54.3nowacek

A Discourse-Based Theory of Interdisciplinary Connections

Rebecca S. Nowacek

The Journal of General Education, Volume 54, Number 3, 2005, pp.171-195 (Article)

Published by Penn State University PressDOI: 10.1353/jge.2006.0006

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JGE: THE JOURNAL OF GENERAL EDUCATION, Vol. 54, No. 3, 2005.Copyright 2005 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

A DISCOURSE-BASED THEORY OFINTERDISCIPLINARY CONNECTIONS

Rebecca S. Nowacek

The skyrocketing popularity of interdisciplinary courses has been welldocumented over the past three decades, in the pages of this journaland elsewhere (Edwards, 1996; Klein, 1990, 1996). This curriculargrowth has both supported and been supported by the burgeoning fieldof interdisciplinary studies. But despite the proliferation of experiencewith and inquiry into the area of interdisciplinary studies, we havevery few systematic studies of interdisciplinary classrooms and there-fore know relatively little about exactly what occurs there. We have agreat many (often competing) theories of interdisciplinarity, but theyhave not yet provided practitioners with a means of articulating theresources that both students and teachers use to make interdisciplinaryconnections.

In the pages that follow, I report on ethnographic research con-ducted in a team-taught interdisciplinary classroom. Working induc-tively from transcripts of classroom conversations and guided by aBakhtinian view of language and cognition, I propose a discourse-based theory of interdisciplinary connections, focusing on theresources that participants in an interdisciplinary classroom draw onto make interdisciplinary connections. This discourse-based theorydirects our attention away from debates over the nature of interdis-ciplinarity in the abstract and instead allows us to focus on the inter-face between the social context of a particular classroom and theindividual cognition of teachers and students. I will illustrate, draw-ing on transcripts of class discussion and interviews with partici-pants, how such a theory draws to our attention elements thatprevious theories have overlooked, including the central role of talk-ing and writing in the interdisciplinary classroom and why individ-uals can leave the same interdisciplinary classroom with verydifferent understandings of interdisciplinarity.

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Review of the Literature and Theoretical Framework

Scholarship on interdisciplinary studies includes a long tradition ofwork that attempts to theorize interdisciplinarity. The Organizationfor Economic Cooperation and Developments 1972 Interdiscipli-narity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities is a sem-inal publication in this regard. Contributors to that volumemuchlike authors of the scholarship that followedwere eager to workout a clear taxonomy of terms; making, for instance, distinctionsamong multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and transdisciplinary.Erich Jantsch and many of his coauthors evince a clear preferencefor those approaches that more thoroughly integrate and even tran-scend the disciplines. Much subsequent scholarship has similarlyvalorized transdisciplinary synthesis as true interdisciplinarity anddenigrated what is often described as the mere juxtaposition ofdisciplines commonly associated with multidisciplinarity.Armstrong (1980), for example, argues that the highest level ofinterdisciplinarity is distinguished by the effort to integrate variousdisciplinary perspectives into a new, single, intellectually coherententity (p. 173). Kelly (1996) is similarly concerned with questionsof synthesis, so much so that he introduces the term wide interdisci-plinarity to draw positive attention to syntheses that reach across thechasm between humanities and sciences. Miller (1982), Fulcher(1978), and others offer similar praise of the attempt to synthesizeand transcend different disciplinary pespectives.

But, increasingly, interdisciplinary scholars are moving awayfrom the debate over what degree of synthesis merits what name,instead attending to questions of how such synthesis is made andwhen it is appropriate. Richards (1996) acknowledges that transdis-ciplinary synthesis may be an appropriate goal for more advancedstudents but argues that

if synthesis is given priority of purpose in the learning process,its realization may come at the cost of failing to expose stu-dents to a variety of contending perspectives whose ultimatecategories and values are in competition with the dominant,integrating framework. (p. 126)

172 REBECCA S. NOWACEK

Sill (1996) focuses more specifically on the cognitive processesinvolved in interdisciplinary integration by drawing from theories ofcreativity to reconceptualize the process of integrative thought.Newell (1992) has written about how instructors and students nego-tiate the tension between disciplinary expectations and interdiscipli-nary goals in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at MiamiUniversity of Ohio. He focuses on the structure of the program as awhole but begins to address questions of student learning by draw-ing on surveys from alumni.

Hursh, Haas, and Moore (1983) focus even more specifically onstudent learning in their attempt to provide a theoretical framework forunderstanding the interrelationships between disciplinary and inter-disciplinary thinking. They argue that salient concepts offer a meansof enabling students to identify similarities and differences among dis-ciplines and then integrate those disciplinary understandings into aninterdisciplinary synthesis: By combining inputs from more than onediscipline, students can challenge conclusions and eventually worktoward a more comprehensive understanding of the problem at hand(1983, p. 45). This statement embodies both the strength and thelimitation of their model. Although the salient concepts approachoffers a more specific vision of how individuals go about integratingdisciplinesa welcome corrective to a tradition of scholarship thatpays little attention to individual cognitionthe model remains vagueabout disciplinary inputs. What are these inputs, how do individualscome to associate them with the various disciplines, and how doindividuals learn to make connections among them?

