Is interdisciplinarity old news? A disciplined consideration of interdisciplinarity

Abstract

This paper draws on the theory of Basil Bernstein and on more recent applications of it by Rob Moore, John Beck and Michael Young to respond to recent calls for the replacement of discipline-based university faculties and departments with ‘problem-based’ curricula and programmes of study. It considers, particularly, the potential consequences of such a shift in higher education policy for the identities of university teachers, researchers and students, and suggests that these calls for reform are premised especially on the problematic assumption that, in Bernsteinian terms, ‘regionalised’ curricular inputs can be expected to produce ‘generic’ knowledge outcomes within the university.

Keywords:

• interdisciplinarity
• tertiary education
• Bernstein

Notes

1. While Taylor’s focus, and the focus of this article, is on the American university, similar reforms have been called for in a number of nations worldwide and have even been implemented to varying degrees from nations ranging from France (Stavrou 2009) to Australia (Greig 2010).

2. Taylor does not provide readers with the logic behind the seven-year (as opposed to six years, or eight years, etc.) timeframe he recommends for faculty contracts and problem-focused programmes of study. As such, the suggestion that the timeframes have been proposed rather arbitrarily cannot be discounted.

3. Political discourse on the subject of interdisciplinarity, however, has remained relatively muted. For example, the major and wide-ranging final report by the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education (US Department of Education 2006) mentions curriculum only five times and, while these include positive references to experiential learning and computer-based curriculum, interdisciplinarity is not addressed in any way.

4. Indeed, in a more recent and wider analysis of the use of the term ‘interdisciplinary’ in the titles of academic journal articles, Jacobs and Frickel (2009) reveal an upward trend since the 1990s. Likewise, in their review of bibliometric research examining cross-disciplinary citation patterns in academic journals (i.e. the percentage of references in sociology journals coming from outside sociology), they identify ‘a web of connections between scholarly articles, with no discipline standing completely apart from the others’ (Jacobs & Frickel 2009, 48). As such, Taylor’s experience, which he identifies as a cause for concern in his piece, of attending ‘a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society’ (2009) – besides being unrecognised by Taylor as prima facie evidence of ‘routine interdisciplinarity’ at work – indicates that what he terms such a ‘significant oversight’ may actually be an exception to the rule.

5. In further supporting his argument here, Moore offers examples such as ‘recent advances in neuro-science or the way in which important advances in genetics have transformed not only that science itself and the biological sciences more generally, but have fed into a range of other areas and debates, such as the “out of Africa” thesis’ (2008, 11).

6. I have provided a Bernsteinian conceptualisation of No Child Left Behind and its impact on teachers’ professional practices and identities elsewhere (Barrett 2009).

7. Such an example could certainly be extended to the United States, covering an even lengthier timeframe before many individual states adopted more centralised measures of standards and accountability following the publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983) and up to the implementation of No Child Left Behind in 2002.

8. Mid-term elections shortly thereafter resulted in a Congress that was less sympathetic to Spellings’ intentions, that passed legislation to reduce the power of the Secretary of Education, and that, in re-authorising the Higher Education Act, bars the Secretary of Education from establishing ‘any criteria that specifies, defines, or prescribes the standards that accrediting agencies or associations shall use to assess any institution’s success with respect to student achievement’ (US Congress 2008).

9. As one anonymous referee of this article has importantly noted, we can look to the United States to foreshadow where universities in Europe and, more specifically, in the United Kingdom may be heading. The argument put forward in the recent Browne Review that individuals who are perceived to benefit from the enhanced earning power that goes with a degree should shoulder the financial burden of higher education very much reflects longstanding beliefs and practice within the American system of tertiary education. As such, while debate about the purpose, organisation and practice of higher education in the United States has a different starting point to that in the United Kingdom and Europe, similarities between the destinations and the controversies visited (and revisited) along the way can be expected.

10. Although it must of course be recognised that the work undertaken in these centres might very well take on productive characteristics of routine interdisciplinarity as outlined by Moore (2011).