Interdisciplinarity & Collaboration
Abby Goode
Summer 2019
Slow Interdisciplinarity, Reprised
In some regards, it seems counter to the values of open education to begin the year with a forecast of what’s to come. If students truly shape how I approach my teaching, how rigid and detailed can my plans possibly be before I meet them? Yet even in the most unplanned, learner-driven, project-based courses (such as Integrated Capstones), I still find myself imagining the arch of the class, and how we will get to where we are doing. I imagine flexible assignments, structured fish-bowl discussions, and my now-infamous primer assignment.[*] In other words, despite my best efforts, my inner planner is in full force. This time, it is much more informed by current scholarship of teaching and learning, thanks to my participation in the Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community (CPLC).
This summer, I was most influenced by the work of Cathy Davidson, Josh Eyler, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and Paul Handstedt, who all, in their own ways, emphasize more integrated, open, and collaborative forms of learning. Particularly during my first read of Davidson’s The New Education (2017), I began to develop a concept that I call “slow interdisciplinarity”: a method of teaching and learning that calls us to be mindful, respectful, and inquisitive of each other’s disciplinary perspectives—to value ways of knowing that might challenge our own. Many of our readings—and indeed, much of the forward-thinking scholarship on teaching and learning—emphasize the vital role of innovative, integrated curricula in transforming higher education for the twenty-first century. I couldn’t agree more, and my sense is that Plymouth State’s community is invested in creating and sustaining interdisciplinary learning experiences for our students. However, as a member of the INCO Task Force, an INCAP Teaching Fellow, and an ambassador to WPI’s Institute for Project-Based Learning this past summer, I’ve learned that effective interdisciplinary pedagogy is much easier said than done. As I wrote in a previous piece this summer: “Sometimes I think that, in our zeal to provide more innovative learning experiences, we get on the interdisciplinary train without inviting students on board. And we need to remember that, if we are going to implement interdisciplinary forms of learning, we should welcome students into these forms of learning as well. Sometimes this requires slowing down, making space for conversations about disciplinary divides and methods, and recognizing how those divides can affect the classroom.”
Having taught English courses with multiple majors, I am no stranger to the ways in which disciplinary divides can alienate non-English majors and unintentionally devalue diverse forms of knowing. So, when I taught an Integrated Capstone (INCAP) course last spring, I began by asking students in the course to articulate their own disciplinary assumptions, methods, and objects of study. I did this for a numb