That we need to know more about the resources students draw onto make interdisciplinary connections is made clear by the few studiesthat include extensive conversations with students about particularclassroom experiences. Boix-Mansilla, Miller, and Gardner (2000)interviewed students after an interdisciplinary unit on Nazi Germanyand point out the very different levels of success that students achievedin synthesizing their insights. Applebee, Burroughs, and Cruz (2000)were struck by the thoughtfulness of one teachers interdisciplinary syl-labusbut found when interviewing students that the students did notexperience the curriculum as integrated. And Roth (2000) recountshow students made interdisciplinary connections that teachers never

A DISCOURSE-BASED THEORY 173

expected and how (ironically) when the teachers consciously plannedout a series of interdisciplinary assignments and connections, studentsmade fewer connections than before. Her experiences suggest thateven very thoughtful and thorough interdisciplinary planning andteaching does not assure student learning (2000, p. 131).

These research studies highlight a major gap in our knowledge:namely, we know very little about how students in an interdiscipli-nary classroom actually make interdisciplinary connections.Ghnassia and Seabury (2002) acknowledge this gap when theywrite, Interdisciplinary synthesis needs to be constructed, not justtaught. Too much of the interdisciplinary literature still speaks offacultys working out interdisciplinary understandings and then pre-senting them to students (pp. 156157). We are in need of a con-ceptual framework that directs our attention to the ways in whichindividuals construct their understanding of both disciplinarity andinterdisciplinarity. One vital resource for the negotiation of discipli-nary and interdisciplinary knowledgeand one that has been largelyoverlooked in interdisciplinary scholarshipis spoken and writtendiscourse. Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtins theories of languageoffer a framework for identifying the patterns of discourse thatemerge in an interdisciplinary classroom over time. Especially use-ful are Bakhtins concepts of utterance, genre, and dialogism.

For Bakhtin, the basic unit of communication is not the word oreven the sentence but, rather, the utterance. Unlike a sentence (thebasic unit of communication in structural linguistics), which takes itsmeaning from the inner logic and structure of the sentence, the utter-ance becomes meaningful only when it is placed within a social andhistorical context. And every utterance is necessarily situated in sucha context. Each utterance resonates within a chain of already spokenand not-yet-spoken utterances. Every speaker is influenced by andresponding to what has already been said by others and what she orhe anticipates will be said in response to her or his own utterance.Furthermore, we understand the utterances of others in relation towhat was already spoken and what we expect to hear:

The word in living conversation is directly, blatantly, orientedtoward a future answer-word: it provokes an answer, anticipatesit and structures itself in the answers direction. Forming itself


in an atmosphere of the already spoken, the word is at the sametime determined by that which has not yet been said but whichis needed and in fact anticipated by the answering word.(Bakhtin, 1981, p. 280)

The concept of utterance helps to foreground how, for example, stu-dents in an interdisciplinary classroom can have widely divergentexperiences: though they hear the same utterances, those utterancesresonate within potentially very different chains of already spokenand not-yet-spoken utterances.

Bakhtins concept of genre provides a way of understanding howthose utterances can become stable and often predictable (but not pre-determined) over time. Utterances are inextricably linked to theirsocial context, and every social context (e.g., passing a colleague inthe hallway, the public library) includes repeated social interactions ortasks to be accomplished (e.g., exchange of pleasantries, issuance of alibrary card). Bakhtin explains that over time a particular function(scientific, technical, commentarial, business, everyday) and the par-ticular conditions of speech communication specific for each spheregive rise to particular genres, that is, certain relatively stable thematic,compositional, and stylistic types of utterances (1986, p. 64). Theserelatively stable types of utterances, or genres, ease communication:we can toss off the predictable Hello, how are you?/Fine, you?exchange without breaking stride; we fill out preprinted forms to get alibrary card. Without them we would reinvent the communicativewheel with each interaction. Genres help us predict the responses ofothers (rarely do our colleagues reply, as we rush past each other, Imquite depressed today) and understand our own obligations (we knowwe must come to the library with a form of written identificationrather than a friend to vouch for our name and address). Classroomstoo develop genres of interaction: patterns that shape the expectationsof teachers and students. These patterns can ease the give-and-take ofclassroom dialoguebut when genres of interaction do not coincidethey can also become the source of disappointment and frustration.This has very real relevance for the interdisciplinary classroom wheremultiple genres collide.

Finally, Bakhtin argues that these genres (and the social realms inwhich they develop) can and almost certainly will enter into dialogic


relationships with one another. These genres do not exist purely andindependently of one another. Through social interaction and evenwithin the mind of a single individual, the genres cross-pollinate, infus-ing one another with additional meaning and relevance. The genre ofhallway pleasantries exists in a potentially dialogic relationship with,among others, genres such as lengthy personal conversations, job inter-views, and department meetings. Language and the ways in which lan-guage resonates within a chain of utterances are always saturated inpotential meanings: Only the mythical Adam, who approached a vir-ginal and as yet verbally unqualified world with the first word, couldreally have escaped from start to finish this dialogic inter-orientationwith the alien word that occurs in the object (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 279).The concept of the dialogic nature of language is also vital for under-standing the interdisciplinary classroom, for it suggests that the variousdisciplines are not pure but interanimate one anothereven outsideexplicitly interdisciplinary classroomsas individuals engage in disci-plinary and interdisciplinary discussions.

