To understand and be understood: facilitating interdisciplinary learning through the promotion of communicative competence

Abstract

Whilst interdisciplinarity has become a central concern of research and learning in geography, few from the discipline have considered the practical facilitation of interdisciplinarity in the classroom. Module convenors, I argue, must pay greater attention to how learners engage and negotiate with peers and perspectives from other disciplines. In this paper, I focus on my own efforts in designing and teaching a second year undergraduate course on health, biomedicine, and society, to illuminate the opportunities and challenges facing teaching staff who seek to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning in the classroom. Drawing upon theories of communication, I demonstrate the significance of developing “communicative competence” as a pathway to successful interdisciplinary learning. Unless learners from one discipline can understand, and be understood by, peers from other disciplines, the accomplishment of interdisciplinary learning is undermined. Interdisciplinary modules should include learning outcomes that facilitate student development in this area. Approaching interdisciplinary learning through the lens of communicative competence casts critical attention upon the central abilities and cultural sensitivities that are the hallmarks of interdisciplinary collaboration – from negotiating meaning to critical disciplinary awareness – and highlights the lessons that interdisciplinarity poses for disciplines, such as geography, tasked with preparing students for interdisciplinary learning.

Keywords:

• Interdisciplinary learning
• interdisciplinarity
• interdisciplinary communication
• classroom communication
• teaching and learning

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank the students of “Health, Biomedicine, and Society” whose engagement, comments and feedback have profoundly shaped my own teaching and scholarship in recent years. I also acknowledge a significant debt to David Andrew, David Beckingham, Tim Brown, Fran Darlington-Pollock, Al James, Francesca Moore, David Nally, Simon Reid-Henry, Caroline Walker, and Matthew Williamson for encouraging me – through both their advice and example – to cast a critical eye over my own teaching practice.

Notes

1. While interdisciplinary undergraduate degree programmes remain few and far between (in the English context at least), the growth and success of interdisciplinary postgraduate programmes is encouraging (see Donovan, Sidaway, & Stewart, 2011).

2. As ever, there are exceptions to this trend. Jones and Merritt (1999), Schmelzkopf (2002), and Herrick (2010) document their own efforts, as geographers, to promote interdisciplinary learning in the classroom.

3. The development of these flagship interdisciplinary models, one could suggest, is as much about marketing the distinctiveness of the institution in the competitive neoliberal world of higher education as it is about incubating interdisciplinary best practice.

4. The QMUL research ethics committee approved this research. Students were enthusiastic about the research and all those approached agreed to take part. All participants signed an informed consent form that made clear that their (non-)participation would not influence their final grade. Interviews were scheduled in the first week of the first semester and the first and final weeks of the second semester. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then thematically coded. All 30 students completed the schedule of three interviews.