Page 36 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Chapter 2
2.4.2 Evaluation of scientific research into teaching and learning in interdisciplinary higher education
The evaluation based on the principles of Biggs’ theory (2003) showed that all publications reviewed were explorative. The research field is still in the phase of attempting to deepen the understanding of the nature of interdisciplinary higher education. This formative stage of development can be attributed to the perceived lack of specific educational models and empirical research in this field (e.g., Woods, 2007). Accordingly, strong empirical studies addressing the research questions of this review study were lacking.
The evaluation also revealed the absence of a comprehensive view of teaching and learning; the reviewed publications adopted a narrower focus. Using the Conceptual Review Framework (see Figure 2.1) to categorize the aforementioned researched teaching and learning topics resulted in nine publications that addressed mainly learning environment, two publications that addressed mainly IDT, two publications that addressed mainly learning process, and zero publications that addressed mainly student. In addition, there was slight evidence of the outcome-based approach as adopted in this review study. Three of the reviewed publications (Boix Mansilla & Duraising, 2007; Nikitina, 2005; Woods, 2007) tend towards the outcome-based approach. Concerning the conceptualization of IDT, Boix Mansilla and Duraising defined IDT in a manner similar to that used in this review study. The other publications referred to the synthesis or integration characteristic of interdisciplinarity.
The content analysis resulted in an understanding of potential subskills that constitute IDT and potential conditions for enabling the development of IDT (see Table 2.1).
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