Drawing on a Bakhtinian view of language and cognition providesan important corrective to previous theories of interdisciplinary class-rooms. Rather than plotting interdisciplinarity on a scale from merejuxtaposition to full synthesis or even transcendence of disciplines, thisapproach stresses that interdisciplinary connections must be perceivedand indeed constructed by individuals. Furthermore, this frameworkprods us to acknowledge that students will make different interdisci-plinary connections based on the various chains of utterances withinwhich current utterances now resonate. Finally, a discourse-based viewof interdisciplinarity invites descriptions rather than prescriptionsasignificant shift for practitioners wishing to better understand thedynamics of their own classroom. Inspired by such a framework, theresearch reported here was guided by the following question: Whattypes of discourse-based resources do students and teachers draw on torecognize disciplines and make interdisciplinary connections?

Context for Research

The research I present here was conducted in a team-taught interdis-ciplinary class offered to first-year honors students at Villanova


University. The course, Interdisciplinary Humanities II (known col-loquially as Interdisc II), is the second part of a three-semesterWestern Civilizations sequence. The 18 students enrolled in thecourse committed nine credit hours to Interdisc II: three credit hoursto a literature component, three more to a history component, andthree to a religious studies component. The students took similarlystructured courses (Interdisc I and III) during the previous and fol-lowing semesters, with different arrangements of disciplines andprofessors. Within the courses separate-but-coordinated structure,each professor designed and graded his or her own disciplinaryassignments, and students tended to keep notes for the componentdisciplines in separate notebooks. Yet many students told me, unprompted, that this course felt extremely integrated and was moreinterdisciplinary than many of their previous interdisciplinarycourses in high school and college. This feeling of integration seemsto be largely attributable to the fact that all three instructors attendednearly every class session, regularly referring back to and participat-ing in each others class sessions.

Data Collection

I attended every class session during the 15-week semester, tape-recording every session and videotaping six class periods during thesemester. I kept both descriptive and analytical field notes. I con-ducted an extensive series of interviews with 10 focal students: threelonger (30- to 90-minute) interviews at the beginning, middle, andend of the semester as well as shorter (10- to 30-minute) interviewsbefore and after each paper the students wrote in two of the threecomponent disciplines (they chose the disciplines; I felt that meetingbefore and after every paper that students wrote would place too greata burden on them). I collected all student papers, complete with pro-fessor and peer review comments. I also conducted 45- to 90-minuteinterviews with the professors at the beginning and end of eachsemester. Finally, I conducted group interviews (two interviews withsmall groups of students, one interview with all three professors) inwhich I asked them to watch clips of video from class and discuss the


degree to which the interactions caught on tape seemed typical oratypical of classroom interactions.

Data Analysis

Adapting methods of grounded theory (Strauss, 1987), I tookdetailed notes throughout the semester, recording ideas about how(among other things) interdisciplinarity seemed to function in thisclassroom. After the semester was over, I transcribed 25 class ses-sions selected with an effort to represent all three professors evenlythroughout the semester. I coded each transcript, initially developingcategories that enveloped a wide range of issues and activities,including many unrelated to interdisciplinarity (e.g., religious iden-tity, personal identity, etc.). After several iterations of coding andmemoing, I identified a series of genres, or stable types, of interdis-ciplinary connections made in this particular classroom. From thosegenres I have identified a schema of resources that individuals drawon to make interdisciplinary connections.

Findings: A Discourse-Based Theory of Interdisciplinarity

My analyses have led me to identify four discourse-based resourcesthat participants in an interdisciplinary classroom draw on to iden-tify disciplines and make interdisciplinary connections: content,propositions, classroom genres, and ways of knowing. A studentsunderstanding of the discipline of literary studies, for example,might comprise one, some, or all of the following: a sense that thediscipline of literary studies is what it is because it studies literarytexts like poems, plays, and novels; the discipline of literary studiesis recognizable by the kinds of propositions (or arguments)advanced; literary study is defined by the interactional style of theliterature professor; literary study is what it is because it values, forinstance, close analysis of language and nuances of meaning.

In the pages that follow, I offer explanations and examples ofeach type of interdisciplinary connectionwith a special focus on classroom genres, which prove an especially useful angle of


analysis and have been almost entirely overlooked in the literatureon interdisciplinarity. I use the phrase interdisciplinary connec-tion rather than interdisciplinary synthesis or interdisciplinaryintegration in order to stress the fact that connections may focus onconflict and difference as well as congruence and synergy and maydraw on a wide range of disciplinary resources. Some interdiscipli-nary connections may in fact have been a point of overlap wheredisciplines complemented each other, but others were a point of dif-ference that was not (and perhaps could not have been) reconciledfor or transcended by these participants. For this reason, I am lessinterested in distinguishing juxtaposition from synthesis and moreinterested in identifying the resources individuals draw on to makeconnections.

