Positioning interdisciplinary graduate research: (or, how to avoid painful misunderstandings with your supervisors and examiners).
Golding, Clinton
Research is typically like the parable of the blind men and the
elephant (or, to be fair, the learned academics of specialised and
discerning vision, and the elephant). Some researchers concentrate on
the trunk, some on the tusks, others study the ears, the body, the legs
or the tail. But what if you want to look at the big picture and
research the whole elephant? Or what if you want to use the methods and
insights of ear research to illuminate the tail, or investigate how the
tusk and body interact? What if your supervisors are specialists of the
legs, but you want to use the methods of tail research when studying the
legs? And what if your examiners are specialists of the tusks when you
want to synthesise tusk and trunk research? How do you communicate your
approach so that your supervisors and examiners do not judge your work
to be abnormal and deficient according to the normal research practice
of their specialisms?
This paper presents theoretically informed and autobiographically
illustrated advice for graduate researchers working across established
research approaches. The aim is to enable them to position and
articulate their research in a clear and compelling manner, and thus
avoid painful misunderstandings with their supervisors and examiners.
The paper is also useful for any graduate researchers working in an
established discipline who find themselves unclear about their research
approach, or 'on a different page' to their supervisors.
There is a wealth of recent literature on interdisciplinary
education, (2) thinking (3) and research. (4) There is also a great deal
of literature on postgraduate research, (5) and even on
multidisciplinary postgraduate supervision. (6) However, little
theoretical attention has been given to interdisciplinary postgraduate
research. This paper aims to fill this gap.
As befits a paper on interdisciplinarity in an interdisciplinary
journal, I take an interdisciplinary approach. I synthesise complex
philosophical analysis with the educational simplicity needed to
understand and employ this complexity, in order to produce a practical
and useful product--in this case, tools to support interdisciplinary
graduate research. (7)
I discuss the nature of interdisciplinary research and the
challenge this poses for graduate researchers, and then argue that the
best and perhaps only way to meet this challenge is for graduate
researchers to clearly articulate their interdisciplinary position.
In particular, I argue that graduate researchers need to develop a
meta-disciplinary awareness so they can understand and explain how their
interdisciplinary research conforms to and diverges from established
disciplinary approaches. I then present four tools that graduate
researchers can use, both on their own and in discussion with their
supervisors, to help them develop the needed meta-disciplinary
understanding and produce an interdisciplinary positioning statement
that would become a key part of their thesis. I illustrate how I used
these tools to articulate the interdisciplinary approach I took in my
own graduate research, and conclude with an illustration of the
interdisciplinary statement from my doctoral dissertation.
THE CHANGING NATURE OF RESEARCH
Research typically occurs within an established discipline,
subdiscipline, school of thought, specialism, field or area of study.
But interdisciplinary research takes a different approach, and
integrates the established disciplines, sub-disciplines and specialisms
in unorthodox ways in order to produce something that was not possible
from within the established perspectives. As Boix Mansilla and Duraising
put it, interdisciplinary research integrates:
knowledge and modes of thinking in two or more disciplines or
established areas of expertise to produce a cognitive advancement--
such as explaining a phenomenon, solving a problem, or creating
a product--in ways that would have been impossible or unlikely
through single disciplinary means. (8)
In other words, by taking an interdisciplinary approach to
research, we are able to see a bigger picture than is possible from the
viewpoint of any one discipline.
I will not try to pin down the disciplinary/interdisciplinary
divide, nor define what counts as a 'discipline', nor indeed
to examine the differences between disciplines, sub-disciplines, fields,
specialisms and areas of study. (9) For example, I will not address the
question of whether education counts as a discipline, an
interdisciplinary integration of sociology, psychology, history and
other quantitative and qualitative research methods, or an area of
study. Instead, I focus on the difference between established approaches
to research and approaches that integrate the established approaches in
novel ways. The implication is that although some well-established areas
of research might be called interdisciplinary (such as engineering, art
history or biochemistry), my interest lies in the unorthodox kinds. So,
when I refer to a 'disciplinary approach', I mean any
established approach to research with fairly settled conversations,
traditions, practices and research communities, and by
'interdisciplinary approach' I mean any approach that draws
on, crosses and integrates at least two established approaches in ways
that go beyond the settled practices.
