Interdisciplinarity
Utrecht University aims to educate its students to become critical global citizens with an eye for an open society. Interdisciplinary education plays an important role in the learning trajectories of students on BA, MA and PhD levels as well as in Continuing Education. UU strives for an educational culture in which high-quality interdisciplinary education is self-evident, teachers are encouraged and supported to innovate their teaching, and educational interventions are research-informed.
Interdisciplinarity is complex as well as diverse; it is a buzzword but also part of everyday teaching and learning practice. For the sake of clarity, Utrecht University has adopted the term ‘disciplined interdisciplinarity’ as an overarching perspective on interdisciplinary education. Disciplined interdisciplinarians are trained to keep disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives in balance. After all, interdisciplinarity finds its ground in the knowledge and insights from disciplines and disciplines gain a new context for their research outcomes from interdisciplinary work in turn. This definition is based on the work of Rick Szostak:
What is interdisciplinary education?
Interdisciplinary education is often driven by complex academic and/or societal questions to which students will contribute now and in the future. Research into such questions, which is carried out at UU in the Strategic Themes, is an important driver of interdisciplinary education. In this education, as in research, interdisciplinarity is a means and not an end in itself. It arises from the realization that the questions require collaboration across the boundaries of disciplines. An important attitude that is required of both lecturers and students in interdisciplinary education is an open and appreciative attitude towards knowledge and insights from outside one’s own specialization, one’s own department or faculty, or the academy.
When a teaching team decides to design and implement cross-departmental or cross-faculty education, it is first of all interesting for them to know that there are different ways in which interdisciplinarity can take shape in educational practice.
Multidisciplinarity: by placing insights from multiple disciplines or specializations side by side, a course takes the first step towards interdisciplinarity. Students learn what a discipline or specialization is, and how knowledge and insights are being produced by some of them.
Interdisciplinarity: integration of disciplinary knowledge and insights is reached by establishing a ‘common ground’ and by reaching a ‘more comprehensive understanding’ of a complex theme. Several integrative methods exist for taking these steps and teaching them to students. If you want to learn more about these methods, read this chapter.
Transdisciplinarity: this form of multi- or interdisciplinarity juxtaposes academics with non-academic partners and may also reach a more comprehensive understanding of a societal question.
For all these practices, it is important to take into account two basic principles for designing interdisciplinary education that apply in every context:
- Students should start their research or educational project with a question, problem, or topic that is too complex to be addressed adequately by a single discipline;
- Teaching teams should decide upon an approach of or model for interdisciplinary research (in the context of a given set of disciplines) that informs the constructive alignment process (Biggs and Tang, 2022) of their program, minor or course and that helps for making choices on the didactics that are needed to guide students in their learning. We call such an approach or model an ‘integrative method’.
Different (research-based) integrative methods have been used before in the context of interdisciplinary education, of which Allen F. Repko and Rick Szostak’s model is the most well-known example. Many educational designers and educators, also at Utrecht University, have been relying on their 10-step process of interdisciplinary research for their curricular designs. On this page you can find information on how to use these steps as a model for learning. Systems thinking, design thinking and traveling concepts, like Repko and Szostak’s method, are integrative methods for designing education. A concept you may also see passing by is that of boundary crossing. However, this informs learning activity for students and is therefore different from the above mentioned integrative methods. If you want to know more about boundary crossing as informing learning activities, more information can be found here. We recommend to read the book Key Texts on Interdisciplinary Education.
Introduction to Interdisciplinarity video
The Interdisciplinary Education programme has developed the animation below, designed to introduce interdisciplinarity to students and faculty from several disciplines and specialisations (also available in Dutch here). The programme also developed tools to support you in designing interdisciplinary education both on an organizational and on a didactic level. We offer these tools in Open Access format through our community on Edusources.
UU Support on interdisciplinary education
- If you want to learn more about interdisciplinarity at UU, please visit this intranet page on Interdisciplinary Education (Solis-id required) for more information.
- If you have any questions about how to organize, design or implement interdisciplinary education in the curriculum, please contact Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning (cat@uu.nl).
- Dean interdisciplinary education: the Executive Board has appointed a Dean of Interdisciplinary Education (Iris van der Tuin) at Utrecht University with effect from 1 September 2021. Van der Tuin is the Dean of the Interdisciplinary Education programme.
- Special Interest Group (SIG) Interdisciplinarity: The Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning (CAT) facilitates UU teachers to exchange their educational expertise on Interdisciplinarity.
References
- Biggs, J.B., and C.S. Tang (2011). ‘Constructively aligned teaching and assessment’ in: Teaching for Quality Learning at University : What the Student Does. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education. Pp. 95-110.
- Repko, A.F. and R. Szostak (2021). Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Szostak, R. (2015). “Extensional Definition of Interdisciplinarity.”Issues In Interdisciplinary Studies
- Van Der Tuin, I. (Ed.). (2025). Key texts on Interdisciplinary Higher Education. Bristol University Press.
- Van Lambalgen, R., & Van der Tuin, I. (2024). Chapter 7: Teaching integration. In R. Szostak (Ed.), Handbook of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Administration.
