Interdisciplinarity For The 21st Century

Interdisciplinarity is increasingly viewed as a necessary ingredient in the training of future oriented 21st century disciplines that rely on both analytic and synthetic abilities across disciplines. Nearly every curricular document or vision statement of schools and universities include a call for promoting creativity in students. Yet the construct of creativity and giftedness across disciplines remains elusive in the sense that the prototypical examples of such work come from eminent scientists, artists and mathematicians, and little if any work has been conducted with non-eminent individuals. This monograph is an attempt to fill this gap by putting forth the view that interdisciplinarity and creativity are related constructs, and that the cultivation of domain general creativity is possible. Mathematics has historically been anchored to numerous disciplines like theology, natural philosophy, culture and art, allowing for a flexibility of thought that is difficult to cultivate in other disciplines. In this monograph, the numerous chapters from Australia, U.S.A., Canada, Cyprus, Denmark and Japan provide a compelling illustration of the intricate connection of mathematics with literature, paradoxes, history, technology and modeling, thus serving as a conduit for interdisciplinarity, creativity and learning to occur.

Interdisciplinarity has become increasingly important for emergent professions of the 21st century yet there is a dearth of systematic studies aimed at implementing it in the school and university curricula. The Mathematics and its Connections to the Arts and Sciences (MACAS ) group places Mathematics as a vehicle through which deep and meaningful connections can be forged with the Arts and the Sciences and as a means of promoting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary thinking traits amongst students. The Third International Symposium held by the MACAS group in Moncton, Canada in 2009 included numerous initiatives and ideas for interdisciplinarity that are implementable in both the school and university setting. The chapters in this book cover interdisciplinary links with mathematics found in the domains of culture, art, aesthetics, music, cognition, history, philosophy, engineering, technology and science with contributors from Canada, U.S, Denmark, Germany, Mexico, Iran and Poland amongst others.

Clarification of the aims and problems of interdisciplinarity, as this book demonstrates, not only will help reveal the movement's probable impact on university teaching and research but also will shed light on the overall future of the university. This book therefore speaks to faculty members and administrators in general, as well as to teachers and students whose specialty is the study of higher education. A recurring theme is that every academic specialty can be justified for purposes of research, provided it does not lead to overspecialization in education. The proviso is a formidable one, challenging the intellect, the will, and the good faith of all concerned. Yet interdisciplinarity has a fundamental historical sanction: disciplinary domains are not immutable but rather are constantly evolving through fission and fusion. (Examples of fission are the division of medieval grammar and rhetoric into modern lingustic and literary studies, or of 19th-century biology into today's life sciences. Fusion is exemplified in a range of fields from astrophysics through biochemistry to psycholinguists and social psychology.) A general perspective on the continuing debate about interdisciplinary is presented in the first four chapters, followed by six chapters on specific problems and prospects. The introduction reviews well-founded as well as misdirected objections to interdisciplinarity, contrasting &"natural&" interactions as in geophysics (arising from intrinsic developments) with &"artificial&" ones as in general education courses (arising from curriculum design) &—but holding that the latter can be as legitimate as the former if responsive to genuine educational needs. Chapters 1 to 4 give the historical and philosophical background of interdisciplinarity from Plato's Academy to the Center for Educational Research and Innovation. Chapters 5 to 7 consider specific challenges in the respective domains of natural science, social science, and the humanities&—cautioning against incompetent borrowings of paradigms. Chapters 8 and 9 treat the methodological, institutional, and personal problems arising from boundary-crossing. Chapter 10 critically analyzes three cases of interdisciplinary innovation in the United States and gives summary descriptions of programs in a dozen countries.

Examines the contemporary academy by connecting its discipline-based structure with its burgeoning interdisciplinary focus.

The first critical history of interdisciplinary efforts and movements in the modern university. Interdisciplinarity—or the interrelationships among distinct fields, disciplines, or branches of knowledge in pursuit of new answers to pressing problems—is one of the most contested topics in higher education today. Some see it as a way to break down the silos of academic departments and foster creative interchange, while others view it as a destructive force that will diminish academic quality and destroy the university as we know it. In Undisciplining Knowledge, acclaimed scholar Harvey J. Graff presents readers with the first comparative and critical history of interdisciplinary initiatives in the modern university. Arranged chronologically, the book tells the engaging story of how various academic fields both embraced and fought off efforts to share knowledge with other scholars. It is a story of myths, exaggerations, and misunderstandings, on all sides. Touching on a wide variety of disciplines—including genetic biology, sociology, the humanities, communications, social relations, operations research, cognitive science, materials science, nanotechnology, cultural studies, literacy studies, and biosciences—the book examines the ideals, theories, and practices of interdisciplinarity through comparative case studies. Graff interweaves this narrative with a social, institutional, and intellectual history of interdisciplinary efforts over the 140 years of the modern university, focusing on both its implementation and evolution while exploring substantial differences in definitions, goals, institutional locations, and modes of organization across different areas of focus. Scholars across the disciplines, specialists in higher education, administrators, and interested readers will find the book’s multiple perspectives and practical advice on building and operating—and avoiding fallacies and errors—in interdisciplinary research and education invaluable.

