Page 15 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

General introduction
previous research shows a relatively broad range of publications on newly designed education on IDT (e.g., Bajada & Trayler, 2013; Hooker, Deutschman, & Avery, 2014; McFadden, Chen, Munroe, Naftzger, & Selinger, 2011), a range of publications on the teaching and the evaluation of the newly designed education on IDT (e.g., Lyall & Meagher, 2012; Mobley, Lee, Morse, Allen, & Murphy, 2014; Wagner, Murphy, Holderegger, & Waits, 2012) and, to a smaller extent, publications on researching student learning of IDT (e.g., Boix Mansilla, 2010; Haynes & Brown Leonard, 2010; Holley, 2013). Specifically for HEE, a relatively large number of publications can be found reflecting the teaching-focus on education, i.e., the evaluative investigation on developed instructional designs, whereas publications reflecting the learning-focus on education i.e., the examination of student learning processes, have not been found yet.
The previous research on teaching IDT in higher education shows consensus on the need for pedagogical support of learning IDT (Augsburg et al., 2013; Nardone & Lee, 2011). A potential pedagogical tool for the required pedagogical support is the constructive alignment theory of Biggs (Stefani, 2009; Yang, 2009). This theory, firstly published in 1999 (Biggs, 1999a, 1999b), was continuously developed resulting in new editions in 2003 (Biggs, 2003), in 2007 (Biggs & Tang, 2007), and in 2011 (Biggs & Tang, 2011). The two main design principles of this theory are: (a) outcome-based, and (b) constructively aligned (see chapter 1.4 for more explanation on these principles). It is therefore that this theory is also being named in literature as outcome-based and constructive alignment theory. Although this theory has been multiply recommended as having the potential to help students in achieving the learning outcomes on IDT, scientific research on the implementation of this theory has not been done yet (Borrego & Newswander, 2010; Gharaibeh et al., 2013), nor on the design criteria to enhance the learning of IDT (Lattuca, Voigt, & Fath, 2004). The implementation
5