An Empirical Assessment of Interdisciplinarity: Perspectives from Graduate Students and Program Administrators

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• 作者：Vivek Shandas ; Stephan Edward Brown
• 关键词：Interdisciplinarity ; pedagogy ; urban planning ; graduate program
• 刊名：Innovative Higher Education
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：November 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：41
• 期：5
• 页码：411-423
• 全文大小：547 KB
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Education
  Education
  Higher Education
  Educational Technology
  Learning and Instruction
  Teacher Education
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-1758
• 卷排序：41

文摘

Interdisciplinarity is heralded as a relatively new educational and research paradigm that can effectively address complex problems at disciplinary boundaries. Yet little is known about the extent to which interdisciplinarity has penetrated higher education, nor about how students and program administrators view its usefulness. Through a case study of one field, urban planning, we assessed the extent to which graduate students and program administrators understand and support interdisciplinarity in the departments. We also assessed the extent to which specific factors might affect levels of support. Our survey results suggest differing attitudes between students and administrators and diverse opinions as to whether interdisciplinarity provides a practicable approach to addressing societal challenges. We offer a model for fostering interdisciplinarity and developing empirical evaluations of programs.