The Role of Threshold Concepts in an Interdisciplinary Curriculum: a Case Study in Neuroscience

Threshold concepts have been widely utilized to understand learning in academic disciplines and student experiences in a disciplinary curriculum. This study considered how threshold concepts might operate within an interdisciplinary setting. Data were collected through interviews with 40 doctoral students enrolled in an interdisciplinary program as well as content analysis of interdisciplinary curricula. The findings emphasize the importance of the integrative process to interdisciplinary initiatives. Interdisciplinary threshold concepts do not result from the addition of multiple disciplines, but rather are fostered through unique facets of the interdisciplinary experience.     

A Proposal for Motivating Research

We use an experimental course collaboration that occurred in the winter of 2012 as a case study for an approach to interdisciplinary collaboration between Theatre and Humanities courses, and we argue that the theatre methodology of “devising” can serve as a particularly rich locus for collaboration between Theatre students and other Humanities students because it allows students to cooperate in generating a creative product that draws on two different areas of expertise. In this case, English students operated as critically informed advisors for Theatre students who devised original performances using a canonical text as source material. This experimental collaboration produced many of the positive results that have been discussed in previous studies concerning interdisciplinary pedagogy, including thoughtful consideration of the nature of each discipline, transferring of tools and methodologies between disciplines, increased student enthusiasm, and faculty development. However, it did not require extensive resources or curricular restructuring and thus might operate as a useful model for instructors with reservations about or limited resources for attempting interdisciplinary collaboration.     

Disciplinary differences and implications for the development of generic skills: a study of engineering and business students’ perceptions of generic skills

Although previous research has examined how generic skills and disciplinary contexts are related, such investigation has not been conducted from students’ perspectives. Implications of disciplinary differences for the design of a generic skills curriculum have also remained unexplored. In this study, a questionnaire was administered to 502 first-year engineering and business students from a Hong Kong university which explored their perceived importance and competence level of their generic skills, as well as their motivation towards developing these skills. The results of engineering and business students were compared which revealed some disciplinary differences. Substantial differences were found in the importance and competency ratings on IT skills and business students gave significantly higher importance ratings on most generic skills than engineering students. This study will help guide curriculum design that leverages the benefits of interdisciplinary programmes and incorporates generic skills as part of learning outcomes within disciplinary contexts.     

Concept mapping for the development of medical curricula

Increased use of problem-based approaches to medical education has highlighted the challenges of curricular revision and interdisciplinary development. Venturing beyond disciplinary boundaries can be difficult, despite a desire to create interdisciplinary courses and adopt new ways of teaching. Concept mapping is an effective tool for developing an integrated curriculum. This article includes examples of concept maps that represent an entire veterinary curriculum, specific courses, and case-based exercises. The author argues that concept mapping is a valuable tool for curriculum development of any scope or discipline, but is particularly helpful for creating interdisciplinary courses and case-based exercises.     

Examining the Impact of Interdisciplinary Programs on Student Learning

We investigated how learning outcomes of students majoring in interdisciplinary fields differ from those of students in discipline-based majors. We found that students in interdisciplinary majors report less change in Critical Thinking and Need For Cognition than their peers in disciplinary majors, but no difference in change in Positive Attitude Toward Literacy. Students’ gains in Critical Thinking and Need For Cognition do not vary by the characteristics of the interdisciplinary major, but some program characteristics influence modest changes in Positive Attitudes Toward Literacy. Future research should address selection effects, develop measures of interdisciplinary learning, and further explore curricular and instructional patterns in interdisciplinary programs.     

Facilitating Holistic Curriculum Development

There is a movement in higher education to think of a curriculum less as a sequence of independent courses and more as a set of highly integrated learning and assessment experiences designed to help students develop clearly defined outcomes. This paper reports on a case study that illustrates how internal curriculum assessment processes used by an environmental science and policy department in an institution of higher education lead to the creation of an innovative tenure-track faculty line for someone whose primary activities and scholarship focus not on traditional disciplinary scholarship but instead on coordinating the holistic development of an integrated curriculum. This paper goes on to show how I, the person hired into this position, am facilitating the coordinated development of a senior thesis programme, a junior entry course into the major and a disciplinary writing programme for the purpose of developing a more integrated curriculum.     