Content

Content is the most self-explanatory of the four resources used tomake interdisciplinary connections. In this view, disciplines are rec-ognized through their subject matter. Literature, for example, com-monly focuses on plays, novels, and poetry; history focuses onhistorical events such as the Civil War or the Industrial Revolution. Aparticular person, place, event, or text, then, may become a site forinterdisciplinary connections. In Interdisc, both the history and thereligious studies professors assigned excerpts from Martin Lutherswriting as a way to engage students in conversations about the Pro-testant Reformation; thus Luther became a potential site for interdis-ciplinary connections via content.

I recognize that by naming Luther as a site of possible interdis-ciplinary connection on the basis of his writings being assigned bytwo professors, I am not adopting the usual definition of interdisci-plinarity. Much previous scholarship would quickly point out thatthis point of connection could simply be a multidisciplinary juxta-position of disciplines. Some readers might share Newells (1998)concern that such a broad definition dilutes our understanding ofinterdisciplinarity: If everything can be termed interdisciplinary,doesnt it come to mean nothing? I would answer that interdiscipli-narity already operates as an umbrella term with many differentmeanings and that a discourse-based theory of interdisciplinary


connections offers us a way to be more precise about what types ofconnections are made using what resources.

More specifically, I identified four ways of making connectionsvia content. Often students as well as instructors would use vocabu-lary introduced in one discipline while discussing another: forinstance, when discussing Chaucers General Prologue students useda termstationinitially introduced by the history professor whendiscussing the structure of medieval society. Participants would alsofrequently use material from one discipline as an example in another:the religious studies professor, for instance, made reference to themovie The Mission, which students had watched in history class,while discussing Catholicisms ability to absorb elements of a localculture. A third approach to making connections via content is bymaking comparisons between materials from two courses. Thosecomparisons might stress similarities or differences. For example,during a discussion of Lockes view of human reason led by the reli-gious studies professor, the literature professor pointed out a similar-ity to Milton, inasmuch as both Paradise Lost and Leviathan concernthemselves with justifying the ways of God to humans. The brief ref-erence to Milton, like most comparison connections, was neverdeveloped further. Sometimes, however, participants would makemuch lengthier and more detailed connections on the level of contentby using material from one course to reevaluate material fromanother. The literature professor would regularly ask students to thinkabout course material from the perspective provided by material fromanother class. During one class, students were asked to read the issueof how to treat slaves in Orinoko through a lens provided by the his-torical debates over how to treat native peoples during the conquest,debates discussed at length in the history component of the course.Such prompts would invite lengthier discussions about how one textor thinker would agree, disagree, or reinterpret another text orthinker. In all these cases, thoughvocabulary, example, compari-son, or reevaluationthe connections remain on the level of content.

Propositions

By propositions I mean the arguments made by participants in dis-cussion or in writing. Some propositions may be articulated during


a single class period and then dropped (e.g., arguing that MiltonsEve was, in fact, created sufficient to stand); other propositions areargued over the course of the semester (e.g., arguing that a theolo-gians view of predestination can tell us a great deal about otheraspects of his theology). Such ongoing, semester-long propositionsare one way of creating coherence in a classroom (see Applebee,Burroughs, & Stevens, 2000). In the context of the interdisciplinaryclassroom, a proposition initially advanced by one professor mightbe picked up by another professora very clear manifestation ofBakhtins idea that we orient ourselves to the already spoken.1 Theconnection might be immediate, with one professor jumping in toagree or disagree while a colleague was teaching. Or the connectionamong propositions might be delayed, with professors saying thingslike, Remember last week when Professor X argued . . . ? or evenleaving the connection tacit. Throughout the Interdisc II semester,the three professors worked together to argue several propositions(among them, the pre- and post-Enlightenment worldviews differsignificantly and history is not teleological). Although proposi-tional connections can also be made by stressing differences,participants usually stressed similarities, for reasons I will discussbelow.

Classroom Genres

The concept of classroom genres derives from the Bakhtinian frame-work discussed earlier, but it also draws on empirical studies con-ducted in classrooms by sociolinguists and educational researchers.Classroom genres are the patterns of interactions that emerge overtime; they help participants predict and make sense of the structureof the interaction. For instance, Mehan (1979) has identified what hecalls the IRE structure of classroom discourse: initiation (theinstructor asks a question or poses a problem), response (the studentscomply and respond), and evaluation (the instructor assesses theanswers provided by the students). In contrast, Nystrand and his col-leagues (Christoph & Nystrand, 2001; Nystrand, 1997) have writtenabout the dialogic classroom, which avoids the IRE pattern bydeveloping different classroom genres, including authentic ques-tions (to which the teacher does not already know the answer) and


teacher uptake (reference to student contributions). Black (1998)has argued that one of the challenges of studentteacher conferencesis a clash of interactional genres: while students often treat confer-ences as a variation on IRE, teachers like to believe that conferencesare really conversations (a genre characterized by more equal pat-terns of participation; see Sacks, Schlegoff, & Jefferson, 1974). As awhole, this research has demonstrated that participants in classroomdiscussions are subtly and often unconsciously guided in their inter-actions by unarticulated but powerful conventions of interaction.

