A phenomenographic exploration of course leaders’ understandings of interdisciplinarity

ABSTRACT

The number of interdisciplinary courses being developed in higher education across different countries is increasing. The people responsible for developing and enacting interdisciplinary courses can have significant design and teaching autonomy, but little is known about how they understand interdisciplinarity. This study uses phenomenographic interviews to address the question: how do interdisciplinary course leaders understand interdisciplinarity? This includes exploration of the relationships between different understandings of interdisciplinarity.

Findings from interviews with 23 interdisciplinary course leaders reveal understandings of interdisciplinarity expressed in relation to (A) definitions, (B) knowledge spaces, and (C) situated knowledge work practices. Understandings were multiple and heterogeneous; they varied between participants and more importantly participants each expressed understandings belonging to multiple categories. Findings show that academics’ views about what interdisciplinarity means are rarely exclusively aligned with normative definitions, but instead are marked by individuals’ construction of meaning through processes of acquisition, sense-making and situational judgment.

The study’s findings could be used in future educational design and planning work to elicit and discuss different stakeholder understandings of interdisciplinarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Understandings of interdisciplinary
• interdisciplinary teaching
• higher education
• academic leaders
• phenomenography

Introduction

Universities in many countries have significantly expanded their interdisciplinary curricula over the past decade (Lindvig, Lyall, and Meagher 2019; Lyall et al. 2015). In a world marked by rapid technological change, post-truth politics, and systemic wicked problems, universities aim to strengthen students’ capacities for engaging with complexity and uncertainty through interdisciplinary courses. However, interdisciplinary courses are often developed at the fringes of universities and their academic departments, left to the discretion of individual academics or small teams (Lindvig, Lyall, and Meagher 2019). This results in significant diversity in course goals, curriculum designs, and student outcomes (Lyall et al. 2015). Little has been documented about how interdisciplinarity is understood by academics with significant agency over the creation and enactment of interdisciplinary curricula at universities.

Debates on the meaning of interdisciplinarity and the terminology are numerous and longstanding. It is commonplace for scholars in the area to problematise ‘interdisciplinarity’ and critique different understandings (Barry, Born, and Weszkalnys 2008; Klein 2017) or misunderstandings (Nowotny 2019), so much so that it has been characterised as ‘among the most talked about but most misunderstood topics in education on all levels’ (Graff 2016, 775). Subsequently, there are calls for empirical research that moves beyond assumptions and critique of definitions to investigate how interdisciplinarity is understood by those who engage in interdisciplinary work (Albert, Vuolanto, and Laberge 2023; Nersessian 2019; Nowotny 2019), including how different understandings relate to specific interdisciplinary practices and contexts (Franks et al. 2007; Lindvig, Lyall, and Meagher 2019; Vienni Baptista et al. 2020).

It is not uncommon for innovations in education to develop in the absence of rigorous empirical evidence (Goodyear 2018). However, the scarcity of empirical research on practices and on understandings of interdisciplinarity in practice pose serious risks to the sustainability of interdisciplinary education. The push for more interdisciplinary programs and courses creates a demand for teachers to understand how to design, teach, and assess interdisciplinary learning (DeZure 2017), yet most of the ‘how-to’ literature on practices of interdisciplinary education largely exists outside of peer-reviewed journals (Lindvig and Ulriksen 2019). This does not constitute an adequate empirical knowledge base to inform interdisciplinary course development. Together these factors pose a serious problem for the systematic development of interdisciplinary courses.

This study investigates the question, ‘How do leaders of interdisciplinary courses understand interdisciplinarity?’. It further maps out how different understandings of interdisciplinarity relate to each other. To accomplish this, it draws on phenomenographic interviews of 23 interdisciplinary course leaders from across the breadth of structures and disciplinary fields at the University of Sydney, an Australian comprehensive research-intensive higher education institution.

To situate our study, we first review some challenges faced in understanding interdisciplinarity and a review of literature related to different approaches to defining interdisciplinary. We then review some different research settings of investigations into understandings of interdisciplinarity and contextual variance, finishing by noting limitations and identifying calls for future research.

Literature review

Challenges in understanding interdisciplinarity

Despite the term ‘interdisciplinary’ being used in literature for more than a century (Sills 1986/2016), little clarity has emerged regarding how it is defined. Lindvig and Hillersdal (2019, 23) characterize interdisciplinary literature as ‘ripe with definitions, taxonomies, discussions and other attempts to define the concept’. Graff (2016, 781) describes this diversity of language as ‘a daunting semantic storm’. He later criticises the conflation of multiple related but distinct concepts including, but not limited to, integration, interaction, intersection, inter-professionalism, team science, multidisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity (Graff 2021) to describe a field which already includes varied concepts such as anti-disciplinarity (Pickering 2013) and systems (Ison 2017).