Though interdisciplinary research may seem to be a deviant
exception, as Lyon and Brew show, it is now a common path for the modern
academic. (10) Additionally, interdisciplinary research is identified as
an essential means of dealing with a variety of important and complex
problems, phenomena and concepts that resist understanding or resolution
when approached from single disciplines, including climate change, world
poverty, public health, identity and human rights. (11) The University
of Melbourne's Growing Esteem 2010 gives a clear statement of the
growing importance of interdisciplinary research:
Traditionally research has been conducted by individual academics
or teams of academics within the same discipline. Now, the nature
of research is changing. Research is being driven more and more
by pure and applied questions that require cross-disciplinary
approaches. The University will need a strong and sustained focus on
cross-disciplinary academic practice to meet these challenges. (12)
Due to the importance of interdisciplinary research there has been
a call for the development of interdisciplinary capacity, including an
emphasis on graduate interdisciplinary research. (13)
THE CHALLENGE OF INTERDISCIPLINARY GRADUATE RESEARCH
Despite a growing trend towards interdisciplinary research,
interdisciplinary graduate research is especially problematic, as it
breaks the normal 'rules' and expectations of graduate
research. Graduate theses are expected to contribute to an existing
conversation and research community in a particular field with
particular boundaries and allegiances. (14) This is usually fairly
straightforward for unidisciplinary approaches, but not for
interdisciplinary approaches that deliberately cross established
boundaries. Because interdisciplinary research draws on and integrates
at least two established traditions of research, it tends to be
unprecedented and unorthodox. Like anything unorthodox, it does not fit
the established standards and expectations and is likely to be
misunderstood, and this can prove disastrous for the graduate
researcher.
Supervisors and examiners expect graduate research to conform to an
established field and research community--typically their own. Based on
their disciplinary background, they will have their own beliefs about
the qualities of good research, and these will inform their judgements
as to whether research is convincing, critical, appropriate and deep, or
whether it is superficial, inappropriate and unconvincing. (15) But
interdisciplinary research will conform to only some of these
expectations, and may contradict others. Supervisors and examiners may
not be aware that there are other ways of conducting graduate research,
or they may not value other ways, and this may lead them to judge
interdisciplinary research as poor research--as one interdisciplinary
researcher says: 'they think I have these abnormalities!' The
resulting conflicting expectations and assumptions create frustration
for all concerned, and if not addressed lead to poor examination
results.
I can illustrate this frustration from my own experience. In the
early years of my doctorate in philosophy and education, I often felt
that I could not make my supervisors understand what I was trying to do.
It seemed that no matter what I said, I would repeatedly face what I saw
as the same sort of irrelevant critique. I felt we were speaking
different languages. I can only assume that my frustrations were
mirrored in my supervisors, who must have thought me dim-witted or
obstinate and thus unable or unwilling do what was required for a
successful thesis. This aggravation eased, however, as soon as I began
to understand their assumptions and expectations, which were grounded in
their disciplines of philosophy, education and philosophy of education.
This understanding enabled me to articulate to what extent I was
adopting the standard practice of each of these disciplines and to what
extent I was doing something different. When this clash of assumptions
was cleared up, though there were still differences of opinion, the
communication no longer had that maddening feeling of neither side
understanding what the other was saying. Our relationship was thus much
more productive. (16)
Some conflict between disciplinary perspectives is inevitable in
interdisciplinary research because assumptions need to be challenged and
'quality research' redefined. Yet this can and should be
turned into a welcome puzzle to solve, not a disorienting quagmire that
drags you down.
ARTICULATING AN INTERDISCIPLINARY STANDPOINT
To use Wordsworth, 'the more you take an original
interdisciplinary approach, the more you must create the taste by which
this approach is to be relished.' (17) So, interdisciplinary
graduate researchers must explicitly articulate, explain, justify and
defend their interdisciplinary approach so that their supervisors and
examiners understand and develop a taste for their type of
interdisciplinary research. (18) To do this, they must engage in what
Petersen calls 'category boundary work', (19) in which they:
* Clarify their own understanding of their interdisciplinary
approach;
* Develop a shared understanding of this approach with supervisors;
* Justify why they have taken this approach instead of a more
orthodox unidisciplinary approach;
* Articulate, explain and communicate their interdisciplinary
approach to examiners (and in other contexts where the audience is
likely to misunderstand an interdisciplinary approach unless it is
carefully positioned, such as ethics applications, candidature
documents, conference papers and publications);
* Identify potential false assumptions or misunderstandings, and
address these before they arise; and
* Explain and justify things that are unfamiliar to some of their
audience, distinguish things that seem similar to the untrained eye, and
differentiate their research from standard approaches.
