Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research

How to Enhance Interdisciplinary Competence—Interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning versus Interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning

“…Interdisciplinary teamwork has a large potential for conflicts, and most collaborations fail in practice (Kezar, 2005). Interdisciplinary teams experience difficulties in communication, disagreements on common goals, inappropriate expectations, and underestimation of the additional time and effort in interdisciplinary, collaborative work (Epstein, 2005;Repko, 2008). This explanation is supported by the high dropout rate of iPjBL students who quit their participation in the course.…”

“…If the experience of new information cannot be assimilated into an existing schema, there is a need for accommodation (Piaget, 1977). Due to distinct discipline-based values, knowledge traditions, and used schemas in each scientific community (Epstein, 2005;Frost & Jean, 2003;Repko, 2008), students are confronted with different views on the world in an interdisciplinary learning environment. Students can reconstruct knowledge by reproducing knowledge from foreign disciplines, deconstruct existing knowledge by identifying one's discipline limitations, and construct knowledge by innovatively integrating ideas across disciplines (Braßler, 2016).…”

“…Students can reconstruct knowledge by reproducing knowledge from foreign disciplines, deconstruct existing knowledge by identifying one's discipline limitations, and construct knowledge by innovatively integrating ideas across disciplines (Braßler, 2016). Each disciplinary community has its own culture (Pecukonis et al, 2008) and unique set of terms within their professional language (Brewer, 1999;Jeffrey, 2003;Repko, 2008). Following Vygotsky (1978), language and culture play essential parts both in human intellectual development and in how humans perceive the world.…”

Teaching Interdisciplinarity

“…Produced and archived through the hard work of such scholars as Julie Thompson Klein (1996Klein ( , 1999Klein ( , 2004Klein ( , 2005, William Newell (1994, Carolyn Haynes (2002), Lisa Lattuca (2001), and Allen Repko (2008), as well as organizations such as the Association for Integrative Studies and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU), much of this scholarship focuses its attention on how intellectual and curricular divisions among existing disciplinary formations can be overcome. Take as an example of this scholarship Haynes's edited collection Innovations in Interdisciplinary Teaching (2002).…”

Interdisciplinary Approach: A Lever to Business Innovation

“…Fortunately, there is a wealth of informative literature in the field of interdisciplinary studies in the humanities and social sciences (Bromme, 2000;Klein, 2005;Lattuca, 2001;Mansilla & Duraisingh, 2007;Newell, 2009a;Repko, 2009;Repko et al, 2011), the result of researchers' efforts to record and study information on such interdisciplinary academic activities such as courses, conferences, and scholarly publications over the course of many years.…”