Classroom genres played out in the interdisciplinary classroomin several important ways. First, students came to associate certainpatterns of interaction with the disciplines themselves. For instance,the religious studies professor tended to lead his Interdisc sessionslargely in a lecture-type mode. Over the course of the semester sev-eral students told me that a religious studies class has to be con-ducted in this way because, to paraphrase their comments, you canthave freewheeling discussions on such factual matters as AquinassSumma Theologica. Certainly it is possible to have freewheeling dis-cussions on such matters, but my point here is that students quicklyinternalized the classroom genre and associated it with the disciplineitself. Students also quickly developed a similar sense of what class-room genres are appropriate for an interdisciplinary classroom,using prior experiences to judge future interactions. (I will discussthe point in more depth shortly.)

Finally, classroom genres are also very important to studentswho sense that disciplines are more than subject matter but whosenascent sense of the deeper logic of disciplines is often quite tenu-ous and who therefore rely a great deal on classroom genres to helpthem understand disciplinary ways of knowing. Shulman (2005)makes a similar point in his account of what he calls signature ped-agogies, which he describes as educational practices (for instance,rounds in medical school or the case dialogue method in law school)that help make difficult epistemological processes more comprehen-sible, even routine, for students. Classroom genres, then, serve as anespecially important resource for students developing awareness ofthe often invisible epistemological dimensions of disciplinary andinterdisciplinary learning.


Ways of Knowing

The final mode in which individuals may identify and connect vari-ous disciplines is through their ways of knowing. By ways of know-ing I mean the intellectual activities that individuals engage in toarticulate and support their propositions. Ways of knowing, then,would envelop the characteristics that Szostak (2003) identifies astheories, methods, and worldview and are very similar to Kellys(1996) discussion of epistemology.2

Previous research indicates that individuals are least likely tomake explicit connections among ways of knowing. Wineburg andGrossman (2000) argue that this avoidance is related in part to thedesire of individuals working together across disciplinary lines toforge common bonds that will ease the interpersonal dynamics ofcollaboration. As a result, interdisciplinary collaborators may bedrawn to create what Weinberg and Grossman call a psuedocom-munity, which glosses over significant epistemological differ-ences. My own analyses also indicate that connections amongways of knowing are by far the least likely connections to be madein talk or writing.

Importantly, I found that students were most likely to makeinterdisciplinary connections among ways of knowing in their writ-ing when they were working in an informal genre not clearly asso-ciated with a specific discipline (e.g., the reaction paper). This factfurther underlines the importance of genreswritten or spokenasa resource students draw on to make and articulate interdisciplinaryconnections.

As individuals go about constructing interdisciplinary connec-tions, they may employ one or more of these four resources. Parti-cipants may explicitly acknowledge a connection, or it may remaintacit. But each individual must recognize and construct eachinterdisciplinary connection. Interdisciplinarity is not an abstractquality that can be used to describe an entire classroom and all itsparticipants; it is a connection made (or not made) by individualswho identify similarities and differences among various dis-ciplinary contents, propositions, classroom genres, and ways ofknowing.


Application: Analyzing a Moment of InterdisciplinaryConnection

To illustrate the utility of this discourse-based theory of interdisci-plinary connections, I turn to analysis of a classroom transcript. Inthis particular example, classroom genres prove especially impor-tant. By offering this example I do not mean to suggest that class-room genres are a more common or more important resource forinterdisciplinary connections. This example does, however, illumi-nate a type of challenge to interdisciplinary pedagogy that I believehas not previously been addressed in the interdisciplinary studies lit-erature. Although some scholarship like that of Davis (1995)addresses the complexity of negotiating roles in team-taught class-rooms, I have found no extended consideration of the role of class-room genres as a resource for forging interdisciplinary connections.

The following transcript begins approximately halfway througha class led by the religious studies professor during the final third ofthe semester. In this moment, three stable, predictive patterns ofinteraction collided: the classroom genre typical of the religiousstudies professor, the classroom genre typical of the literature pro-fessor, and the classroom genre that had typified interactions amongprofessors in this Interdisc II class and in the previous semestersInterdisc I class.

The usual classroom genre of the religious studies professor waslecture, sometimes punctuated by IRE and frequently interrupted byauthentic questions from the students. During this particular classperiod, the religious studies professor had been discussing Hobbes,the sovereign, democracy, and the idea of contract. The literatureprofessor, who entered into the conversation, had in her class beendiscussing The Merchant of Venice with a focus on how contractsfigure into the play. Her class sessions, although they includedmoments that might be called mini-lectures and a considerable num-ber of IRE exchanges, relied more heavily on student contributionsto class discussion and were generally structured around issues thatshe encouraged the students to pose.