I argue that graduate researchers should take responsibility for
positioning their research in the confluence of disciplines. Only they
can do this, because there are no 'off the shelf' approaches
that can be taken to unorthodox, potentially unique interdisciplinary
research. (20) In effect, to be an interdisciplinary graduate researcher
is to be a research leader or innovator who breaks new ground rather
than following others' paths.
Mitchell and Willetts argue that this kind of critical reflection
is the most important criterion for high calibre interdisciplinary
graduate research. (21) Such research, because it challenges the norm
and is often different in subtle ways to what is expected, needs a more
explicit and justified methodology than that required from
unidisciplinary research. Interdisciplinary graduate researchers must
ensure that their position is clear, so that their supervisors and
eventually their examiners understand where their assumptions do and do
not apply, and how the research adheres to and differs from what they
might expect given their own disciplinary background.
I offer four tools that can be used by interdisciplinary
researchers to clarify their interdisciplinary position, to develop a
shared understanding with their supervisors and to develop an explicit
interdisciplinary statement to include in the preface or method of their
theses. First I present two tools for developing a meta-disciplinary
understanding, then one for choosing a type of interdisciplinary
approach, and finally a tool for summarising the overall approach.
Although these tools are offered to aid interdisciplinary research, they
can also be illuminating for research in established fields, as they
enable a clear and explicit statement of any research approach.
META-DISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING
To articulate and justify an interdisciplinary research approach,
graduate researchers need to articulate the commonalities and
differences between their approach and the standard disciplinary
approaches. This requires a general meta-disciplinary understanding of
how disciplines work, as well as a more specific understanding of the
particular disciplines that they employ. They must understand 'the
strengths and limitations of each discipline as well as the
possibilities of interaction between them.' (22)
Developing a meta-disciplinary understanding can be difficult as
our expertise in a discipline is often tacit. We tend to learn our
disciplines through being immersed in their practice, for example by
doing history and physics rather than by analysing the nature of these
disciplines. This means that, much like driving a car, we can have
expertise without being able to explain what we do. To articulate their
interdisciplinary position, graduate researchers have to be able to make
explicit the tacit and assumed, so that they can demonstrate the ways in
which their approach is like and unlike the standard disciplinary
approaches.
Various categories have been proposed as tools for analysing,
comparing and contrasting different disciplines. (23) I draw on these
classification systems to offer two tools that graduate researchers can
use to discern the similarities and differences between different
disciplinary approaches and to select and then explain which elements of
the different disciplines they employ and which they reject. These tools
also enable graduate researchers to identify and address possible
sources of misunderstanding that might arise when their approach
diverges from that of a standard discipline. The tools are not intended
to isolate the essence of each discipline, but are more like magnifying
glasses that make the finer details easier to see. (24)
I outline the two tools--the 'matrix of disciplines' and
the 'elements of the disciplines'--and illustrate their use in
relation to my own interdisciplinary research involving philosophy and
education.
MATRIX OF DISCIPLINES
One way of analysing disciplines is to locate them on the scales of
hard-soft and pure-applied research (see Tool 1 with the location of
some disciplines tentatively indicated). (25)
The pure-applied scale indicates what the research is for: pure
research is done for its own sake, while applied research is done for
other purposes. Applied to my case: philosophy tends to be pure
research, whereas education tends to be applied. Philosophers tend to
pursue curiosity-driven research which has little scope for direct
application, whereas educational researchers aim to improve learning,
teaching, curriculum and policy.
The hard-soft scale indicates the precision and certainty of the
results. Hard research tends to involve definitive conclusions with a
high degree of agreement, often relying heavily on empirical research or
proof to determine conclusions. Soft research, on the other hand,
involves more interpretation and less consensus, because the issues
involved require interpretation and judgement, and the conclusions are
underdetermined by the data. Both philosophy and education are difficult
to categorise on this scale. Philosophy often attempts to employ logical
proof, which seems to indicate that it is a branch of hard research
(like mathematics), but it is also characterised by widespread
disagreement and differing interpretations, which seems to indicate that
it is a branch of soft research (like history). Education tends to focus
on gathering hard empirical data, which suggests that it is a branch of
hard research, but the empirical methods range from fairly soft
interpretative methodologies to harder, quantitative methodologies.
