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Abstract
We present a case study centered on an engineering design initiative in which engineers invite scientists to participate in an interdisciplinary collaboration aimed at designing an unmanned, underwater robot. Our interviews of faculty and student project participants were the central focus of our analysis, while the knowledge products produced by the participants in the form of journal articles played a role in our formulation of an open-ended interview question set. Boundary objects in the form of fish and their bio-robotic replications emerged as having played a central role in facilitating the negotiation of epistemological challenges, which were instantiated as differing experimental practices, theories, and concepts. Our analysis of the interview data pays particular attention to the role of boundary objects and epistemological challenges in shaping research and pedagogical practices and in bringing about disciplinary knowledge gains. We propose that interdisciplinary research processes operate via boundary objects to facilitate epistemic negotiations that are leading to disciplinary transformations. The researchers’ reflections indicate that many of their approaches to research and education were fundamentally impacted through this collaboration and that their respective disciplines experienced knowledge gains that may not have been possible within a single-disciplinary framework.
Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0938043. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We are also grateful to the participants in this research.
Notes
1Smith, Scandalous Knowledge, 2006, pp. 108–129; Wenger, “Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems,” 2000, p. 227.
2Newell, “A Theory of Interdisciplinary Studies,” 2001, p. 5.
3Mansilla et al., “Targeted Assessment Rubric,” 2009, p. 343.
4Lattuca, Voigt and Fath, “Does Interdisciplinarity Promote Learning?,” 2004, p. 24.
5Klein, “Evaluation of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research,” 2008, p. 120.
6McCarthy, “The Critique of Impure Reason,” 1990, p. 439.
7Galison discusses the idea of “dyads” such as experiment/experimenter in which, through material practices, both aspects of the dyad are continually shifting. In our case, the engineers’ identities shift along with their experimental practices, even as they participatorily construct interdisciplinary intersections of scientific research communities: See Galison, “Reflections on Image and Logic,” 1999, p. 256.
8Collins, Evans, and Gorman, “Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise,” 2007, p. 658; Gorman, “Levels of Expertise and Trading Zones,” 2002, pp. 933–934.
9McNeill, “On Interdisciplinary Research,” 1999, pp. 313–314.
10McNeill, “On Interdisciplinary Research,” 1999, p. 312.
11Borrego and Newswander, “Definitions of Interdisciplinary Research,” 2010, p. 77.
12Aagaard-Hansen and Svedin, “Quality Issues in Cross-disciplinary Research,” 2009, p. 167.
13Lattuca and Knight, “In the Eye of the Beholder,” 2010, pp. 2, 5.
14Mansilla and Duraisingh, “Targeted Assessment of Students' Interdisciplinary Work,” 2007, p. 219.
15Apostel and Vanlandschoot, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1994, pp. 1, 5; Klein, Crossing Boundaries, 1996; Newell, “A Theory of Interdisciplinary Studies,” 2001, p. 6; Repko, Interdisciplinary Research, 2008, p. 283.
16Aagaard-Hansen, “The Challenges of Cross-disciplinary Research,” 2007, p. 167; McNeill, “On Interdisciplinary Research,” 1999, p. 314; Rosenfield, “The Potential of Transdisciplinary Research,” 1992, pp. 1343, 1345.
17Apostel and Vanlandschoot, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1994, p. 3; Klein, “A Conceptual Vocabulary of Interdisciplinary Science,” 2000, p. 3.
18Rafols and Meyer, “Diversity and Network Coherence as Indicators of Interdisciplinarity,” 2010, p. 364.
19Porter and Rafols, “Is Science Becoming More Interdisciplinary?,” 2009, pp. 728–735.
20ISI (Institute of Science Index); SCI (Science Citation Index)
21Leydesdorff and Rafols, “A Global Map of Science Based on the ISI Subject Categories,” 2009, p. 355.
22Porter and Rafols, “Is Science Becoming More Interdisciplinary?,” 2009, p. 741; Rafols and Meyer, “Diversity and Network Coherence as Indicators of Interdisciplinarity,” 2010, p. 264.
23Rafols and Meyer, “Diversity and Network Coherence as Indicators of Interdisciplinarity,” 2010, p. 264.
24Smith, Scandalous Knowledge, 2006, p. 124. Fuller elaborates on normative modes of knowledge production and the organization of inquiry: “Social epistemology will have a dynamic vision of how these disparate parts [the specialized disciplines] can be brought together … how to organize and dynamize knowledge producers who, if left to themselves would simply reproduce themselves”: See Fuller, “Social Epistemology” 2014.
25Greckhamer et al., “Demystifying Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research,” 2008, p. 309; McNeill, “On Interdisciplinary Research,” 1999, pp. 312–313.
26Klein, “Evaluation of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research,” 2008, p. 122.
27Aagaard-Hansen and Svedin, “Quality Issues in Cross-disciplinary Research,” 2009, p. 166, quoting Berge, Powell, and Boye, “Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research,” 1997, pp. 17–18.
28Leydesdorff and Rafols, “A Global Map of Science based on the ISI Subject Categories,” 2009, p. 349; Rafols and Meyer, “Diversity and Network Coherence as Indicators of Interdisciplinarity,” 2010, p. 283.