The usual genre of interaction between professors was for one toask a particularly detailed or astute question (what the history professor called being in superstudent mode) or to make a brief


comment that made explicit a connection between the current mate-rial and material discussed in his or her own class. It is important tonote that the extended interaction between professors represented inthe following transcript was unusualand was made more unusualby the fact that the literature professor came to the board, rather thanstaying in her seat:

RELIGIOUS STUDIES PROFESSOR (RELPROF)Every democracy in the West has ended up indisaster. Hobbes knows this. Hes a classicist: heknows what happened to Athens and has no usefor it. . . . Democracy is counterintuitive to thesepeople. Why it should be intuitive to us is a goodquestion. But to him it is not. It leads to disaster.Parliament led to disaster in the 17th century.[Literature Professor (LitProf) raises hand.] Thisis not the way its usually prevented but. . . . [Heshrugs shoulders to end the sentence and thenindicates the LitProf.]

LITPROF I wanted to make two rhetorical points. [Shestands and walks toward the board; RelProfwalks away from her toward the other corner ofthe board.] It seems when you read Hobbes likedemocracy is the counterintuitive thing and thatyoure establishing the sovereign as what makessense. But I think it is interesting to look at thisphrase: the commonwealth as a mortal god. [Shewrites mortal god on the board.] Rhetoricallythats a figure weve talked about before. Doesanybody happen to recognize it?

STUDENT 1 Isnt it an oxymoron?LITPROF Its an oxymoron, right? You cant be mortal and

a god. So I think its interesting to note howmuch of this argument is built on an irreconcil-able opposition. I dont know if that means itsless stable or certain than it appears. I dontknow if it means theres a radical uncertainty atthe heart of it all.


RELPROF Well hes death on absurdities, right? That is,phrases that dont make any sense. So he could behaving a lot of fun with this. Unless of course thisisnt an oxymoron. Unless of course all gods aremortal, and its just that some people think theresthis god thats immortal, immaterial, eternal, andall that. So another way you could flip it is to saythis isnt an oxymoron. To say eternal immortalgod, then thats an oxymoron. I dont know.

LITPROF If youre doing that, then it becomes a semanticthing: Is it cogent to talk about a mortal God? Oris the definition of god something thats not mor-tal? So if you wanted to follow [RelProfs] logicand say all gods are mortal, then whats interest-ing is that whats at the heart of Hobbes is theprinciple of semantics. How you define yourterms is what produces your whole system. Andin a way thats what [RelProf] is showing youHobbes is doing: radically redefining all theseterms and showing how you can build a govern-ment, a logical system, out of that. [She writescovenant/contract on the board.] The one otherrhetorical point I thought was interesting is tolook at these two terms that [RelProf] tells us aresynonymous in Hobbes. What lexicon do each ofthese come from?

STUDENT 2 Is covenant from the Bible?LITPROF Yeah. I dont know if covenants are wholly reli-

gious, but they certainly have that overlay. . . . Ithink that the primary meaning of covenant isalways that thing about between god and hispeople. Contract is much more out of the legallexiconout of business, out of commercialintersections. And I think its a really interestingmove to be equating these. Im not sure what theimplications are for commerce. Im not surewhat the implications are for religion. [LitProfsits.] Its very interesting to me.


RELPROF The use of covenant would be especially tellingin England where the impact of Calvin is ratherlarge. In post-Calvin Calvinism, covenant theol-ogy is a crucial understanding. The relationshipbetween god and his people is a covenant. Thelanguage is really redolent for these people. . . .

LITPROF [standing again] Its an ongoing unbreakablecommitment. Its a commitment thats made notnaturally; it has this sense of going on in perpe-tuity when its used. Contract is much more thisthing that a couple people happen to decide todo. But by using them equivalently I think youeither undermine the inviolableness of covenantor you add a lot more weight to the arbitrarynegotiations of contract. You say religion isreally just like commerce, or you say commerceis really just like religion. [Sits.]

RELPROF [after a brief pause] Does Hobbes believe in sep-aration of church and state?

[Students raise hands and answer; the RelProf leads class discus-sion by himself.]

If we were to analyze this interaction from the traditional viewof interdisciplinary synthesis, we might focus on the degree of syn-thesis being achieved: Is this a multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary,interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary moment? However, as my dis-cussion of interdisciplinary connections suggests, I believe it impos-sible to answer that question in the abstract. Connections aresomething that individuals negotiate and experience. A more pro-ductive question, then, would be how the classroom participantsthemselves interpreted this moment. And in such an analysis, theimportance of classroom genres as a resource for making and evalu-ating interdisciplinary connections comes to the fore.

