Page 45 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Teaching and learning in interdisciplinary higher education: A systematic review
recognizing similarities in subskills and conditions between the reported studies despite their differing focus, and (b) providing an organized way of identifying and categorizing these subskills and conditions. In retrospect, the selected time span of the literature search, languages, scientific literature databases as well as the search strategy used were adequate for the purposes of this review. Although no specific search terms concerning the component student were included, eight possible conditions could be extracted (see Table 2.1).
2.7 Suggestions for further research
Further research should examine whether empirical evidence can be found for the subskills and conditions obtained in the present study (see Table 2.1). Strong empirical research is required to test hypothetical relationships between student, learning environment, and learning process conditions and IDT within the context of interdisciplinary higher education. Such testing would open the way for research into the exact nature of these relationships; for example, the extent of the influence of one factor on another, the stability of such influence and its mutation over time. Additionally, empirical research should focus on identifying the optimum combination of conditions to enable IDT. In particular, research into the extent and sequence of knowledge and skills development and the balance between knowledge and skills development is recommended (Ivanitskaya et al., 2002; Manathunga et al., 2006; Woods, 2007).
Investigation whether the proposed performance view of curriculum design in interdisciplinary higher education does indeed facilitate the achievement of the learning outcome IDT is recommended. It would be interesting to investigate if and how the operationalization of the learning outcome IDT differs along interdisciplinary higher
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