Page 98 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering

Chapter 5
each new disciplinary knowledge element by adapting their existing mental structures and schemes.
5.2.2 Perspective of Luning and Marcelis’s food quality management research principles
No general framework for analysing the disciplinary knowledge connections involved in achieving IDT learning outcomes yet exists. Therefore, the concepts underlying the research principles in FQM (Luning & Marcelis, 2006, 2007, 2009a, 2009b) were used to analyse the knowledge connections made between the food technology and management-related disciplines. To illustrate, disciplinary knowledge connections in FQM between food microbiology (a technology-related discipline) and education (a management-related discipline) need to be made when, for example, a hands-on training in microbial hygiene for factory operators is being designed. The integration of knowledge from technology and management-related disciplines is called the ‘techno-managerial approach’ (T-M approach) (Luning & Marcelis, 2006). As Milios et al. (2013, p. 1394) empirically found, management commitment (management-related) to food safety policies (technology-related) is essential for the proper implementation of food safety programs.
Luning and Marcelis (2007) have elaborated the T-M approach with a research paradigm in which food quality (fq) depends on the dynamics of the food systems, which in turn depend on the composition of the food products (food dynamics, fd) and the applied technological conditions (tc). In addition, food quality depends on the dynamics of human decision-making behaviour, which in turn depend on personal characteristics (human dynamics, hd) and the applied administrative conditions (ac). Figure 5.2 illustrates how this research paradigm can be applied to view FQM problems from four perspectives: food dynamics (fd) and technological conditions (tc), which are technology-related, and human dynamics (hd) and administrative conditions (ac), which are management-related. As a
88