Offering an alternative perspective, Klein (2017) argues that this diversity of language denotes plurality rather than discord, encompassing both continuity and change in the evolution of its meaning as the term is challenged and extended. However, the mutability of the term ‘interdisciplinary’ poses a challenge for interdisciplinary teachers who often have limited interdisciplinary experience (Lyall et al. 2015) and must navigate this diversity of language.

Approaches to understanding interdisciplinarity

There are different approaches to articulating the meaning of interdisciplinarity. Some scholars suggest adopting inclusive and encompassing definitions. For example, Barry, Born, and Weszkalnys (2008) view interdisciplinarity as a wide spectrum, ranging from mere cooperation to invention in interdisciplinary practice and the recasting of disciplines themselves. However, inclusivity and vagueness of terms do not always help in the advancement of knowledge and teaching when specificity matters (Markauskaite 2020). For example, Lindvig and Ulriksen (2019) found that teachers often lump diverse practices together under the umbrella term ‘interdisciplinary’, universalising interdisciplinarity which risks trading off rich context from findings in exchange for purposes of generalisation.

Social and spatial metaphors which focus on interactions are another often-used approach to describing interdisciplinarity (Downey et al. 2019). Integration is one and involves the synthesis or combination of knowledge and methods from different disciplines to achieve an outcome unlikely to be achieved by any single disciplinary approach (Boix Mansilla, Miller, and Gartner 2000; Klein 1990). This is often used in studies of interdisciplinary education in universities (DeZure 2017; Kidron and Kali 2015). However, integration is complex, and Boon, van Baalen, and Groenier (2019) argue that there is a risk of oversimplifying the processes of integrating and combining knowledge from different disciplines, thereby ignoring the epistemic challenges inherent in interdisciplinary knowledge work.

Yet another approach to articulating the meaning of interdisciplinarity employs taxonomies and typologies to compare ‘interdisciplinary’ with other similar but distinct terms. The terms ‘multidisciplinarity’, ‘interdisciplinarity’, and ‘transdisciplinarity’ have been described as ‘sophisticated categorizations of the different forms of disciplinary exchange’ (Nikitina 2005, 395). These terms differentiate who is involved, how they interact, and what those involved aspire to achieve in exchanges between disciplines (Repko, Szostak, and Buchberger 2017). However, the assumption that disciplines are well-defined and static has been challenged (Albert, Vuolanto, and Laberge 2023; Brew 2008; Pinch 1990), weakening the efficacy of such comparisons intended to clarify understanding. Nersessian (2019) thus suggests that after decades of discussion of taxonomies, there should be a refocusing of attention onto research that provides precise and authentic accounts of the actualities of interdisciplinary research and education.

Varied contexts, varied understandings

Lindvig and Ulriksen (2019) show that understandings of interdisciplinary are situated within and therefore distinct to local practices. Franks et al. (2007) found conceptions of interdisciplinarity held by leaders of interdisciplinary reforms differed from those of interdisciplinary practitioners, while Lattuca (2003) reported differences between those who research and teach interdisciplinarity, and those who are directly involved in interdisciplinary scholarship. Additionally, Cooke et al. (2020) reported diverse meanings given to interdisciplinarity among members of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, attributing the diversity to individual variances in experiences, values, cultural norms, and values. On a wider scale, in a study of how interdisciplinarity is understood by researchers across Europe, Vienni Baptista et al. (2020, 18) found multiple, heterogeneous, and plural understandings of interdisciplinary terminology, noting ‘divergence, nuance, and contextual specificity with differences evident across disciplines, regions, and scholarly communities’.

In relation to institutional practices, Lindvig and Hillersdal (2019) argue that when the institutional framing of interdisciplinarity is unclear it is reflected in a lack of clarity in ground-level practices. To address this, Franks et al. (2007) call for mutually supportive or co-constructed institutional meanings and practices in universities. In relation to research on interdisciplinary understandings, Vienni Baptista et al. (2020) call for studies which not only map different understandings of interdisciplinarity, but also the relationships between them to identify and improve support for interdisciplinarity in universities. We address these multiple calls by investigating and mapping out the variance in understandings of interdisciplinarity among course leaders with varied levels of interdisciplinary experience and positions within a university. We further provide a visualisation in the form of an outcome space that can support the development of institutional understandings of interdisciplinarity and thereby support interdisciplinary teaching and learning at universities.