Placing the disciplines I employ on the matrix enables me to better
understand my own interdisciplinary practice and to anticipate possible
misunderstandings of my approach. I can see that my supervisors and
examiners with a philosophical bent may expect my research to be pure,
whereas I am pursuing applied research in order to solve problems in
educational practice. If I do not make this clear, they will likely
think that my constant attention to the details of classroom practice
indicates that I do not understand the pure, abstract theories normally
employed by philosophers. I can also see that my examiners could expect
my research to be anywhere on the scale from hard to soft research. As
such I need to clarify to what extent I employ hard or soft methods. My
educationally minded supervisors and examiners will understand that I am
doing applied research, but will likely expect me to gather empirical
data as the basis of my conclusions. I will need to make it clear that I
am not employing empirical research methods, but rather that I employ
philosophical methods of analysis.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
THE ELEMENTS OF THE DISCIPLINES
A finer analysis of the different disciplines can also be obtained
by isolating the elements that make up every discipline and then
comparing the disciplines according to these elements (or categories).
This meta-disciplinary analysis makes it easier to articulate an
interdisciplinary approach by identifying in each discipline those
elements that are to be incorporated in the research and those that are
not. I list these elements in the Tool 2 and illustrate how I used these
categories to understand the nature of the two main disciplines employed
in my own interdisciplinary research. I focus on the aspects of the
disciplines that were relevant to my research, rather than the whole
discipline. This is necessarily only a summary, though I provide greater
detail in my interdisciplinary statement at the end of this paper.
By comparing the elements of the disciplines employed,
interdisciplinary researchers can select which to employ, which to
integrate and which to reject. They can also consider which aspects of
their interdisciplinary approach may be misunderstood or judged
deficient from a unidisciplinary perspective, and thus determine what
needs further clarification, explanation or justification.
This can be briefly illustrated through my own experience: I chose
to tackle philosophical problems that arise in the practice of learning
and teaching, which meant that the content I was investigating was both
philosophical and educational. I knew that both philosophers and
educators would be likely to misunderstand my approach, and that I would
need to carefully explain the ways in which my research was both
philosophical and educational. For example the philosophers would expect
me to produce complex, abstract positions, when my intention was to
produce simpler advice and guidance that would be helpful to students
and teachers. The educational researchers, on the other hand, would
expect me to gather empirical data with which to justify my claims, when
my intention was to take a philosophical approach to justification based
on argumentation for and against different conceptualisations. My
interdisciplinary statement (below) shows how I articulated my synthesis
so that both philosophers and educators could understand to what extent
I was taking an educational approach, to what extent I was taking a
philosophical approach and to what extent I was integrating the two.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY
A third tool for articulating an interdisciplinary position allows
interdisciplinary researchers to judge what kind of interdisciplinarity
they will employ and how they will integrate or link the different
disciplines they draw from. Tool 3 roughly describes the range of
interdisciplinary interactions according to the extent to which
disciplines remain distinct or are modified. The earlier types keep the
disciplines distinct, while the later ones increasingly integrate them,
and in the case of transdisciplinary research change them as a result of
this interaction. (26)
Tool 3: Types of interdisciplinarity
1. Unidisciplinary: Only one discipline is employed. The insights
and methods of other disciplines are effectively ignored. For example, a
mathematical proof.
2. Multi-disciplinary: Multiple disciplines are employed to provide
multiple ways of approaching a common problem or issue, but they are
kept separate and the perspectives are not integrated. For example,
presenting first a medical and then an artistic perspective on the body.
3. Cross-disciplinary: One discipline is used to 'peer'
into another discipline (and sometimes to critique the other discipline)
without using the methods of this discipline. For example, philosophy of
art or history of medicine.
4. Disciplinary borrowing: The overall research is situated fully
in one discipline, but advice, conclusions or insights are borrowed from
other disciplines. For example, an engineer might employ mathematical
techniques developed by research mathematicians, or a sociologist might
borrow insights from psychology or art history.
5. Interdisciplinary (cooperative): Different disciplines are
employed to complete different sub-tasks in an overall interdisciplinary
research project. For example, sociology might be employed for the
conceptual work, and then historical analysis employed to gather data
from primary sources; or medicine might be employed to isolate a problem
with current surgical practices, and then engineering might be employed
to find a technological solution (in a large research project,
disciplinary specialists would be responsible for the different
disciplinary sub-tasks).
6. Interdisciplinary (integrative): Multiple disciplines are
employed and integrated to complete the same research task. For example,
a combined philosophical and psychological approach might be devised to
study the conceptions of children; or insights from ecology,
engineering, architecture and sociology might be synthesised to devise
the best location and design for a new bridge; or the findings of
various sciences might be combined to enable better understanding of
climate change.
7. Transdisciplinary: In integrating different disciplines the
established disciplines are modified and new
'interdisciplines' are created with hybrid or new methods and
epistemologies.