This book comprises proceedings of the 2022 International Forum “Science and Global Challenges of the XXI Century”. The main principle of the Forum’s program is interdisciplinarity, the formation of end-to-end innovation chains: fundamental and applied research, technology development, implementation, and wide application of networks and systems. In 2022, the central theme of the forum is innovations and technologies in interdisciplinary applications. The book covers a wide range of knowledge-communication methodologies and effective technologies for processing data in various forms and areas. The book might interest researchers working at the interface of disciplines, such as e-learning, digital humanities, computational linguistics, cognitive studies, GIS, digital geography, machine learning, and others. It can also be a valuable source of information for Bachelor and Master students with open curricula or majors and minors who seek to find a balance between several fields of their interest.

The ‘tribes and territories’ metaphor for the cultures of academic disciplines and their roots in different knowledge characteristics has been used by those interested in university life and work since the early 1990s. This book draws together research, data and theory to show how higher education has gone through major change since then and how social theory has evolved in parallel. Together these changes mean there is a need to re-theorise academic life in a way which reflects changed contexts in universities in the twenty-first century, and so a need for new metaphors. Using a social practice approach, the editors and contributors argue that disciplines are alive and well, but that in a turbulent environment where many other forces conditioning academic practices exist, their influence is generally weaker than before. However, the social practice approach adopted in the book highlights how this influence is contextually contingent – how disciplines are deployed in different ways for different purposes and with varying degrees of purchase. This important book pulls together the latest thinking on the subject and offers a new framework for conceptualising the influences on academic practices in universities. It brings together a distinguished group of scholars from across the world to address questions such as: Have disciplines been displaced by inter-disciplinarity, having outlived their usefulness? Have other forces acting on the academy pushed disciplines into the background as factors shaping the practices of academics and students there? How significant are disciplinary differences in teaching and research practices? What is their significance in other areas of work in universities? This timely book addresses a pressing concern in modern education, and will be of great interest to university professionals, managers and policy-makers in the field of higher education.

This peer-reviewed book adopts a multidisciplinary perspective to re-examine the complicated nature of societal challenges, resulting from mans quest for an increasingly reduced world. Chapter One discusses methodological innovations in teaching in Rwanda to postulate how culturally-adapted resources liberate learners from the top-bottom colonial pedagogy. Chapter Two derives from Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse to establish that human beings, as replicated by Woofs characters, seem to be much more defined by biochemical factors than by socioeconomic and cultural factors. Chapter Three posits the centrality of environmental factors in language learning in examining the effectives of instruction. Chapter Four exposes the double-edged international diplomacy, which victimised Sudan, and suggests solutions that anticipate the preventive diplomacy of the United Nations in the 20th and 21st centuries, with reference to D.H Lawrences The Rainbow. Chapter Five examines political discourses in Taylors The Land of the Saracen to show how a redefinition of orientalism experienced by early Americans leads to an ambivalent Americanised orientalism. Chapter Six reviews principle axioms of postcolonial theory asserts that literature teaching in Africa has shifted from exclusive literary dogmas to a multifactorial approach, which enhances human construction. Chapter Seven sees elderly people in Africa as mediators and socio-political mentors necessary for cross generational fertilization needed for sustainable development. Chapter Eight analyses ways through which both Nigerian and Cameroon English maintain their norm developing status according to Kachrus concentric circle. Chapter Nine argues that the Book of Genesis in the Bible venerates women, contrary to Christian attributes of betrayal. It argues that God is not wholly potent and must learn from the failings of his creation to perfect his art. Chapter Ten examines gender roles in Cameroonian myths to argue that new societal trends are offshoots of images constructed by myths. Chapter Eleven explores the bond between the English language and education and challenges linguistic imbalances that undermine 21st Century Africas educational system. Chapter Twelve discusses womens agentive roles in the spread of Islam evidence in Salman Rushdies The Satanic Verses and contends that Rushdie empowers female prophetess as a way of eliminating values of subjugation in which they find themselves. Chapter Thirteen contends that in postcolonial or postmodern contexts, rules on poetic drama may be an empirical farce as there is always a dramatic depiction of events, which portrays the poet dramatists impressions. Chapter Fourteen analyses the structure of negative constructions in a Bantu languageLimbumto propose an outer shell NegP and an inner core NegP contrary to common understanding. Chapter Fifteen argues that, the motives for which Cameroonians were made to learn English in state-run pilot linguistic centres have been submerged by the new global dispensation thereby contesting the relative value of the centres. Chapter Sixteen sees the emergence of a more Francophonised English in Cameron, which sets a new order for the definition of Cameroon English.