Methodology

This study aims to investigate and map out the understandings of interdisciplinarity of leaders of interdisciplinary courses. The primary research question is: How do leaders of interdisciplinary courses understand interdisciplinarity?

The study employs a phenomenographic approach which enables in-depth investigation of the scope and structure of how different individuals as part of a group understand a phenomenon. The phenomenographic approach is particularly suited to addressing this research question as it enables investigation of the relationships between the categories constructed, whereas systematic literature reviews and the syntheses of case studies are limited to reporting on variance. Also, it permits the study of a larger research sample than is usually feasible with ethnographic approaches.

Phenomenographic research produces an outcome space with two components (Åkerlind 2005). The first contains the categories of description which describe what participants focussed upon when they described interdisciplinarity. This is called the referential component. Second, the dimensions of variation show how participants’ understandings of interdisciplinarity varied across the categories. This is called the structural component. The final outcome is a two-dimensional space (referential and structural) that shows how different meanings of interdisciplinarity are interrelated.

Context and sampling

This study was conducted in a comprehensive research-intensive Australian university comprised of a mix of large faculties, composed from loosely cognate disciplinary fields (e.g. engineering encompassing computing, civil engineering, chemical engineering), and cross-faculty interdisciplinary research institutes.

Purposeful sampling, common in phenomenographic research (Bowden and Green 2005), was employed. We reviewed course handbooks and identified interdisciplinary courses. The criteria were as follows:

1. The course was described using terms ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘interdisciplinary’ or other synonyms, and

2. The course had a project component, with teams composed of students from than one disciplinary field.

A pool of 80 undergraduate courses was identified from across the breadth of the university’s structures and disciplinary fields. Employing a maximum variation strategy, we then purposefully selected specific courses from this pool and contacted course convenors aiming to identify people who had leadership roles and made substantial intellectual contributions to the conceptualisation, creation, design or redesign, or enactment of these interdisciplinary courses (we call them ‘course leaders’). We contacted course convenors gradually until we recruited enough participants with the desired characteristics. A total of 59 potential participants were contacted, 36 responded, 23 of them met all sampling criteria and agreed to participate.

After conducting 23 interviews it was observed that no new understandings were forthcoming. As the sample was diverse, it was decided that sufficient data had been gathered. This sample size was within the suggested range of 20–30 participants to enable sufficient variation, while avoiding an unmanageable amount of data to analyse (Bowden and Green 2005).

The final sample included 12 women and 11 men, with academic experience from 2 to 30 years (Table 1). Twelve participants held lecturer-level positions (lecturer or senior lecturer), and 11 participants held professorial-level positions (associate or full professor). The sample was distributed among participants affiliated with different disciplinary areas, including Sciences (4), Business and Law (4), Engineering and Design (4), Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (5), and Medicine and Health (6). All courses that participants focussed upon were open to undergraduate students, and six were also open to postgraduate students.

Table 1. Profiles of study participants.

Participant ID	Academic level	Years in academia	Disciplinary area	Years leading interdisciplinary courses
1	Professor	16+	Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences	3
2	Lecturer	6–10	Sciences	2
3	Lecturer	0–5	Business and Law	2
4	Lecturer	11–15	Medicine and Health	4
5	Lecturer	0–5	Engineering and Design	2
6	Lecturer	6–10	Business and Law	3
7	Lecturer	6–10	Engineering and Design	2
8	Professor	11–15	Sciences	2
9	Professor	11–15	Engineering and Design	6
10	Professor	11–15	Medicine and Health	3
11	Lecturer	11–15	Business and Law	3
12	Professor	16+	Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences	4
13	Professor	16+	Medicine and Health	5
14	Lecturer	11–15	Medicine and Health	3
15	Professor	11–15	Engineering and Design	5
16	Lecturer	6–10	Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences	1
17	Lecturer	16+	Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences	4
18	Professor	16+	Medicine and Health	5
19	Lecturer	0–5	Business and Law	2
20	Lecturer	16+	Sciences	4
21	Professor	16+	Sciences	4
22	Professor	16+	Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences	7
23	Professor	16+	Medicine and Health	7

Participants’ anonymity has been protected by removing identifying information and tagging quotations from their interviews with a participant identification number (e.g. P4).

