream in undergraduate institutions.
13
James Davis argues
that interdisciplinary courses “better serve students themselves in their quest for personal
growth and the development of clearer identity,” as well as helping students develop skill
at synthesizing information, dealing with problems in the modern world which are global
and connected, and having exposure to cultural diversity “both in its historical roots and
5
Ibid., p. 7.
6
Marilyn Stember, “Advancing the Social Sciences through the Interdisciplinary enterprise,” p. 341.
7
William H. Newell, “Interdisciplinary Course Development,” p. 54.
8
Steve Fuller, “The Position: Interdisciplinarity as Interpenetration,” p. 123.
9
Rick Stostak, A Schema for Unifying Human Science, p. 57.
10
Davis, Interdisciplinary Courses and Team Teaching, pp. 35-7.
11
Lattuca, Creating Interdisciplinarity, p. 1.
12
Ibid., p. 25.
13
Stember, “Advancing the Social Sciences through the Interdisciplinary enterprise,” p. 339.
Convention