SUMMARISING YOUR INTERDISCIPLINARY POSITION
The first three tools enable interdisciplinary researchers to
articulate and justify their interdisciplinary position. The
meta-disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding that is developed
can be summarised using a fourth tool for articulating interdisciplinary
research. This summary can then be turned into an interdisciplinary
positioning statement to be included in the final thesis. I present the
tool, and then an illustration of the interdisciplinary statement from
the preface of my doctoral dissertation.
Tool 4: Summarising an interdisciplinary position
Main topic: What topic, issue or content are you approaching in an
interdisciplinary way?
Reason for interdisciplinary approach: Why is an interdisciplinary
approach valuable or necessary for this topic?
Which disciplines will be employed? What does each discipline offer
that is important to your approach? Which elements of each discipline
will be employed? Which elements will not be employed?
Type of interdisciplinarity: What sort of interdisciplinarity will
you employ? How will the different elements of the disciplines be
integrated? (see possible types of interdisciplinarity in Tool 3 above)
Interdisciplinary outcome: (27) What do you aim for in employing
this interdisciplinary approach? What do you expect to produce? For
example, a deeper understanding, balanced judgement, a solution or a
tangible product.
Interdisciplinary statement: How and why is what you do similar to
and how is it different from the established disciplines you employ?
EXAMPLE OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY STATEMENT
The following is an illustration of a positioning statement for
interdisciplinary graduate research taken from my own doctoral
dissertation and based on my own meta- and inter-disciplinary
understanding. It locates the research in an interdisciplinary space,
describes which elements of the disciplines will be employed and how
they will be employed, and identifies and clarifies potential
misinterpretations.
This thesis is a work of philosophy and of education.
I would have liked to leave it at that, but this
Identify the disciplines involved
sentence is deeply ambiguous, and is likely to lead to
misunderstandings without further discussion of the rich interactions
between the two disciplines. This preface is an attempt to disambiguate
my simple opening statement and describe the ways that I intertwine
philosophy and education in my interdisciplinary, boundary-blurring
practice.
Meet the challenge by articulating an interdisciplinary statement
Locating myself in the confluence of philosophy and education poses
a profound challenge for me, not just about what field I am contributing
to, but also about my academic identity. Is this thesis a work of
philosophy of education, teaching philosophy, or something else? Am I
writing as a philosopher, an educator, a philosophy educator, a
philosopher of education or something else altogether? Am I writing for
philosophers, for educators, for philosophers of education, for
philosophy educators or for some combination these? While I have some
affinity with some of these categories, none of them seem to fit
comfortably with my work.
Outline possible interpretations of the interdisciplinary approach
There are multiple ways in which the disciplines of philosophy and
education could be combined, some of which are incompatible with my own
standpoint. I do not take a multidisciplinary approach, in which I would
first present a philosophical perspective and then an independent
educational perspective on the same issue. Rather, I integrate the
perspectives. I also do not take a cross-disciplinary approach, in which
I would, as Davies and Devlin put it, 'peer into' education
from a philosophy, using the tools of philosophy to analyse education,
but without doing any education. (28) Nor do I do the converse, and
'peer into' philosophy from education, using the tools of
educational, curriculum or pedagogical research to analyse philosophy
teaching without engaging in philosophical practice. Instead, I
integrate the approach of an educator, an educational researcher and a
philosopher into an interdisciplinary perspective, because this offers
greater insight and enhancement of practice than philosophy or education
alone could offer.
Rule out likely misinterpretations
Specify the type of interdisciplinarity employed
Although 'philosophy of education' is a plausible way to
describe the interdisciplinary relationship between philosophy and
education in this thesis, this is still a highly ambiguous description
that needs clarification and elaboration.
It is sometimes claimed that philosophy of education is a branch of
philosophy, (29) and sometimes that it is a branch of educational
research. (30) Yet the philosophy of education in this thesis is as much
philosophical as it is educational research. It is philosophical
research because I use the methods of philosophy and deal with
philosophical issues, and it is educational research because I apply
these methods and resolve these issues to give greater insight into
education and to enhance educational practice.
Describe which elements of the disciplines are employed
Philosophy of education could also be either detached or practical.
A model of detached philosophy that I reject for the purposes of this
thesis is the cross-disciplinary approach that uses philosophy to
analyse and understand another without affecting it. For example,
philosophy of art and philosophy of religion aim to observe but not to
influence artistic and religious practices. On this approach, philosophy
of education might be '... primarily a concerted attempt to
elucidate and critically examine the conceptual relations, logical
structures and justificatory patterns within current educational
ideals.' (31) I do not take this 'spectator' or
'commentator' approach.