Data collection and analysis

Semi-structured phenomenographic interviews (Åkerlind 2018) using videoconferencing were conducted. Both audio and video data were recorded and additional information about courses and participants’ profiles was collected from the university’s website in accordance with the University of Sydney’s human research ethics committee’s approved ethics protocol (approval #2020/668).

Table 2. Outcome space: course leaders’ understandings of interdisciplinarity and variations between them.

Categories /Dimensions of variation	Category A	Category B	Category C
	In relation to definitions	In relation to knowledge spaces	In relation to knowledge work
	Understandings interdisciplinarity draw on the assumption that a correct understanding and/or definition exists, but is unclear	Interdisciplinarity is understood in relation to spatial terms and the interactions that happen between disciplines, boundaries, diverse knowledges, or systems	Interdisciplinarity is understood in relation to knowledge work
1. Conception	A correct meaning exists	Multiple meanings are possible and acceptable	Meanings are situated in activity
2. Language	Focus on comprehension	Focus on sense-making using spatial words	Focus on authentic meaning-making and acceptance of uncertainty
3. Formation	Knowledge sharing	Knowledge consolidation	Knowledge construction

The participants were asked a range of questions about interdisciplinary teaching and learning, including: ‘What does interdisciplinarity mean to you?’. This was followed by a range of probing questions, including, ‘How do you understand it?’ and ‘What is the purpose of interdisciplinarity?’.

Analysis aimed to charterise the variation in how the phenomenon appeared to participants (Marton 1986). It started during the interviewing process and was guided by Åkerlind’s (2012) iterative process which involves sorting data and comparing them with and against other similar quotes, with consideration of how they relate to the categories of description being constructed. To enhance trustworthiness (Åkerlind 2005), the analysis was performed by two members of the research team: the first two authors.

The analysis involved initial work by the first author: (1) transcription of recordings; (2) identification of data relevant to answering the research question from the entire corpus; (3) initial coding of transcripts by semantic meaning into preliminary 45 codes (4–12 supporting quotes each); and (4) grouping of the preliminary codes by semantic similarity into four initial categories; and (5) construction of tables with quotes exemplifying key meanings in each code and category. The rest of the work was done by the two authors together: (6) comparing and contrasting initial codes and categories using shared tables and refinement into 3 categories; (7) review of the categories against the entire corpus of data to ensure no relevant data was missing and the included quotes were correctly interpreted; (8) identification of dimensions of variation to make differences between the categories more explicit and minor refinements of the categories; and (9) final review of the resulting categories and dimensions, and the quotes that support them to create a coherent and justifiable outcome space.

Results

Three ways of understanding interdisciplinarity

The outcome space included three categories of description and three dimensions of variation (Table 2). Course leaders expressed how they understand interdisciplinarity in relation to (A) definitions, (B) knowledge spaces, and (C) knowledge work. Three dimensions of variation, which existed across the three categories, represented how participants (1) conceive of interdisciplinarity, (2) use language to express their understanding of interdisciplinarity, and (3) formed their understanding of interdisciplinarity. No participant expressed an understanding solely in relation to definitions, and all participants expressed their understanding in 2–3 different ways, suggesting that their understanding of interdisciplinarity was grounded in multiple encounters with the phenomenon, ranging from definitions to sense-making to authentic disciplinary and interdisciplinary work experiences.

Table 3. Referential and structural components of course leaders’ understandings of interdisciplinarity.

Referential component Focus on the ‘what’ of understandings	Structural components focus on the ‘how’ of understandings
Understood in relation to definitions Understood in relation to knowledge spaces Understood in relation to knowledge work	Rationalist epistemological position Constructivist epistemological position Pragmatist epistemological position

The categories of description and dimension of variation are presented below with supporting quotes to illustrate them. Participants’ anonymity has been protected by removing identifying information and by tagging quotations from their interviews with a participant identification number in brackets (e.g. P4). Italics are used for emphasis of important aspects of statements, and ellipsis were used to denote that irrelevant text was omitted from participants’ statements.

Category A: interdisciplinarity is understood in relation to definitions

In Category A, participants expressed their understanding of interdisciplinarity in relation to institutional definitions, or those found in interdisciplinary literature. Although participants emphasised definitions to convey meaning, they exhibited limited confidence in definitions of interdisciplinarity to effectively convey their understandings.

