Interdisciplinarity in Adapted Physical Activity

ABSTRACT

It is commonly accepted that inquiry in adapted physical activity involves the use of different disciplines to address questions. It is often advanced today that complex problems of the kind frequently encountered in adapted physical activity require a combination of disciplines for their solution. At the present time, individual research questions in adapted physical activity are most often developed and pursued by researchers from a single discipline despite incentives to the contrary. However, the inclusion of multiple disciplines to address research questions raises a number of challenges. A major one is effective communication. The language related to the use of multiple disciplines is often used loosely. Key terms, such as multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary, are often used interchangeably. We introduce the technical meaning of these terms and outline some key epistemic challenges to communication across disciplines and highlight the importance of willingness, on the part of researchers, to carefully listen to each other.

KEYWORDS:

• Assumptions
• communication
• epistemology
• ontology
• research

Notes

1. Our field has had a long history of debates about its nature and its name. Expressions like physical education, movement science, exercise science, human performance, human kinetics, kinanthropology, physical activity sciences, science of motor action, human movement studies, and others, have been suggested as appropriate to identify our field. In this article we use the expression kinesiology as an umbrella term which could be used interchangeably with other similar expressions.

2. This paragraph may appear confusing because it says that exercise physiology could be viewed both as a discipline and a cross-discipline. We claim this usage is correct. The reader is reminded that biochemistry, a recognized discipline, could also be viewed as resulting from an amalgam of knowledge in biology and chemistry. In addition, biochemistry has created its own domain of inquiry (a key characteristic of a discipline).

3. The integration concept is reminiscent of the ideal of unified sciences which has been viewed as a desirable goal by many during the last 100 years. For example, members of the Vienna Circle, typically described as logical positivists, started the publication of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, which consisted of 19 monographs published between 1938 and 1969. More recently, scientists have attempted to revive a similar project under the idea of “consilience” (e.g., Slingerland & Collard, 2012; Wilson, 1998).