Teaching Beyond the Horizon: Transdisciplinary Approaches

In 1916, the year of Eugene O'Neill's official launch as a produced playwright, the noted educational reformer and philosopher John Dewey published Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. Dewey contended that optimal learning methods are those in which students can link their academic work to the world around them. Such methods, he argued, "give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results."¹ Dewey's idea about the "intentional noting of connections" feels very much like a pedagogical concept for the twenty-first century. Indeed, a common element emerges in hundreds of recent papers, TED Talks, podcasts, and books dedicated to such topics as universities of the future and how best to prepare students for the world outside the classroom: an emphasis on transdisciplinary learning and teaching as a means of addressing and solving big problems. Though he could not have foreseen today's complex educational landscape, Dewey, not unlike his contemporary O'Neill, saw tremendous power and potential in the active linking of different areas of study in the pursuit of understanding. His ideas would reach fruition nearly a century later.

Transdisciplinarity, at its core, is a "practice that transgresses and transcends disciplinary boundaries."² In the 2010 book Tackling Wicked Problems Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination, Valerie A. Brown, Peter M. Deane, John A. Harris, and Jacqueline Y. Russell chart new possibilities for college curriculums as they consider the needs of the twenty-first century student:

So what can we ask of the decision-maker of the future? Certainly not to reject the powerful tools that led to the capacity to reduce disease, increase world food production and put a human on the moon. Rather than limiting the focus to any single avenue of inquiry, the requirement here is to be open to different ways of thinking, to use imagination to the full and to be receptive to new ideas and new directions that match the times.

The task is therefore to draw on all our intellectual resources, valuing the contributions of all the academic disciplines as well as other ways in which we construct knowledge.³

This receptivity to the methods, research, and practices of other disciplines is not only being celebrated and promoted as a way to foster learning and help students face the multifaceted problems, rapid technological advances, and complex work environments awaiting them after graduation. Transdisciplinarity also addresses the unique needs of Generation Z, the demographic cohort born in the mid-1990s and currently attending high school and college. This generation, sometimes called iGen as a way to pay "homage to the historical significance of this being the first generation of true digital natives," has shown themselves to be distinct learners.⁴ In addition to being acutely aware of societal problems such as racism, inequality, climate change, and the cost of education, Generation Z is committed to collective social action and activism. As Corey Seemiller argues, "If Millenials were the 'Me' Generation, then Generation Z is the 'We' Generation."⁵ This focus on mobilizing a number of different people to solve a particular problem is compatible with the way Generation Z operates as students. As Supriya Pavan Desai and Vishwanath Lele argue, Generation Z students "absorb information from multiple sources and think in hyperlinks."⁶ This generation of students is not only comfortable with multiple and varied channels of information but actually learns best when these channels are a part of their education. Such pedagogy requires a dramatic rethinking of the current curriculums and fundamental structures of many universities where "collections of segmented and highly specialized disciplines functioning in their own silos" often render transdisciplinary collaboration difficult if not impossible.⁷

If colleges and universities begin to follow the recommendations put forth in education scholarship regarding transdisciplinary routes for teaching and learning, how might the plays of Eugene O'Neill continue to be a vital part of a...