First, some participants emphasised the lack of agreement and clarity around definitions, illustrated in these examples:

I know there's a big debate. You know, I've heard people feel very strongly about specific meanings. (P12)

it's hard to know and to define (P1)

Even though some course leaders had substantial interdisciplinary experience, some of them struggled to articulate their understanding and tried to do this by referring to how interdisciplinarity is commonly understood:

Interdisciplinarity as I understand it, I think that a lot of people would argue … you have different, different perspectives or different disciplinary perspectives coming together to try and answer questions that may not either be asked or solved with a single disciplinary perspective. So, in that respect I would say, well yes actually, maybe that is interdisciplinary, and I am interdisciplinary (but) then at the same time … I'm sorry, you're asking me questions that I haven't reflected on. So, I'm struggling with it. (P23)

Others referred to a definition used within the institution. For example:

Well, I can define it as not combining two science programs, which is how it's often interpreted at the university. (P4)

However, this institutionally provided definition was perceived to be problematic by some other participants:

I remember (leadership) kept saying it's not physics and maths, right? So, physics and maths actually have a unit together. So, I think everyone's thrown that out the window (P20)

Other participants emphasised the difficulty and usefulness in differentiating and articulating the meaning of different related terms to convey a meaning of interdisciplinarity:

I once read an article which went through the definitions for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, all that stuff. I don't remember any of it. I kind of bundled them all together. (P5)

In this category, participants expressed the conception that a correct or ‘pure’ normative understanding of interdisciplinarity exists. This is evidenced in the following statements:

We use the term interdisciplinary, and I think I probably wasn't really across all of that theory, and I'm probably still not (P20)

I'm not sure that [program name] is the best interdisciplinarity – in its pure form (P11)

The language participants used in this category focused on declarative knowledge and its comprehension. Nouns included ‘definitions’ (P5), ‘terms’ (P20), ‘theory’ (P20) and ‘specific meanings’ (P12). Verb use related to expressing comprehension, such as to ‘know what it means’ (P11, P19), to ‘know and define’ (P1), to ‘have an idea’ (P7), and to ‘have an understanding’ (P11), and to ‘remember’ (P5).

Participants learned and formed their understanding of interdisciplinarity through reading interdisciplinary literature. This sometimes was aided by discussions and peer support:

There were people that sort of suddenly came out of the woodwork around the campus … who wanted to talk, and that was of enormous value, and directed me to some interdisciplinary literature (P20)

To summarise, in Category A participants attempted to describe interdisciplinarity in relation to definitions, both encountered in the literature and locally used. However, despite the focus on definitions, the central emphasis in this category was one of critique, noting a general lack of confidence in both the usefulness and the comprehensibility of definitions to articulate an understanding of interdisciplinarity.

Category B: interdisciplinarity is understood in relation to knowledge spaces

In Category B, participants described interdisciplinarity in relation to knowledge spaces where disciplines or other forms of expertise met and interacted in different ways. Understandings were also described as sense-making of the interactions between different knowledges.

The use of spatial terms was evident in this category. Some participants focussed solely on how disciplines interacted with each other:

Interdisciplinarity means moving between disciplines, working between disciplines, bringing different disciplines together to achieve something that cannot be achieved through application of one specialization by itself. (P9)

Some participants focused on boundaries when describing interactions spatially:

You need to be able to prove that you're working, or define what interdisciplinarity might be, in terms of boundaries. And if you're not working outside the boundaries, then you're not doing [it] (P18)

Similarly, some other participants described interdisciplinarity as interaction between disciplines even if they problematised the use of term ‘disciplines’, noting that they are not static:

I think, in a very basic nutshell, bringing two disciplines to do something is interdisciplinary. However, the traditional definition of a discipline has evolved itself, that’s what makes this a bit harder to tease out exactly … that's not clear. (P8)

Some participants in this category went beyond classical disciplines and described interdisciplinarity in relation to complex systems, or as a separate meta-area or meta-disciplinary field:

Well, it's all about understanding a complex system. I mean, is that a skill? It's a new level of understanding. It's a new way of framing … It's a conception of the world (P13)

Another participant extended a systems view of interdisciplinarity, arguing that interdisciplinarity did not inherently need to be grounded or built upon the construct of disciplines:

The term I like currently in my team is anti-disciplinary. This idea, the metaphor that, in the map of human knowledge all the disciplines are dots on a page. Well, they're interested in the white on the paper, not the dots. And that's what they call anti-disciplinary. I am interested in that too … How do you live in your dot, live in your depth and specialism, but how do you work, create, and produce in the white space? (P14)