29Donald, Learning to Think, 2002, pp. 2, 7.
30Donald, Learning to Think, 2002, pp. 62–65, 96–99, 111–115.
31Apostel characterize the general strategy of an integrated approach: “find a problem that's on the frontier of at least two disciplines and that is also of a broad scope”: See Apostel and Vanlandschoot, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1994, p. 13. (p. 4).
32We utilize “brokers” and “bridges” interchangeably. Wenger defines a broker as a type of bridge. People who “act as brokers between communities [ … ] can introduce elements of one practice into another”: See Wenger, “Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems,” 2000, p. 235.
33Klein, “Evaluation of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research,” 2008, p. 116.
34Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1996, pp. 5–6, 23–42.
35Carlile, “A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries,” 2002, p. 442.
36Apostel and Vanlandschoot, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1994, p. 12.
37Apostel and Vanlandschoot, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1994, p. 2.
38Fujimura, “Crafting Science,” 1992, p. 168.
39Fujimura, “Crafting Science,” 1992, p. 169; Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects,” 1989, p. 389.
40Fox, “Boundary Objects, Social Meaning and the Success of New Technologies,” 2011, p. 70.
41Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects,” 1989, p. 393.
42Akkerman and Bakker, “Boundary Crossing and Boundary Objects,” 2011, pp. 136–137.
43Star, “This is Not a Boundary Object,” 2010, p. 602.
44Kimble, Grenier, and Goglio-Primard, “Innovation and Knowledge Sharing Across Professional Boundaries,” 2010, p. 437.
45Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects,” 1989, p. 410; Star, “This is not a Boundary Object,” 2010, p. 602.
46Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects,” 1989, p. 393.
47Fox describes a situation in nineteenth-century medicine in which antiseptic technologies proved to be an inhibitory boundary object: See Fox, “Boundary Objects, Social Meaning and the Success of New Technologies,” 2011, pp. 76–80.
48Fong, Valerdi, and Srinivasan, “Using a Boundary Object Framework to Analyze Interorganizational Collaboration,” 2007, pp. 1848–1851.
49Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects,” 1989, pp. 412–413.
50John et al., “Identifying Gaps between HCI, Software Engineering, and Design, and Boundary Objects to Bridge Them,” 2004, p. 1723.
51Wesselink, “The Emergence of Interdisciplinary Knowledge in Problem-Focused Research,” 2009, p. 410.
52Trompette and Vinck, “Revisiting the Notion of Boundary Object,” 2009, see section entitled “Uses of the Notion”.
53Fox claims that “little has been written on how boundary objects work, and what role human agency plays in this function”: See Fox, “Boundary Objects, Social Meaning and the Success of New Technologies,” 2011, p. 80.
54Fujimura, “Crafting Science,” 1992, p. 169.
55Latour, Science in Action, 1987, pp. 103–144. Highlighting this difference is important because the interpretive flexibility that enables a boundary object to be reconstructed to meet local (i.e. single-disciplinary) situations is “disadvantageous for establishing the kind of ‘stabilization’ of allies behind ‘facts’ which Latour discusses.”: See Fujimura, “Crafting Science,” 1992, p. 169.
56Fujimura, “Crafting Science,” 1992, p. 171.
57Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1996, p. 76.
58Apostel and Vanlandschoot, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1994, p. 2.
59Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 2001, p. 26.
60Creswell, Research Design, 2009, pp. 8–9, 16.
61Because people retrospectively construct narratives that do not necessarily align with events as they actually transpired, we recognize that in situ observations combined with the interviews would have enriched our analysis. However, working within the constraints of our study, we believe that the extent of our analysis is sufficient to provide valuable insights that can be utilized in conducting further studies.
62McNair et al., “Faculty and Student Interdisciplinary Identities in Self-Managed Teams,” 2011, p. 380.
63Creswell, Research Design, 2009, p. 201.
64Gorman, “Levels of Expertise and Trading Zones,” 2002, pp. 933–934.
65Rafols and Meyer, “Diversity and Network Coherence as Indicators of Interdisciplinarity,” 2010, p. 25.
66Rafols and Meyer, “Diversity and Network Coherence as Indicators of Interdisciplinarity,” 2010, p. 4.
67McCarthy, Auto Mania, 2007, p. 167.
68Kotter, Leading Change, 1996, pp. 103–105; Kotter, “Accelerate!” 2012, pp. 49–50; Gulati, “Silo Busting,” p. 101.
69Apostel and Vanlandschoot, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1994, p. 3.
70Edmondson, Bohmer, and Pisano, “Speeding Up Team Learning,” 2001, pp. 129–130.
71Covey, Principle-Centered Leadership, 1991, pp. 33–39, 101–108, 250–266; Larsson, “Banking on Social Capital,” 2007, pp. 606, 620–621; Lee, The Power Principle, 1997, pp. 16–17, 100–117.
72Kotter, Power and Influence, 1985, p. 32.
73Ashworth, “‘Bracketing’ in Phenomenology,” 1999, p. 707.
74Bloor, The Enigma of the Aerofoil, 2011, pp. 197–198.
75Kotter, Power and Influence, 1985, p. 33.