Disciplinary Foundations for Solving Interdisciplinary Scientific Problems

Problem-solving has been one of the major strands in science education research. But much of the problem-solving research has been conducted on discipline-based contexts; little research has been done on how students, especially individuals, solve interdisciplinary problems. To understand how individuals reason about interdisciplinary problems, we conducted an interview study with 16 graduate students coming from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. During the interviews, we asked participants to solve two interdisciplinary science problems on the topic of osmosis. We investigated participants’ problem reasoning processes and probed in their attitudes toward general interdisciplinary approach and specific interdisciplinary problems. Through a careful inductive content analysis of their responses, we studied how disciplinary, cognitive, and affective factors influenced their interdisciplinary problems-solving. We found that participants’ prior discipline-based science learning experiences had both positive and negative influences on their interdisciplinary problem-solving. These influences were embodied in their conceptualization of the interdisciplinary problems, the strategies they used to integrate different disciplinary knowledge, and the attitudes they had toward interdisciplinary approach in general and specific interdisciplinary problems. This study sheds light on interdisciplinary science education by revealing the complex relationship between disciplinary learning and interdisciplinary problem-solving.     

Engagement in two interdisciplinary graduate programs

This qualitative study examines two US interdisciplinary graduate programs which involve faculty and students from different disciplines. Haworth and Conrad’s engagement theory of quality graduate education was applied. It was found that when interdisciplinary programs facilitate engagement by supporting diversity, participation, connections, and interactive teaching and learning, students report positive experiences. Engagement is particularly achievable when an interdisciplinary administrative unit (e.g., a school or center) grants degrees and serves as a tenure home for faculty. Students earning degrees in traditional departments had more difficulty connecting interdisciplinary requirements to their disciplinary work, and were often faced with incompatible program requirements or advice from faculty members. Although they desire to do interdisciplinary work, the students and faculty in traditional departments are required to meet additional and often conflicting requirements. Engagement may further be complicated because these participants feel divided between collaborations, social networks, and expectations that pull them in different directions.     

Assessing students' disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding of global carbon cycling

Global carbon cycling describes the movement of carbon through atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere; it lies at the heart of climate change and sustainability. To understand the global carbon cycle, students will require interdisciplinary knowledge. While standards documents in science education have long promoted interdisciplinary understanding, our current science education system is still oriented toward single‐discipline‐based learning. Furthermore, there is limited work on interdisciplinary assessment. This article presents the validated Interdisciplinary Science Assessment of Carbon Cycling (ISACC), and reports empirical results of a study of high school and undergraduate students, including an analysis of the relationship between interdisciplinary items and disciplinary items. Many‐faceted Rasch analysis produced detailed information about the relative difficulty of items and estimates of ability levels of students. One‐way ANCOVA was used to analyze differences among three grade levels: high school, college Freshman–Sophomore, college Junior–Senior, with number of science courses as a covariate. Findings indicated significantly higher levels of interdisciplinary understanding among the Freshman–Sophomore group compared to high school students. There was no statistically significant difference between Freshman–Sophomore group and Junior–Senior group. Items assessing interdisciplinary understanding were more difficult than items assessing disciplinary understanding of global carbon cycling; however, interdisciplinary and disciplinary understanding were strongly correlated. This study highlights the importance of interdisciplinary understanding in learning carbon cycling and discusses its potential impacts on science curriculum and teaching practices.     

高校数据科学教育生态系统建构——以美国普渡大学为例

作为智能化社会的学科基础要素,大数据正在驱动着高等教育系统的范式变革。美国普渡大学一体化数据科学首倡计划发起的跨学科学术组织变革,强调以跨学科学位项目与学科交叉课程、学科会聚研究计划与研究团队、服务性学习数据社区与主题工作坊、产教融合的数据科学校企合作模式构建高校数据科学教育生态系统。值此加强新时代教育科学研究的战略契机,以"数据+"引导多学科会聚和教育模式创新,打造面向真实世界的数据科学实践社区,建设校企协同产教融合共同体,加快培育大学生数据思维和校园数据文化,将有助于高等教育治理体系改革和治理能力现代化的实现。     

Can the Study of Students' Epistemological Beliefs and Epistemic Match Help Us to Explore the Disciplinary Nature of Education Studies?

In the United Kingdom, education studies degree courses offer students with a range of career plans both inside and outside the formal education system, a chance to study the foundations of education. The disciplinary nature of education studies has been debated from a variety of theoretical perspectives. This article explores the usefulness of the concept of personal epistemological beliefs in exploring the issue of disciplinarity in education studies and contributing to that debate. An empirical study utilizing measures of personal epistemological beliefs and epistemic match sought to establish whether students on an education studies degree course in the United Kingdom took an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach to applying the disciplines of education studies to their assignments. The results show students apparently alternating between these two approaches and thus highlighting some of the potential of personal epistemological beliefs in exploring the nature of education studies and other similar courses.     

Connecting science,social studies,and language arts: an interdisciplinary approach

The purpose of this study was to see how well an elementary teacher intern was able to help her students see both the differences between language arts, science and social studies, and connections among them, using an action research design, including student interviews, observer logs, journal notes, students' ‘connection’ journals, student work, and her record and planning book as data sources. She designed and delivered an interdisciplinary language arts, science and social studies curriculum that focused on electricity. She found that students were finally able to see the interdisciplinary natures of language arts and science, and language arts and social studies, but did not see connections between science and social studies. Implications include making explicit disciplinary instruction, as well as connections between the disciplines.     