Nevertheless, in this category, interdisciplinarity was always conceived as a space where different knowledges come together. However, participants did not express that there was any single ‘right’ way of understanding interdisciplinarity. Participants accepted and supported people’s diverse ways of sense-making. This is evidenced in the following example:

I'm finding that interdisciplinarity means so many different things to different people. And it's such an open space. It's quite interesting to see how people bring their way of thinking and working to an understanding of what this massive, unbound spaces actually is (P15)

The language participants used was diverse in relation to the subjects of interactions, including disciplines, boundaries, expertise, and systems. Participants’ verb use was prepositional – signifying position, direction, and interaction between subjects. These included: ‘bringing together’ different disciplines (P9) as well as people from different disciplines (P11, P17), ‘combining disciplines’ (P3), ‘fitting together’ disciplinary theories (P16), ‘integrating’ theories (P16), perspectives (P20), backgrounds (P11), and knowledge and methods (P19), as well as ‘fusing different disciplines together’ (P11) and ‘melding’ ideas, knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attitudes (P10).

Learning and the formation of a personal understanding of what interdisciplinarity means in this category emphasised intellectual sense-making efforts. This focussed on mentor-supported learning and involved dialogue, tools, resources, and guidance which provided different ways of framing interdisciplinarity in the ongoing construction of meaning. For example:

We caught up more or less for coffee and a chat … [academic mentor] shared some templates from her work, and pointed me to relevant resources … I came at it from complexity and systems theory, which is one big part, but there are many others. She pointed me to soft systems methodology and the systems of systems. So, I still had to learn a lot myself … it’s a learning journey (P6)

Overall, participants in this category expressed an understanding of interdisciplinarity using spatial descriptions (e.g. moving between, spaces, boundaries, dots). Their understanding of disciplines was often the starting point for articulating the meaning of interdisciplinarity. Simultaneously, they challenged the view that interdisciplinarity can be neatly described as interaction between disciplines. Unlike Category A in which participants referred to the external definitions, in Category B, participants drew more prominently on their reasoning and reflections to construct understandings.

Category C: interdisciplinarity is understood in relation to knowledge work

In Category C, participants expressed an understanding of interdisciplinarity by focussing on problem-centered work, knowledge creation practices, and ways of working with uncertainty. Rather than describing what interdisciplinarity was, or how disciplines interact, participants described interdisciplinarity in relation to how knowledge work was accomplished:

Ultimately, interdisciplinarity is something you do (P23)

Some participants described interdisciplinarity as problem-centered work:

It means that we should be attacking problems without regard to disciplinary boundaries or straight-jackets. (P22)

It's about the diversity of knowledge that, put into a coherent theme, how they come together to solve problems. This can go the other way around as well. You have a problem that needs diversity of knowledge to find a solution. (P2)

Some participants focussed on the creative component of interdisciplinary work rather than on solving problems, describing it as working with uncertainty and creating new epistemic practices and methods. Despite complexity and uncertainty, their answers featured epistemic confidence and awareness:

For me it's absolutely normal to not know what you're making. And to set out together with deep expertise, and to be absolutely confident that you're going to get it. And that's it. That's what I expect when I'm working with people in an interdisciplinary way (P14)

For example, one participant described interdisciplinarity as being ‘in everything that I do’ and noted:

Sometimes we come up with a really hard problem, we don't have the statistical techniques that are available for us to answer this. So, we've got to come up with new stuff. So, we come up with new theory and methods (P21)

Participants conceptualised an understanding of interdisciplinarity as varied and situated in the context of the work being done and emerging. This is evidenced in the following comments:

You're basically bolting together a factory, and you bring everybody together to make one product, once and then you disassemble the factory, and everybody goes home. And … what you're making has never been made before, so it has to be entirely original. (P14)

The language used to describe interdisciplinarity signified aims, strategy, and creativity and described non-routine, creative knowledge practices constructed to support knowledge co-creation and reduction of uncertainty. Phrases included to ‘create something new’ (P11), to ‘create new knowledge’ (P11), to ‘come up with new ways of doing, and new ways of looking’ (P11), to ‘come up with new theories and methods’ (P21), and to ‘reduce uncertainty’ (P21).

Learning and formation of personal understanding of what interdisciplinarity is, was described as stemming from, and happening in, hands-on interdisciplinary knowledge co-creation activity. This included course leaders’ creation of an interdisciplinary course. For example:

In order for us [course leaders] to design the [student] interdisciplinary project, it effectively made us do an interdisciplinary study … In fact, we ran it as if we were part of a unit, in which the outcome was to actually create a unit … We had cultural competency between all of us coming from different backgrounds, we did collective decision making, and we actually achieved all the graduate qualities that were intended for graduates, but as academics (P8)

Central to this category is participants’ descriptions of interdisciplinarity as non-routine, collaborative, creative, and adaptive knowledge work. An understanding of interdisciplinarity is situated in the knowledge work being done.