Reject some interdisciplinary approaches
Instead, this thesis falls within the practical philosophy
tradition that stems from Dewey. (32) It shares similarities with
branches of philosophy such as medical ethics, in which the aim is to
have an impact on the practice being investigated. While the philosophy
of education in this thesis is certainly concerned with illuminating
education, it is equally concerned with influencing, enhancing and
constituting current and future educational practices. Thus it might be
termed 'practical philosophy of education'. But this should
not be mistaken for applied philosophy that merely applies pre-existing
philosophical insights or theories to educational issues. The aim of
this thesis is to do both practical philosophical and educational
research.
Employ a particular kind of interdisciplinarity
Reject a seemingly similar kind of interdisciplinarity
Practical philosophy of education, as I see it, includes a
philosophical approach to pedagogy, learning and teaching, in which
philosophy constitutes the method of education. This relationship
between philosophy and education is described well by Lipman's term
'Educational Philosophy', meaning 'philosophy functioning
educationally'. (33) So in this thesis, philosophy functions as a
core educational method. By employing the intellectual tools and
dispositions of philosophical thinking, conceptual understanding,
critical analysis, dialogue and inquiry as part of the teaching and
learning process, educational philosophy is the means to generate
reflective learning and deep understanding, which enables students to
make sense of themselves and of the world.
Transdisciplinary approach: creating new disciplines
In summary, this thesis is intended to contribute to the domains of
practical philosophy of education, philosophy with education, and
educational philosophy. It is an interdisciplinary study (rather than
cross-disciplinary or multidisciplinary) that integrates philosophical
and educational research. Rather than providing a detached analysis, it
uses philosophical methods to investigate and resolve philosophical
issues that arise in educational practice, in order to make sense of
learning and teaching and to understand and enhance educational
practice.
CONCLUSION
Because interdisciplinary research deliberately crosses the
boundaries of established traditions of research, it poses special
challenges for graduate researchers. Such unconventional approaches are
prone to be misunderstood by supervisors and examiners, with potentially
distressing and detrimental results. Thus, the challenge is how to
articulate interdisciplinary graduate research in such a way that
ensures that supervisors and examiners do not say 'I just
can't see a PhD in this work', but rather say 'I can see
three!' (34) Graduate researchers can begin to overcome this
challenge if they use the tools described in this paper, develop a meta-
and inter-disciplinary understanding, prudently anticipate possible
misunderstandings of their approach, and then carefully articulate their
interdisciplinary position.
ENDNOTES
(1) This paper draws from and is indebted to four main sources:
first, the experiences of interdisciplinary teaching and research of
academics at the University of Melbourne, shared with me in 2009 while I
was providing support for interdisciplinary subjects and staff at the
Centre for the Study of Higher Education; second, a research project
that I completed in 2009--'A travel guide to the disciplines for
interdisciplinary teaching and learning'--which involved members of
different disciplines reflecting on the nature of their disciplines;
third, the recently completed guide to interdisciplinary learning and
teaching: Clinton Golding, Integrating the Disciplines: Successful
Interdisciplinary Subjects, CSHE, Melbourne, 2009; and finally, my PhD,
submitted in 2010: 'I've Got a Better Idea!'
Philosophical Progress and Philosophy for Children.
(2) Zachary Stein, Michael Connell and Howard Gardner,
'Exercising quality control in interdisciplinary education: Toward
an epistemologically responsible approach', Journal of Philosophy
of Education, vol.42, nos 3-4, 2008, 401-14; William Miller and Veronica
Boix Mansilla, Thinking Across Perspectives and Disciplines, Project
Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, 2004.
(3) Svetlana Nikitina, 'Pathways of interdisciplinary
cognition', Cognition and Instruction, vol.23, no.3, 2005, 389-425.
(4) Allen Repko, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory,
SAGE, California, 2008.
(5) Gina Wisker, The Postgraduate Research Handbook: Succeed with
Your MA, MPhil, EdD and PhD, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2008;
Stephen Potter, Doing Postgraduate Research, SAGE, London, 2006.
(6) Eva Petersen, 'Negotiating academicity: postgraduate
research supervision as category boundary work', Studies in Higher
Education, vol.32, no.4, 2007, 475-87; Cynthia Mitchell, Quality in
Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Postgraduate Research and its
Supervision: Ideas for Good Practice, Institute for Sustainable Futures,
University of Technology, Sydney, 2009; Amy Nisselle and Rony Duncan,
'Multiple supervisors from multiple disciplines', Traffic,
vol.10, 2008, 143-65.