I showed a videotape of this classroom interaction during threegroup interviews: one with the three professors and two others withsmall groups of students. When I played this clip for the professorsthey described the moment as an example of what they aspired to do more often: namely, give the students a chance to see different


interpretations (and maybe even different disciplinary interpretations)come into contact and conflict with each other. This was not a momentof deep epistemological conflict, but the literature professors focus onrhetorical strategies and lexicon did help to highlight possible inter-disciplinary connections: between disciplinary contents (both profes-sors were exploring the concept of contract), between disciplinarypropositions (both professors seemed to be arguing that the nuances ofthe language are significant for understanding the relevance of theseconcepts in the texts being discussed), and potentially between disci-plinary ways of knowing. The professors were pleased to reflect onsuch a moment and wanted to include more moments like this in theirfuture teaching.

The students reactions (and none of them had participateddirectly in the exchange that they watched and I have transcribedhere) were quite different. Their reaction to this moment, whichseemed informed primarily by a sense of classroom genres, wasoverwhelmingly negative. Their analysis of the moment (transcribedhere using pseudonyms) focused on a belief that the literature pro-fessor was speaking out of turn, interrupting the religion professorsclass time:

WILL She is good about discussion, but when its anothersubject Id rather see her be a part of the discussionthan get up and teach a little bit.

ALAN I liked how last semester the teachers would alwaysget involved, but theyd pose their own question, ortheyd say, Well, I said this last time; do you thinkthe same kind of thing? Not, Here let me teachyou.

TIGRA She has something from her own agenda that shewants to throw in there, and shes not adding to theclass that were in. And thats kind of hard. And yeahsure, well go back to it in her class, but thats [theRelProfs] class. One thing that really disturbed mein the beginning of the semester was, I think [the his-tory professor (HistProf)] was talking, and she gotup and starting writing on the board, and I was like,What are you doing?! First of all, the chalk on the


board was very distracting to what [the HistProf]was saying, and second of all, I dont remember if ithad any relevance to anything at all. . . .

BETTY Well it doesnt bother me at all if she gets up andstarts; I dont know, I just take what theyre sayingin little bits. I dont really worry about it being [theHistProfs] or being [the LitProfs] or belonging. Idont think its really important.

These students reflections demonstrate how heavily individu-als draw on their previous experiences with classroom genres tomake sense of interdisciplinary interactions. Alan, Will, and Tigracriticized this moment of interaction because it is one in which theliterature professor intrudedapparently uninvitedinto the reli-gion professors class. They were not sure if it was relevant, andthey were not sure if it was respectful, but they were certain (asAlans reference to the last semesters Interdisc I class makes clear)that the literature professor was violating the genre of interactionsthat they had grown accustomed to the semester before in InterdiscI (and during much of Interdisc II). Significantly, the only studentto resist the critique of the literature professors mode of participa-tiona mode of participation that violated the expectations fromthe first semester of Interdiscis Betty. Betty had transferred fromanother college that semester and had not been enrolled in InterdiscI the previous semester. She did not, therefore, bring to Interdisc IIthe same classroom genre expectations that her classmates devel-oped in Interdisc I.

Some readers may, after reading the transcript, agree with thestudents critique (that the turn taking was out of order) or perhapsoffer a different critique (that this moment is not sufficiently inter-disciplinary perhaps). What the discourse-based framework I amadvocating here highlights, though, is that there is no one definitiveinterpretation of this classroom interaction. Betty, Alan, and the pro-fessors responded differentlynot because there was anythingintrinsically wrong or unclear about the classroom interaction but,rather, because all individuals will contextualize this classroomexchange within their own unique chain of utterances. Drawing ontheir experiences of disciplinary and interdisciplinary classroom


genres, most students objected to the ways in which the literatureprofessors interactions with the religious studies professor violatedtheir expectations of what was appropriate.

To take this view is not to suggest that some classroom interac-tions cannot be more or less effective othersonly that the criteria forevaluating the efficacy of interdisciplinary connections must beresponsive to the fact that every individual will understand the inter-action within a unique interpretive framework. Each individual mustconstruct interdisciplinary connections for him- or herself, employingthe various resources available: content, propositions, classroom gen-res, and ways of knowing. Unfortunately, previous scholarship hasgenerally overlooked any connections other than ways-of-knowingconnections.

Conclusions

A discourse-based theory of interdisciplinarity has implications forclassroom pedagogy, assessment, and future research. In terms ofpedagogy, the discourse-based framework can help teachers plantheir courses and assignments, communicate their expectations tostudents, and interact with fellow teachers more effectively. Asteachers plan their interdisciplinary courses, they might use thisframework to articulate for themselves previous practices and futureexpectationsusing the four types of interdisciplinary connection Ihave identified in order to plan what types of connections might bemade throughout the semester, as a way to sequence the interdisci-plinary structure of the course.

When actually teaching, some instructors may find it productiveto explicitly introduce the four types of connections into classroomvocabulary. Especially useful may be a discussion of students class-room genre expectations and how an interdisciplinary course maychallenge those expectations. For instructors who wish students tomake connections among ways of knowing, distinguishing andnaming the different types of connections may be an important firststep toward that ambitious goal.