Relationships between the categories

The differences between the three categories of description as well as the relationships between them were most visible when looked via three dimensions of variation.

In Dimension 1, participants’ conceptions of interdisciplinarity advanced from the idea that there was likely a correct way of understanding interdisciplinarity, to the idea that multiple acceptable understandings could exist, to the idea that understanding is situated in interdisciplinary activity and is context-dependant and variable. In Dimension 2, the language participants used to convey their understanding shifted from a focus on comprehension of interdisciplinarity, to sense-making using prepositional verbs to signify position, direction and interaction between disciplines, boundaries, expertise, or systems within a broader knowledge space, then to authentic meaning-making focusing on creative ways of working and addressing uncertainty. In Dimension 3, revealing how participants formed an understanding of interdisciplinary, the focus shifted from sharing knowledge and resources, to gradually expanding one’s horizon and consolidating understanding by reflecting on the intersections of different knowledge spaces, to participating in authentic interdisciplinary knowledge work in teams.

Together these dimensions provide insights into the structural relationships between the three ways of understanding interdisciplinarity. Progressing across the categories of description, participants express increasingly authentic meaning-making, epistemic awareness, and confidence in their understandings. In Category A, participants’ statements reflected a rationalist epistemological position conveying that a correct meaning of interdisciplinarity existed and it could be acquired from external sources. In Category B, participants’ statements reflected a constructivist epistemological position, emphasising that no fixed understanding of interdisciplinarity existed and understanding could be constructed through an individual’s sense-making. Multiple and changing understandings were perceived as both possible and acceptable. In Category C, participants expressed a pragmatist epistemological position, emphasising the applied nature of interdisciplinary practices, focussing on concrete aims. Understandings were tied to situated contexts, and at times collectively constructed or negotiated (Table 3).

Furthermore, all course leaders expressed understandings which traversed the three categories and dimensions of variation in different ways. For instance, P20 made multiple statements relating to definitions of interdisciplinarity in category A to describe an understanding, but also used language in relation to the integration of perspectives from different disciplines in category B. P15 similarly critiqued normative understandings from category A as ‘a philosophical discussion’ to preface a description of interdisciplinarity as a ‘massive unbound space’ where people ‘bring different ways of thinking and working’ belonging to category B. Other course leaders similarly prefaced the understandings they expressed in relation to common definitions by recognising existing debates (P12) and arguing against understandings provided by the institution (P4). Additionally, five of the participants expressed understandings belonging to all three categories. For example, P11 described interdisciplinarity as having a ‘pure form’, as ‘fusing different disciplines together’, as well as ‘coming up with new ways of doing and new ways of looking’ to ‘create new knowledge’. These examples show the variety in how meaning is constructed by course leaders. Some course leaders expressed meaning drawing on two or more different categories, while others critiqued normative understandings in category A to articulate understandings in relation to categories B and C.

Discussion

Our findings provide three main contributions to the study of interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

First, participants’ understandings of interdisciplinarity reflected definitions and stances on interdisciplinarity discussed in the literature but did not adopt any single definition outright. Instead, participants drew on definitions, extended them, or expressed constructed understandings by challenging them. Course leaders’ views reflected but did not fully adopt understandings such as the integration of disciplines and various typologies (Klein 1990; 2017), social and spatial metaphors (Downey et al. 2019), sense-making (Nikitina 2005), anti-disciplinarity (Pickering 2013), creative epistemic practices (Knorr-Cetina 1999) and systems (Ison 2017). Participants also described interdisciplinarity in diverse and, at times, conflated ways (Graff 2016) and challenged assumptions about disciplines as fixed and well-formed (Brew 2008; Lindvig and Ulriksen 2019; Pinch 1990). While course leaders’ understandings of what interdisciplinarity means had connections to normative definitions and theoretical views, they simultaneously diverged significantly from them.