(7) For more on this approach and how it differs from both standard
philosophy and education see the interdisciplinary statement at the end
of this paper, and Clinton Golding, 'Making sense',
Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol.41, no.7, 2009, 814-7.
(8) Veronica Boix Mansilla and Elizabeth Duraising, 'Targeted
assessment of students' interdisciplinary work', Journal of
Higher Education, vol.78, no.2, 2007, 219.
(9) For more on the definition of a discipline, see Martin Davies
and Marcia Devlin, Interdisciplinary Higher Education, Centre for the
Study of Higher Education, Melbourne, 2007; Martin Davies and Marcia
Devlin, 'Interdisciplinary higher education', in Martin
Davies, Marcia Devlin and Malcolm Tight (eds), Interdisciplinary Higher
Education, New York, Elsevier Press, 2010; and Repko.
(10) Arabella Lyon, 'Interdisciplinarity: Giving up
territory', College English, vol.54, no.6, 1992, 681-93; and Angela
Brew, 'Disciplinary and interdisciplinary affiliations of
experienced researchers', Higher Education, vol.56, no.4, 2008,
423-38.
(11) Office of the Vice Chancellor, Refining Our Strategy, The
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2009; Golding.
(12) Office of the Vice Chancellor, Growing Esteem 2010, The
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2010, 10.
(13) Office of the Vice Chancellor, Refining; Office of the Vice
Chancellor, The University of Melbourne Plan 2008: Growing Esteem, The
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2008.
(14) Lyn Yates, What Does Good Education Research Look Like? Open
University Press, Maidenhead, 2004.
(15) Cynthia Mitchell and Juliett Willetts, Quality Criteria for
Inter and Transdisciplinary Doctoral Research Outcomes, Institute for
Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney, 2009, 12.
(16) Of course, not all my frustrations were due to the mismatch of
expectations regarding the interdisciplinary nature of my thesis, or to
poor articulation of the exact nature of my interdisciplinary practice.
A good deal was due to the difficulties of doctoral research.
(17) William Wordsworth, Letter to Lady Beaumont, 21 May 1807.
(18) In this paper I concentrate solely on the issue of
articulating an interdisciplinary standpoint. For advice on other
aspects of interdisciplinary graduate research, see: Nisselle and Duncan
about how to choose the right supervisors, which faculty to locate
yourself in, and the pros and cons of graduate interdisciplinary
research; Repko about how to choose disciplines that are relevant, and
how to construct an interdisciplinary literature review; and Mitchell
about good practice for supervisors of interdisciplinary research.
(19) Petersen.
(20) This explicit articulation may not be necessary if engaging in
established interdisciplinary research such as philosophy of art or
history of medicine, because the researcher can simply adopt the
perspectives, methods and assumptions of those established
interdisciplinary practices. Yet thorough articulation will be required
when the researcher is using or combining the disciplines in unorthodox
ways, and this is my focus in this paper.
(21) Mitchell and Willetts, 13-14.
(22) Veronica Boix Mansilla, Howard Gardner and William Miller,
'On disciplinary lenses and interdisciplinary work', in Sam
Wineburg and Pam Grossman (eds), Interdisciplinary Curriculum:
Challenges to Implementation, Teacher College Press, New York, 2000, 36.
(23) For example, Geoffrey Squires describes different disciplines
in terms of three dimensions: 1) Object: what they are about; 2) Stance:
their procedures and methods for dealing with that object; and 3) Mode:
to what extent the discipline reflexively analyses its own nature
('Interdisciplinarity in higher education in the United
Kingdom', European Journal of Education, vol.27, no.3, 1992, 202).
Davies and Devlin use the categories of what is known, what is valued
and what is capable of investigation. Repko uses the categories of
phenomena, assumptions, methods, epistemology, theories and concepts.
Becher and Trowler's categories are: distinctive methods, content,
epistemology, ways of thinking and the legitimate and important
questions (Tony Becher, Academic Tribes and Territories, The Society for
Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, Milton Keynes,
1989; Tony Becher and Paul Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories:
Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines, The Society for
Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, Buckingham,
2001). Although Becher and Trowler also stress the social aspect of
disciplines, I do not. The epistemic and methodological dimensions are
more relevant to articulating research and writing a thesis.
(24) To help make the tacit explicit, a graduate researcher might
also audit subjects in the different disciplines, read textbooks and
methodological papers and books, go to conferences or find a mentor or
collaborator from the relevant disciplines.
