This week’s readings focused heavily on defining important terms in interdisciplinary theory in a way that is very accessible to all people. In my experience as a new IDS student, I have been met with many blank stares when I tell people what my major is (without using the specific title of my program). I have found that there are many people, especially people of an older generation, who do not understand interdisciplinarity, especially in a school setting. “Inventing your own major” is such a foreign concept to people in my parents’ generation and especially to my grandmother, who told me that when she was in school she could only pick from nursing or becoming a secretary. In understanding how interdisciplinarity applies in higher education, it is important to understand the terms that frequent the language surrounding it. The article “The Big Terms” does an excellent job using fruit metaphors to explain the differences between interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary- “‘multidisciplinarity’ is like a fruit bowl, where different disciplines are represented by the different fruits that are placed together in a bowl but which do not mix much or change shape themselves. ‘Interdisciplinarity’ is more like a fruit smoothie, where the disciplines are blended together–integrated– to create something new.” For example, being a double major in business and music would be example of multidisciplinarity while creating a major called “the business of music” would be an example of interdisciplinarity. The article “Fruit: a Metaphor for Understanding Interdisciplinarity” discusses this concept even further by using fruit to show how to quantify the amalgamation quotient of a concept. In other words, we can determine the degree of interdisciplinarity in any given concept, as the “interdisciplinary richness of any two exemplars of knowledge, research, and education can be compared by weighing four variables: the number of disciplines involved, the “distance” between them, the novelty and creativity involved in combining the disciplinary elements, and their degree of integration”. After determining whether something is multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary, we can also quantify how interdisciplinary it is. The last article breaks down of the most basic but important parts of interdisciplinarity is- what a discipline is. In order to understand how to combine disciplines and make them your own, one must understand the specifics of disciplinarity. The article “Content, Methods and Epistemologies” describes “the central building blocks of disciplines” of interdisciplinarity which are content, methods and epistemologies. These terms describe the what, how and why, respectively, of each discipline, which makes understanding how to combine them much easier. In essence, these articles are a great way to start learning about what interdisciplinarity is, so if you have never heard of IDS I highly recommend these as a starting point. Interdisciplinary theory is incredibly interesting and very applicable to any aspect of life and I think it’s going to have a huge place in education in the future.
Because many people have not heard of or do not understand the terms involved in interdisciplinarity, I think there needs to be a push for learning about interdisciplinarity in school, preferably at a younger age than college. Not only is it a great tool for scholars, but it’s also a great way to teach younger children the benefits of working together. It shows how important it is for people to have different strengths, because each individual strength helps to make a project ultimately more successful. I think it’s really important for students to know that they are important and valuable members of society, even if they don’t have conventional strengths. I know a lot of people who are my age who have really low self esteems because they were never considered smart in school, even if they have amazing abilities in other fields. Teaching college students about interdisciplinarity is beneficial, but I think there is also a huge benefit to teaching this concept to younger students.
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