Page 26 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Chapter 2
2.1 Introduction
Various groups of professionals are increasingly confronted with complex issues like food quality (Luning & Marcelis, 2006) or biodiversity conservation (Warren, 2006). In order to deal with these issues, professionals need to be able to critically analyse, conceptualize, and synthesize knowledge and to reach conclusions on the basis of ambiguous information (Tynjälä, Slotte, Nieminen, Lonka, & Olkinuora, 2006). In response, higher education is increasingly called on to train students to become capable of dealing with such complex issues in both scientific and professional environments (Jacobson & Wilensky, 2006; Roehler, Fear, & Herrmann, 1998).
Interdisciplinarity can help to address today’s complex issues since it is believed that a cross-disciplinary approach facilitates a comprehensive understanding (Newell, 2007). This belief has led to an increased interest in interdisciplinary higher education over the years (Newell, 2010b). In comparison with traditional higher education, which focuses on domain- specific knowledge and general skills development, this kind of higher education also aims to develop boundary-crossing skills. Boundary-crossing skills are, for instance, the ability to change perspectives, to synthesize knowledge of different disciplines, and to cope with complexity.
Unlike multidisciplinarity, which is additive, interdisciplinarity is integrative: Knowledge of different disciplines is contrasted and changed by integration (Klein, 1990). This integration or synthesis of knowledge is seen as the defining characteristic of interdisciplinarity. As a consequence, the ability to synthesize or integrate is considered as a beneficial learning outcome of interdisciplinary higher education. In that case, the learning outcome is called interdisciplinary understanding or interdisciplinary thinking (IDT). Boix Mansilla, Miller, and Gardner (2000) formulated a definition of interdisciplinary
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