关于小教专业学科课程建设的几点意见——以综合文科方向为例

小教专业毕业生的入职状况表明,必须加强小教专业的学科课程建设。小教专业的专业基础课程应分为教育类、学科综合类和执教学科类三大类;执教学科类专业基础课程由言语类、语言类和阅读类课程组成,并且要凸显语言类和言语类课程的地位;语文教育学和语文教育史是小教专业（综合文科方向）的核心课程。     

Software engineering education: some important dimensions

Software engineering education has been emerging as an independent and mature discipline. Accordingly, various studies are being done to provide guidelines for curriculum design. The main focus of these guidelines is around core and foundation courses. This paper summarizes the current problems of software engineering education programs. It also proposes some important dimensions as integral parts of software engineering education: interdisciplinary skills, practice experience, communication, skills on continuing education and professionalism. In the current guidelines and studies these dimensions are not addressed specifically. Although there could be other dimensions to be considered in software engineering education, we believe that the proposed ones are very crucial as software engineering is evolving more rapidly than any other engineering discipline. This study also provides a survey of some major universities’ undergraduate software engineering programs to evaluate these dimensions.     

Getting old and heading south: the academic success of Southerner learners in design cohorts

This paper investigates the relationship between learning style, as determined by Kolb's Learning Style Inventory, age and one measure of academic performance in design assignments for two cohorts of first‐ and third‐year architecture students. The paper focuses on the results of a cross‐curriculum learning style survey conducted as part of a project aimed at resolving the learning difficulties of students collaborating in multi‐disciplinary and multi‐cultural team assignments. The research was conducted to determine how learning style differences in heterogeneous teams might be addressed through pedagogy. In light of evidence in student cohorts of learning style changes towards the learning styles of design teachers as students progress through their studies, this paper demonstrates how these changes reflect a statistically significant relationship between learning styles and academic performance in design assignments.     

Developing Membership in the Education of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Inclusive Settings

This article discusses the importance of membership in the inclusive education of deaf/hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students. Membership refers to being an integral part of the classroom and school communities. Membership is a key philosophical concept in inclusion that may influence how classroom teachers and teachers of D/HH students share their expertise and how they work with students and each other. Membership can be contrasted with "visitorship." When programs treat D/HH students as visitors, these students face greater barriers to obtaining a quality education in classes with hearing students. A social constructivist perspective of learning and teaching that requires students in the classroom to interact with one another and the teacher may best promote learning and is consistent with a focus on membership. We suggest that inclusion is possible, but to sustain students as full members of their classes and school, programs must go beyond placement and communication access issues. To facilitate membership, inclusive programs must carefully address teacher attitudes, teacher roles and relationships, student knowledge and curriculum, structural barriers, extracurricular activities, community relationships, and parental support.     

我国高校博士生课程设置的现状及问题分析——基于48所研究生院高校的调查

为深入探讨我国博士生课程设置的现状及问题,对全国48所研究生院8064名在校博士生进行了调查。调查结果显示,学生认为博士课程设置应至少遵循强调研究方法训练、与研究方向相结合以及强调应用知识能力三种取向。然而,现实中博士生课程仍与硕士课程有较多或非常多重复,在选修课的选择范围和研究方法课程量上存在明显不足;课程内容的广度与深度以及前沿知识与跨学科知识比重有待提升;课程设置体现出较大的学校与学科差异。研究认为,应激发博士生主体意识,鼓励博士生参与课程建设;明晰本硕博课程的层次性,提高课程衔接度;适当扩大选修课的选择范围,增加前沿知识与跨学科知识比重,实现不同学校和学科博士课程的横向拓展与纵向深化。     

校本课程开发的几点建议

校本课程开发是对国家教材的再改造,是跨学科的综合课程资源整合,也可以是对原有课程进行的拓展。校本课程开发类型主要包括技能型兴趣课程、社会性的实践课程和情感教育类课程。     

艺术设计专业特色核心课程建立的思考与探索--以“地域形象推广设计”课程为例

针对高校艺术设计类专业的学科特色,充分利用地利及行业背景优势,科学规划专业特色方向是专业培养计划的重要一环。以“地域形象推广设计”课程为例,讨论设计核心课程的设立,在考虑学校背景及所处的环境同时,还应留有专业间拓展的空间,发挥出学科间相互融合的优势。建设特色的核心课程是专业提升的关键举措,通过引导建立专业特色方向,强化核心课程实践环节,构建以培养学生创新精神和创新能力为导向的教学模式,从而达到提高学生专业综合能力、提升学科建设平台的目的。