Page 94 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Chapter 5
demonstrating the linkages between the disciplinary knowledge, (b) explaining the disciplinary knowledge connections, and (c) describing the advancements in understanding. Students in HEE require the opportunity to practise the analysis and synthesis cognitive endeavours during their learning to achieve the IDT learning outcomes.
The integration or synthesis cognitive endeavour is seen as the defining characteristic of interdisciplinary outcomes (Klein, 1990). The integration or synthesis of the disciplinary knowledge should provide a more holistic understanding or an enriched view of the particular phenomenon or the complex problem under study (Richards, 1996). Creativity is necessary to re-order the disciplinary information that was gained in the analytical cognitive endeavour. However, as a rule, students are taught to accept the order of disciplinary knowledge as it is given (Sill, 2001). In re-ordering the disciplinary information, epistemic or language conflicts may occur (Repko, 2012; Turner et al., 2015). The emergence of hybrid understanding manifests itself in the forging of new disciplinary knowledge connections. According to Defila and Di Giulio (2015), disciplinary knowledge connections can be made in various arrangements. For example, in a group of eight disciplinary knowledge elements, the options include connecting pairs of elements and connecting one element with each of the seven others. The best arrangement to apply in connecting the disciplinary knowledge depends on the purpose of the knowledge integration. In this respect, it is not a matter of ‘the more disciplinary knowledge connections, the better’, rather, it is a matter of the sufficiency of the gained advancement in understanding and the characteristics of the disciplinary knowledge connections made. The sufficiency and characteristics are constantly improved by revising and questioning the provisional integration made (Nikitina, 2005). Empirical research on making disciplinary knowledge connections by students in HEE has not yet started. Similarly, the phenomenon of disciplinary knowledge integration is also poorly researched (Defila & DiGiulio, 2015; Nikitina, 2005).
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