(25) Becher and Trowler. The two dimensions used to form the matrix
were originally developed by Anthony Biglan, 'The characteristics
of subject matter in different scientific areas', Journal of
Applied Psychology, vol.57, no.3, 1973, 195-203.
(26) See Davies and Devlin (2007 and 2010), for discussions of
variations in terminology, and a different way of carving up the
territory.
(27) Svetlana Nikitina (Three Strategies for Interdisciplinary
Teaching, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge,
MA, 2002) calls this an 'integrative structure', which is the
intended result of the interdisciplinary research. The literature
discusses numerous possible interdisciplinary outcomes: an
interdisciplinary interpretation or explanation, conceptualisation,
theory or meta-theory, resolution or solution, deeper understanding or
illumination, model, metaphor, product, policy, narrative, taxonomy,
rule or application. See also Miller and Boix Mansilla, and Boix
Mansilla and Duraising.
(28) Davies and Devlin, Interdisciplinary Higher Education, 3.
(29) Harvey Siegel, 'In search of reasons', in Leonard
Waks (ed.), Leaders in Philosophy of Education: Intellectual
Self-Portraits, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2008, 227.
(30) Michael Peters, 'Editorial: ERA journal ranking exercise:
An open letter to the Australian Research Council', Educational
Philosophy and Theory, vol.40, no.7, 2008, 809-811.
(31) Paul Hirst, 'Foreword', in Nigel Blake, Paul
Smeyers, Richard Smith and Paul Standish (eds), The Blackwell Guide to
the Philosophy of Education, Blackwell, Oxford, 2003, xv.
(32) John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, Henry Holt and Co,
New York, 1920.
(33) Matthew Lipman, 'Philosophy for children's debt to
Dewey', Critical and Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of
Philosophy in Education, vol.12, no.1, 2004, 6.
(34) These were two responses to the same interdisciplinary thesis
reported by Mitchell and Willetts, 1.
Clinton Golding
Graduate School of Education
Tool 2: The elements of the disciplines
Element of the discipline Philosophy
Content
What problems, concerns Addresses problems
and question are where our conceptions
addressed? What insights do not make sense.
are produced and what The conclusions drawn
conclusions drawn? tend to be arguments
for different positions,
or different ways of
conceptualising the
world
Method
What methods, Primarily uses
techniques, procedures argument and
and types of thinking conceptual analysis
are used to address the
content?
eg empirical, conceptual,
interviews, theorising
Concepts
What are the main Knowledge,
concepts employed? epistemology, ontology,
eg sustainability, cause and proof, valid and sound
effect, place, difference arguments, truth
Theories
What are the main theories Reflective equilibrium,
employed? relativism, objectivism,
eg Marxism, systems theory of knowledge
theory, phenomenology
Epistemology
How are claims Claims are based on the
justified and arguments argument--objection
structured? What --response pattern.
counts as evidence and A claim is justified if
knowledge? it is backed up by an
eg empirical testing, argument, and if all
mathematical proof, plausible objections
interpretation to this claim and this
argument can be
refuted
Products and outcomes
What does the discipline Produces conceptions,
produce? arguments and
eg buildings, theories, positions
explanations, solutions,
formulae, arguments
Element of the discipline Education
Content
What problems, concerns Addresses practical
and question are and theoretical issues
addressed? What insights related to learning,
are produced and what teaching, educating and
conclusions drawn? schooling. The products
tend to be overarching
theories, and techniques
for improving practice
Method
What methods, Primarily uses empirical
techniques, procedures methods (though
and types of thinking these are social science
are used to address the empirical methods
content? and not the sort of
eg empirical, conceptual, experimentation used
interviews, theorising in disciplines such as
physics)
Concepts
What are the main Pedagogy, curriculum,
concepts employed? development, learning,
eg sustainability, cause and teaching
effect, place, difference
Theories
What are the main theories Social learning, zone of
employed? proximal development,
eg Marxism, systems inquiry-based learning,
theory, phenomenology constructivism
Epistemology
How are claims Claims are based
justified and arguments on a combination of
structured? What theoretical consistency
counts as evidence and and empirical evidence.
knowledge? A claim is justified if it
eg empirical testing, is both supported by
mathematical proof, contemporary theory
interpretation and backed by empirical
data
Products and outcomes
What does the discipline Produces practical
produce? advice for individual
eg buildings, theories, teachers, learners,
explanations, solutions, classrooms and schools,
formulae, arguments as well as educational
policy and curricula
