Innovations In Interdisciplinary Teaching

Specialists in interdisciplinary studies, either as teachers or administrators, offer advice to new and experienced faculty members teaching a no-trump course, primarily at the undergraduate level. They address such questions as how faculty can best prepare, how to ensure excellence in learning, and the foundational tenets in interdisciplinary teaching. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

"This book is a detailed resource on knowledge management and innovations that has been written and edited to provide flexibility and in-depth knowledge management innovations, strategies, and practices"--Provided by publisher.

As universities increasingly offer courses that break the confines of a single subject area, more students are enrolling on interdisciplinary programmes within multidisciplinary departments. Teaching and learning within interdisciplinary study requires new approaches, including an understanding of the critical perspectives and frameworks and the rearranging of intellectual and professional boundaries. Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching in Higher Education explores the issues and tensions provoked by interdisciplinary learning, offering helpful information for: Staff development Distance learning Mass communication courses Interdisciplinary science courses Grounded in thorough research, this collection is the first of its kind to provide practical advice and guidance from around the world, improving the quality of teaching and learning in interdisciplinary programmes.

This book provides an international platform for educators from different STEM disciplines to present, discuss, connect, and develop collaborations in two inter-related ways: (1) sharing and discussing changes and innovations in individual discipline-based education in STEM/STEAM, and (2) sharing and discussing the development of interdisciplinary STEM/STEAM education. Possible relationships and connections between individual disciplines (like mathematics or physics) and STEM education remain under explored and the integration of traditionally individual discipline-based education in STEM education is far from balanced. Efforts to pursue possible connections among traditionally separated individual disciplines in STEM are not only necessary for the importance of deepening and expanding interdisciplinary research and education in STEM, but also for the ever-increasing need of reflecting on and changing how traditional school subjects (like mathematics or physics) can and should be viewed, taught, and learned. Scholars from eight countries/regions provide diverse perspectives and approaches on changes and innovations in STEM disciplinary and interdisciplinary education. Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Education in STEM will be a great resource to students and researchers in STEM education as well as STEM curriculum developers and teacher educators internationally.

Pedagogy is at the heart of teaching and learning. Preparing young people to become lifelong learners with a deep knowledge of subject matter and a broad set of social skills requires a better understanding of how pedagogy influences learning. Focusing on pedagogies shifts the perception of ...

Ultimately, the authors make a compelling case not only for this turn to learning but for creating new pathways for nonfaculty learning careers, understanding the limits of professional organizations and social media, and the need to establish this new interdisciplinary field of learning innovation.

During the most recent decade, interdisciplinary instruction at the undergraduate level has increased rapidly. Independent colleges and universities are both innovators in developing new approaches to interdisciplinary education and strong supporters of traditional liberal arts disciplines. Some observers argue that interdisciplinary approaches are better suited to the complexity of the 21st-century world and workplace. Significant barriers to interdisciplinarity include institutional inertia, evaluation challenges, the strong commitment of faculty members to the disciplines in which they were trained, and the role of discipline-based departments in curricula and faculty rewards. The size, flexibility, and commitment to teaching at smaller independent institutions can make it easier for them to introduce innovative programs in interdisciplinary education. Campus leaders can promote and sustain interdisciplinary initiatives by developing and supporting policies that explicitly reward faculty members and departments for interdisciplinary teaching. [This brief was prepared by the CIC Project on the Future of Independent Higher Education.].

This volume documents the growth of a new kind of interdisciplinary teamwork that is evolving among practitioners, researchers, teacher educators, and community partners. Its premise: the design of learning environments and the development of theory must proceed in a mutually supportive fashion. Scientific researchers have learned that a prerequisite to studying the kinds of learning that matter is helping to shoulder the responsibility for ensuring that these forms of learning occur. To support and study learning, researchers are increasingly making major and long-term investments in the design and maintenance of contexts for learning. Practitioners are assuming new roles as well, reflecting an increasing awareness of the need to move beyond skillful doing. If developing learning contexts are to be protected within and expanded beyond the systems that surround them, it is necessary to foster professional communities that will support reflection about practice, including the generation and evaluation of rich and flexible environments for student thinking. One consequence of recent reforms is that teachers are increasingly regarding such tasks as central to their professional development. Innovations in Learning: New Environments for Education describes coordinated interaction between educational design on the one hand, and the development of learning theory on the other, through a series of examples. These examples have been chosen because they are continuing, proven programs with evidence of success. Contributors to the volume are researchers and practitioners who have played a role in inventing these programs and have guided their development over a period of years. Rather than choosing illustrations of a pipeline or "application model of research" from research and then to practice, the editors of this volume have selected interventions in which researchers and practitioners work together persistently to forge common understanding. Such activity is necessarily interdisciplinary, often encompassing long spans of time, and is more akin to engineering in the field than to laboratory science. The common themes that emerge from this activity -- for example, the role of tools, talk, and community -- belong exclusively neither to theory nor to practice, but to their intersection in commitment to specific contexts of learning and continuing contributions to practice and underlying theory. This volume is organized into three sections that reflect different levels and kinds of learning contexts. Each of these levels has been the focus of recent cognitive and reform applications to learning and schooling. The first offers examples of effective learning in informal settings; the second discusses innovative approaches to schooling at the classroom level; and the third reviews reforms that regard the entire school as the appropriate unit of change.

This book explores the community of practice at New York City College of Technology engaged in interdisciplinary team teaching. Professors report on their high-impact practices when they combine the assets of different disciplines. Chapters feature examples of the innovative curriculum resulting from a true interdisciplinary system, including place-based learning. The book also discusses questions of validity and measuring the influence of high-impact practice within interdisciplinary co-teaching.