Innovations in Interdisciplinary Teaching (review)

Increasing numbers of faculty are teaching in interdisciplinary settings, including honors programs, general education programs, women's studies, cultural studies, international studies, and environmental studies, to name a few of the best known. Those who teach in or are considering development of interdisciplinary undergraduate programs, as well as scholars of higher education curriculum theory and development, will want to read this substantive volume.

Drawing on work by interdisciplinary theorist Julie Thompson Klein (1996) to conceptualize and organize this volume, Haynes foregrounds how pedagogical approaches can facilitate the ability to integrate and synthesize disciplinary perspectives" (p. xvi). Refreshingly, she asserts that "interdisciplinary pedagogy . . . is not synonymous with a single process, set of skills, method, or technique. Instead, it is concerned primarily with fostering in students a sense of self-authorship and a situated, practical, and perspectival notion of knowledge that they can use to respond to complex questions, issues, or problems" (p. xvi).

Fundamentally, then, interdisciplinary pedagogy is about facilitating student development, and in particular, how students make meaning of their world and develop their own identity in relation to that world. This requires the promotion of students' interpersonal and intrapersonal learning, or what Haynes refers to as a holistic process of development. A reading of all thirteen chapters suggests Haynes has been successful in recruiting authors who share this perspective of both the promise and challenge of interdisciplinary pedagogy. The Association for Integrative Studies provided support for this volume.

The book begins with Haynes's brief introduction, laying a foundation for interdisciplinary teaching, and concludes with a section by Faith Gabelnick that identifies and discusses factors in higher education organizations that influence the change process that necessarily must accompany interdisciplinary initiatives. In between are thirteen chapters that describe a rich array of pedagogical approaches intended to facilitate interdisciplinary learning. The book is conceptually organized into five parts. The first three focus on approaches to interdisciplinary teaching, the fourth on working with unique groups of students, and the fifth, on assessment and advising. The attention given to special populations of students as well as to assessment and advising are especially welcome ones.

Part 1 includes three chapters having to do with "standard approaches to interdisciplinary teaching," featuring a social science program, team teaching and writing. The authors explore how to cultivate integration and coherency, risk-taking and sharing power. The team teaching chapter, by Jay Wentworth and James R. Davis, offers very practical suggestions about how faculty can prepare for the team teaching experience and function as an integrated team. Marcia Seabury's chapter on writing offers specific suggestions for interdisciplinary assignments that encourage students to practice integrative thinking. The three chapters in Part 2, "Innovative Approaches to Interdisciplinary Teaching," cover learning communities, technology, and diversity and liberal education. Each provides specific examples of innovations occurring in different kinds of institutional settings.

Chapter 6, "interdisciplinarity, Diversity, and the Future of Liberal Education" by Debra Humphreys is a "must read." She argues that when studying issues of diversity, multidisciplinary perspectives are essential to both scholarship and teaching. She brings together interdisciplinary and multicultural education perspectives and offers a developmental process to create an interdisciplinary diversity curriculum.

Part 3, "Applying One Disciplinary-Based Pedagogy to Interdisciplinary Teaching" features articles related to performance, women's studies, and science. The performance-based pedagogy chapter, "Being There," by Jeff Abell, and the Nancy Grace chapter on women's studies describe what I see as some of the most innovative and potentially powerful ways to have students experience an interdisciplinary place or space.

Part 4, "Interdisciplinary Teaching in Different Settings or to Different Students" includes a chapter on study abroad programs and one on adult/lifelong learning. Chapter 10 by George Klein is research based and reports results from a national study of interdisciplinary patterns of study abroad programs. He suggests that, for integration to occur, there must...