Page 22 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Chapter 1
d. What are the typical learning challenges that need to be taken into account to teach engineering students IDT in HEE? (study IV)
The first study reviewed the literature on teaching and learning of IDT in higher education in general and not specific for HEE. The other three studies were conducted in HEE, in particular, in the interdisciplinary field of food quality management (FQM). The sub research questions feature an ‘open formulation’ due to the phase of the research field which is, yet, attempting to deepen the understanding of the teaching and learning of IDT in higher education. The two hypotheses, which were tested in the present thesis research, are:
1. The constructive alignment theory of Biggs and Tang is suitable to identify design criteria for interdisciplinary learning environments (teaching-focus)
2. The learning theory of Illeris is suitable to characterize the learning of IDT in HEE (learning-focus)
1.5 Research approach
The research approach features an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach. The interdisciplinary research approach includes the integration of the teaching and learning. This approach towards teaching and learning is adopted to achieve the present thesis research aim of developing pedagogical content knowledge. The transdisciplinary research approach includes the integration of theory and practice via concurrent consultation of the scientific literature and education practice. This approach is adopted to improve education practice by disseminating research insights to practice, to conduct research that is relevant to education practice, and to increase the external validity of present research, as being identified by Anderman (2011) as challenges for educational psychology research. Figure 1.4 presents the four steps of the thesis research.
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