Multidisciplinary Education

 

“Sociology or Social Science for the BA Programme”, enquired a parent and I started using the usual jargons of multi-disciplinarity, inter-disciplinary engagement and I probably ended up confusing them more. And over the weekend I have been thinking about these terms and the ability to explain in simple language in the context of higher education.

Image credits: Kartiki Kane 

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Multidisciplinary: In simple words multidiscipline or multidisciplinarity is the existence of multiple disciplines of Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities taught at a University.

Conventionally, academic disciplines are categorised into humanities (including philosophy, language, literature, art and history), the scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics) and social sciences (economics, politics, anthropology, sociology etc.). (I have avoided the segregation of Sciences into Natural Sciences, Formal Sciences etc. for now)

These subjects (i.e. Disciplines) are existing in parallel to each other in the form of departments with or without much of an interaction. A recent example is the news of IITs and top B-Schools strengthening their humanities and social science departments.

An example of multidisciplinary collaboration would be an Architect, Engineer and an Interior designer creating an office space. To make it more interesting you can bring in the dimension of Sustainability into the office space not to forget the management skills during construction phase. To quote the Utreht University, Netherlands blog, “You cross the boundaries of the disciplines, but the disciplines keep their own 'voice”, in a multi-disciplinary environment. 

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Cross-Disciplinary:

This approach expects interactions and collaboration between the disciplines (two or more). An example will be a Biologist, an Economist and an ecologist, doing research or writing an article about the deterioration of our natural environment and its impact on health outcomes, access to clean water and related social impacts. The broad idea here is to create connections and enable a dialogue between the said disciplines. Some also refer to cross disciplinary as a method of viewing one discipline from the perspective of another. History of Science could be an example of this.

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Image sourced from an article on Arch Psych, UK

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Inter-Disciplinary:

An interdisciplinary approach involves integration of methods and concepts from various disciplines for long-lasting solutions to complex real-world problems. For example, to understand the issues in Education, one should draw concepts from Sociology, Child Psychology, Philosophy, Political economy and many more to have a holistic understanding about the complex domain of Education. In simple words the domain of education spans across various disciplines.

 Here, the idea is not only collaboration between disciplines but the synthesis of new ideas and solutions, crossing the traditional disciplinary boundaries. Here is an excellent article detailing the interdisciplinary approach to science education published in the iWonder magazine of Azim Premji University. 

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Transdisciplinary: I will probably write more about this later. But to quote some of the approaches, Transdisciplinarity involves not only the learners or academics, but also other (societal) partners in problem solving. The Community engagement initiative at the Azim Premji University could be a good example. Here co-creation of solutions is between students, faculty members, the local panchayats and other civil society organisations. Hence, transdisciplinary approach is therefore about bringing together knowledge from Academic disciplines and practice, and arriving at a integrative approach to problem solving. Click here for some excellent articles on Transdisciplinarity from Science Direct. ___________________________________________________________________________

Note: Some also use the term intradisciplinary which means within the same discipline. An economist working with other economists on matters of policy and human development.

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Well, the point is this -A good University (for the 21^st century) cannot be a collection of multiple departments or disciplines, but one that is in constant conversation, collaboration, and also evaluating diverse viewpoints. The teaching, learning, assignments, research, internships will all have to be thought-through these dimensions of cross/inter/trans disciplinary approaches to prepare the graduates for future career trajectories.

On that note, let me look for a course called Economic changes and class structure as seen in Malayalam Cinema. Let me find an Economics, Sociology and Film studies faculty to develop such a course :-) and probably also ask the History faculty to join in.  And to make it Transdisciplinary I will ask cine-director Sathyan Anthikkad (1982-present) to share his inputs as well. 

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 References: Elements of this blog post are borrowed from the following articles:

Disciplinarities definitions: https://www.archpsych.co.uk/post/disciplinarities-definitions

 

Higher education for today’s India: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/higher-education-for-today-s-india-1003813.html

 

University of the future: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/giving-shape-to-the-university-of-the-future/article69440470.ece

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