Second, our findings show that most course leaders expressed multiple or entangled ways of understanding interdisciplinarity. The majority of course leaders’ constructed understandings that reflected, but were not limited to definitions in category A. All course leaders expressed understandings belonging to categories B and, or C. Vienni Baptista et al. (2020) have described this as having multiple, heterogeneous, and plural understandings. Our findings support but extend this description. Our findings show a distinct emphasis placed on course leaders’ construction of their own understandings of interdisciplinarity rather than accepting or holding multiple commonly accepted understandings of interdisciplinarity. DeZure (2017) argues that understandings of interdisciplinarity evolve and are ongoingly constructed through ongoing investigation of the field. Our findings show that understandings of interdisciplinarity are also constructed within individuals through sensemaking and in interdisciplinary work. More apparent than accepting or holding multiple or plural normative understandings of interdisciplinarity, course leaders construct diverse understandings in relation to normative understandings.

Third, understandings in each of the three categories reflected distinct epistemological positions advancing from rationalist to constructivist, to pragmatist positions. Advancing from category A to C, course leaders’ views become increasingly more problem-centered and focussed on understandings of what interdisciplinarity is when people do interdisciplinarity. Advancing across the three categories, they also reflected increased participants’ grounding of their responses in personal experiences, epistemic confidence in dealing with uncertainty and epistemic awareness of how interdisciplinary work is done. Many of our participants were researchers and curriculum innovators, and their expressed understandings of interdisciplinarity were reflected through their experiences gained doing complex creative knowledge work, often drawing heavily upon their understandings of interdisciplinarity from research, and at times, design experiences. However, our findings also show that experience alone is not enough to articulate an understanding of interdisciplinarity. Despite having significant experience, participants who had not previously engaged in reflective practices about interdisciplinarity struggled to articulate their understandings.

Conclusions

Our study sheds light on how interdisciplinarity is understood by those who lead interdisciplinary courses. The phenomenographic approach enabled us to map the outcome space and systematically investigate the variance and relationships between different understandings. These findings significantly extend prior studies that pointed out the multiplicity of ways in which interdisciplinarity is understood but did not investigate the relationships between varied understandings of interdisciplinarity.

Our findings demonstrated that while familiarity with interdisciplinary literature and institutionally-accepted definitions can be foundational for developing an understanding of interdisciplinarity, a sole focus on how interdisciplinarity is defined could limit a broader and deeper understanding of interdisciplinarity. Such deeper understanding draws on personal sense-making of how disciplinary and other kinds of knowledge are created, and authentic engagement in interdisciplinary knowledge work.

The findings also show that course leaders describing their understanding of interdisciplinarity adopted different epistemological stances and shifted between them. The rationalist position and normative understandings of interdisciplinarity were never the only way course leaders framed their understanding of interdisciplinarity. This is an important distinction to make as non-normative explanations of interdisciplinarity are often described in the literature as confusions or misunderstandings. Our results suggest that it could be more productive to acknowledge different possible ways of framing, explaining, and understanding interdisciplinarity to help practitioners see differences and connections between them. The constructed outcome space can be used as a starting point to elicit and discuss diverse ways of understanding interdisciplinarity and to support the development of epistemic awareness about what practitioners mean when they say ‘interdisciplinarity’. Alternatively, the development of mutually acknowledged understandings could be particularly important in the context of interdisciplinary education as what is meant by interdisciplinarity also connects to how it is learnt.

We acknowledge that further research is required to investigate the relationship between beliefs and actual practice, noting that research on understandings risks telling ‘half the story’ (Kane, Sandretto, and Heath 2002) and would benefit from further research on practices. Our findings provide a starting point for such research. Additionally, we acknowledge that awareness alone is insufficient to improve teaching; a sustained, systematic approach that involves critical reflection on both practices and outcomes in required as well (Trigwell and Prosser 1996). Further support and guidance, as well as time and opportunities are essential to enacting theory-informed change in practices (Hughes et al. 2023).

Our aim was to study the variance in ways course leaders from across the breadth of a university’s disciplines and faculties understand interdisciplinarity. Acknowledging that understandings of interdisciplinarity are situated, our study does not claim generalizability to other contexts. Future studies could investigate how institutionally-accepted understandings influence understandings of interdisciplinarity in practice. We have investigated course leaders’ understandings, but a similar phenomenographic approach could be used to study students’ understanding of interdisciplinarity and the relationships between students’ understandings and course leaders’ understandings. This could help inform the development of mutual or mutually acknowledged understandings of interdisciplinarity across a university and support more systematic approaches to advancing interdisciplinary education.

Statements and declarations

This research was partly funded by the Australian Research Council through Discovery Project grant DP200100376 (Developing interdisciplinary expertise in universities). The authors report there are no other competing interests to declare.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DP200100376].