In this session we will discuss how an interdisciplinary culture is reflected among the students, teachers and staff at Utrecht University. Three separate empirical research projects will be presented, and a discussion will be facilitated to compare and contrast these findings with other (monodisciplinary) educational contexts. For this discussion, we have invited several experts in the research field as a discussion panel, including Katrine Lindvig. With this session we aim to facilitate an insightful exchange that will help attendees understand how interdisciplinary educational cultures develop at Utrecht University and other higher education institutions.
Although Utrecht University has a longer history of creating interdisciplinary education, it has only recently again been fore fronted as an important strategical goal. Reasons mentioned for desiring ‘more and better’ interdisciplinary education include, for example, how it might aid students in addressing complex societal problems, such as climate change and migration. In line with this strategic aim, Utrecht University has endeavoured to promote the development and maintenance of interdisciplinary education through funding programmes for educational innovation and professionalisation. However, for a university with a mostly disciplinary organisational structure and tradition, setting up interdisciplinary education necessitates major changes in the following areas:
• governance structures,
• teaching roles and skills,
• student expectations and learning.
Research has shown that in order to achieve sustainable interdisciplinary education, a holistic cultural change is required, with recognition and appreciation of interdisciplinary education in many aspects (Cai, 2017; Klein, 2009). In other words, we adopt this idea of an ‘interdisciplinary culture’ in an attempt to go beyond research that looks at a shift towards interdisciplinary education as one course, minor or degree and its impact on either teachers, students or managers. Instead, we want to take a broader perspective on how interdisciplinary education is (not) developed and sustained within a university at these different levels. Moreover, by examining what an interdisciplinary culture entails, we hope to understand how Utrecht University aims to change its educational structure in such a way that interdisciplinary education can become more than a trendy buzzword of the 2020s but an integral part of the university’s educational structures. This session will explore this cultural shift from three perspectives: organisational perspective, teacher perspective and student perspective.
To study interdisciplinary culture from a governance perspective within the broader organisation, Zowi Vermeire conducted an organisational ethnography of three projects within Utrecht University that aim to implement (more) interdisciplinary education. She specifically looked at these projects through the lens of pedagogical governance: the ways in which the university structures, recognizes and values education. Such a perspective has enabled us to analyse how social relations and infrastructures are or are not changing around a cultural transition towards (more) interdisciplinary education. At the same time, this perspective has enabled us to look at who is (held) responsible and given power for such (lack of) changes. In other words, this research maps a cultural shift towards (more) interdisciplinary education by paying specific attention to the underlying, normative ideas about the educational role of the university.
To explore teachers’ perspectives on interdisciplinarity and to investigate the facilitators and barriers teachers perceive in obtaining an interdisciplinary culture among their colleagues and within their discipline, Jessica Oudenampsen conducted a vignette study at Utrecht University. Based on an exploratory survey study several vignettes have been created, to study; 1) What stimulates or hampers teachers to teach or develop interdisciplinary education at UU, 2) What actions or changes would help to overcome these barriers, and 3) What actions or changes would help to make the interdisciplinary culture more prevalent among colleagues. By analysing the results, Oudenampsen was able to map what is needed for teachers to be able to implement interdisciplinary education and to create an interdisciplinary culture amongst colleagues and within their discipline.
To explore students’ perspectives on interdisciplinarity, Jael Draijer has interviewed students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds at Utrecht University about their views on interdisciplinary education. At Utrecht University, much of the interdisciplinary education is set up as optional minors and courses (i.e., electives), which means that students have to actively choose to pursue this type of education in their elective spaces. Most of the students that were interviewed had no previous experience with interdisciplinary education and had different interpretations of the term. While some were interested in the idea of interdisciplinarity, most explicitly linked their choice of minor to their future educational choices (i.e., which minor will I need to get into my chosen Masters programme?) and hence did not prioritise interdisciplinary education in their choices.
Bringing together the insights from these three separate empirical studies, we present overarching themes relating to the development of an interdisciplinary culture, e.g., commonalities and differences in the way interdisciplinarity is understood at different levels in the organisation. Furthermore, we have identified key opportunities and barriers towards creating and sustaining an interdisciplinary educational culture at a traditionally disciplinary organised university. By providing a discussion with participants from different backgrounds and different universities, using our research results obtained from different perspectives, we aim to place our results in a broader context so that both we and the participants will obtain useful insights about developing and sustaining interdisciplinary cultures at traditionally disciplinary-organised universities.
Session design
During the session, the researchers will present their research in an integrated way, by highlighting themes that emerged from the three studies (15 min). After that, the panellists will react on the results from their own (interdisciplinary) perspectives (15 min). After these introductions, we will start a discussion about fostering interdisciplinary cultures at universities across the globe, and possible consequences that emerge from the results (30 min).
