Page 114 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Chapter 5
critical awareness of how to construct the disciplinary knowledge connections (subskill 4 and criteria b). With respect to the category of having communication skills, the subcategories of justifications showed the student’s awareness of his or her influence on the making of the disciplinary knowledge connections and, in particular, the influence of the researcher’s disciplinary background (see Table 5.6). An example is: ”Despite the fact that I was firstly biased on analysing different factors and try [to] find solutions more from a technological prospective because of my background, in the end I underpinned my argumentation based on managerial prospective which was supported from [by] technological factors as the disinfectant agents and the microbiological tests.” By providing this type of justification, students demonstrate the ability to reflect on disciplinary bias in interdisciplinary research (subskill 5 and criteria c). Further research is required to determine whether having a justification for each subcategory is a prerequisite for making disciplinary knowledge connections. Suppose this were the case, then the question becomes whether it would be possible to teach students in HEE to formulate all five kinds of justifications identified.
5.6 Critical considerations and further research
One issue to be critically considered is the current use of research methods. Firstly, the IDT learning outcomes were empirically investigated by means of the analysis of the disciplinary knowledge connections. However, this means that the gain in IDT ability by students has not yet been investigated. Secondly, the self-reflection method was used to investigate the challenges, strategies, and outcomes. Presumably, the ability to self-reflect differs per student and per nationality, and it is likely that this was the first time that these students had been required to reflect in this way. However, the self-reflection method is a common formative method used to evaluate the practicality of newly developed instructional designs (Linn,
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