Overcoming Barriers to Interdisciplinarity

Professor Myra StroberStanford University

myras@stanford.edu

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

Definition of interdisciplinarity

What is a discipline? What is interdisciplinarity?

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

Type I and Type II Errors

Explain to faculty what they miss by judging ideas too quickly

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

How will departments be affected by a change in faculty reward structures?

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

Should graduate study include other disciplines?