Even if the terminology is not made explicit to students, teams ofteachers may find it useful for articulating and discussing among


themselves the frustrations that inevitably come with team teaching,especially when classroom genres or ways of knowing clash.Developing a vocabulary for such discussions may also help teachersmove beyond the pseudocommunity that Wineburg and Grossman(2000) argue impedes interdisciplinary collaborations, by stressingthat the conflicts are not always simply personal disagreements but aresometimes more fundamental and potentially productive differences.

The discourse-based framework may also provide instructorsand administrators with a means of articulating assessment goals onboth the macrolevel of programs and departments and the microlevelof individual grades on papers or projects. Field and Stowe (2002)have offered a detailed analysis of the challenges facing individualscharged with assessing interdisciplinary programs and departments.Among the obstacles they identify is the lack of consensus on whatexactly interdisciplinary synthesis or integration entails; third ontheir list of five crucial challenges to interdisciplinary learningassessment is defining the core interdisciplinary construct of synthesis or integration in a measurable manner (2002, p. 264). Because the discourse-based framework is descriptive rather thanprescriptive, it can provide groundwork for individuals working toarticulate such a construct.

Especially useful are the four types of interdisciplinary connec-tion, but also important is the very shift from a focus on synthesis toone on connections. The term connections, with its insistence thatinterdisciplinary connections may focus on differences as well assimilarities and may be implicit as well as explicit, offers a reminderthat points of disagreement that refuse to dissolve into transdiscipli-nary synthesis can be as important and welcome as points of agree-ment and integration. A focus on connections suggests that learningobjectives for courses need not focus solely on synthesis or integra-tion but, rather, include the ability to recognize and ideally articulatepoints of overlap, agreement, and disagreement.

Assessment on the microlevel of assignments has also drawnincreased attention in the scholarly literature. Seabury (2002) hasexplored the challenges of designing and grading interdisciplinaryassignments. Again, a discourse-based theory of interdisciplinaritycan help provide a vocabulary that instructors can use to articulateexpectations and appraise performance in the form of a grading


rubric. Furthermore, the discourse-based framework illuminates theimportance of considering the genre of the written assignment. Justas oral classroom genres subtly orient students and help shape theirexpectations, written genres can influence students approach totheir interdisciplinary assignments. Any assessment of written inter-disciplinary work would benefit from reflection on the role that dis-ciplinary associations with those written genres may play in thework students produce.

The discourse-based theory of interdisciplinarity I have pre-sented here also suggests directions for future research. It under-scores the need for more systematic empirical studies ofinterdisciplinary classrooms. Though some studies of this sort havealready been conducted (see Applebee, Burroughs, & Cruz, 2000;Boix-Mansilla et al., 2000; Lenoir, Larose, & Geoffroy, 2000;Miller, 1996; Wineburg & Grossman, 2000), they all indicate theneed for further research. They also suggest a need to pay moredetailed and systematic attention to the role of spoken and writtendiscourse in the formation of interdisciplinary understandings.Future discourse-based research will doubtless revise and refine theframework that I have offered here.

More specifically, the analyses I present here also suggest thatclashes in classroom genres may influence students perceptions ofinterdisciplinary connections more than previously imagined.Though there has been some extensive research into the classroomgenres that best facilitate student learning in traditional disciplinaryclassrooms (e.g., Nystrand, 1997), we are in need of studies that seekto identify and examine the efficacy of various classroom genres inthe interdisciplinary classroom. This line of inquiry could haveimportant repercussions for teachers at various levels of instruction.

Finally, I have sought to describe the four resources for makinginterdisciplinary connections in nonhierarchical language, but therelationships among them call out for more research. Do connectionsamong ways of knowing, for instance, require more cognitive abil-ity and maturity than connections among content? A longitudinal,ethnographic study that focuses on the types and frequency of theinterdisciplinary connections made by a small group of individualsover time might tell us a great deal about how and why these typesof connections are made. Such research might also offer insight into


the following questions: Must disciplinary knowledge developbefore interdisciplinary connections can be made, or can the processof making interdisciplinary connections hasten or deepen under-standing of the disciplines? How do students come to understand therelationships among content, propositions, classroom genres, andways of knowing? Is there a predictable sequence of cognitivegrowth? Can we sequence assignments, courses, or programs inways that will facilitate interdisciplinary understandings?

Although the challenges of such research are great, only throughsuch research will we come to understand not what we wish or hopehappens in the interdisciplinary classroom but what actually tran-spires there. And with such knowledge we can continue to improveand expand interdisciplinary instruction in ways that will benefit stu-dents and instructors alike.

Notes

1. Though it was not obvious in the transcripts of class discussion, the three professorsreported that they also oriented themselves to the not-yet-spoken utterances of theircolleagues. After having taught together for a period of time (this was the second timeall three had taught together, and two had taught together for several additional years),they could sometimes anticipate what each other would say. This phenomenon of col-leagues getting into your head is frequently reported by instructors who team teach.

2. Szostaks (2003) phenomena would correlate to what I have identified as content,and what he terms rules of the game would, on a classroom level, be comparable to theexpectations embodied in what I have discussed under the heading classroom genres.

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