Overcoming Barriers to Interdisciplinarity
Professor Myra StroberStanford University
Why Work Across Disciplines?
Complex problems don’t respect disciplinary boundaries
Disciplinary diversity promotes creativity (new ways of thinking) and innovation
It is important to think about interdisciplinarity in both research and teaching
Interdisciplinarity and its cousins
Multidisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity requires integration
Transdisciplinarity Food metaphors
Working Across Disciplines is Difficult
Rewards tend to come from disciplines
But even when faculty want to work across disciplines, disciplinary frames of references often get in the way
Three Purposes of Today’s Talk
Explain the barriers faculty face when they try to communicate across disciplines
Discuss how to overcome these barriers
Discuss public policy and interdisciplinarity
My study
Helps us to understand the barriers to faculty interdisciplinary work and the ways to overcome those barriers.
My Study
Six faculty seminars at three research universities (Washington, Adams, and Jefferson
40 faculty interviewees from seminars
Each seminar had 9-18 members from 6-10 disciplines. Met weekly for a year to discuss readings done in advance.
Purpose of seminars was to get faculty to talk with one another about their disciplines’ major puzzles, theories and findings
Hope was that seminars would lead to team-teaching and possibly joint research projects
Despite initial excitement about the seminars, faculty had considerable difficulty talking to one another
The Jefferson consilience seminar was much more successful than the others.
Not true that it is easier to talk within social sciences than across broad fields
Talking across disciplines is talking across cultures
In the course of doctoral training and early career, faculty initiate their “young” into a disciplinary culture.
Disciplinary cultures include beliefs, morals, rules of conduct, and language systems.
Physical habits have their mental counterpart in habits of mind
Howard Margolis: “Habits of mind…[are] entrenched responses that ordinarily occur without conscious attention, and that even if noticed are hard to change.”
Disciplinary Cultures Lead to Disciplinary Habits of Mind
Differences in Cultures and Habits of Mind
Historians and economists Open and closed paradigms
English faculty and drama faculty The doubting game vs the believing
game Quantitative and qualitative social
scientists
Language is Particularly Important
Vocabulary is only a small part of the problem.
What are the norms of interacting? Is interrupting okay? How are turns for speaking
arranged? What is said outright and what is
said subtly?
What constitutes a good argument?
What evidence is required to reject or confirm a hypothesis? What if you don’t have a hypothesis?
How to Have More Effective Interdisciplinary Conversations
The first task of cross-disciplinary communication is for each of us to become ethnographers of our own discipline—to NOTICE our disciplinary cultures and habits of mind.
Faculty Leadership
Faculty leaders need to recognize that of necessity they come from a culture. They are not “neutral.”
Pay Attention to Culture!
In the six seminars I studied, there were no discussions about the ground rules of the sociolinguistic system. The leader chose a system simply because he was familiar with it.
Those who came from different cultures had difficulty adapting to the seminar style.
Help Faculty to Broaden Their Comfort Zones
To help faculty work across
disciplines requires helping them to accept other cultures and ways of perceiving, helping them to broaden their comfort zones.
Help Faculty to Play the Believing Game
Help faculty to learn to listen sympathetically—to “try on” ideas
Leaders Cannot be Laissez-Faire
Careful selection of faculty participants
Careful structuring of conversations
Productive Conversations Walk a Fine Line
Leaders need to create productive cognitive conflict, create in-depth “uncomfortable” conversations, without allowing the conversations to degenerate into brawls.
Affective Conflict is Inevitable
Leaders need to understand that beneath conversations about content there are efforts to establish status and power. Successful leaders know how to defuse these efforts.
Affective Conflict Needs to be Managed
Leaders need to pay attention to interpersonal dynamics, neutralize anger, and smooth hurt feelings. A successful leader is a bit like a family therapist.
Successful Leaders Engage in Intellectual “Play”
Successful cross-disciplinary collaborations are fun. Faculty enjoy their own disciplines. If they are to engage with people from other disciplines, they need to have at least as much fun as they do interacting with colleagues from their own discipline.
Keep the Importance of the Goal in Mind
Working toward successful cross-
disciplinary conversations is worth the trouble and the additional resources because of the high potential for creativity and innovation.
Public policies – government and foundations
Set aside funding specifically for interdisciplinary work
Set aside funding to study what promotes interdisciplinary work
Public policies - Universities
What can universities do to foster interdisciplinarity?
Three part strategy
Part 1- Lower the risk of doing interdisciplinary work
Change faculty reward structures Salary Prestige Prizes Promotion criteria
Part 2 – Make it easier to publish interdisciplinary work
Sponsor new high-quality interdisciplinary journals
Part 3 – Teach interdisciplinary skills
Assist undergraduates to integrate their coursework Requires in-depth faculty
conversations across disciplines Requires re-education of faculty Requires additional resources