Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 22 (2004)

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https://hdl.handle.net/10323/3987

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    Reflections on the Wellsprings of Interdisciplinary Studies and Transformative Education
    (Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2004) Navakas, Francine; Fiscella, Joan
    To make the case for the importance of interdisciplinary studies, Minnich appeals to its wellsprings. She reflects on how her own field of philosophy encourages questioning of assumptions and methods; on her political concerns for freedom, justice and equality; and on her commitment to a model of education that trusts students to follow questions and issues that really matter to them. In this context she cautions that it is important to question in and across even new interdisciplinary fields such as women’s studies, ethnic studies or disability studies. The form and content of her reflections challenge educators to think through their own goals and how to assess whether they have achieved them.
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    Knowledge in Science and Innovation: A Review of Three Discourses on the Institutional and Cognitive Foundations of Knowledge Production
    (Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2004) Navakas, Francine; Fiscella, Joan
    Modern society is said to be a knowledge society. Yet the academic discourse on the topics of learning and knowledge production is fragmented. In order to build bridges between different traditions, we review three discursive formations on contemporary knowledge production in science and innovation: the social shaping of science (SSS) discourse, the knowledge in innovation (KNOWINN) discourse and the analogy in science (ANALOG) discourse. We argue that the three discourses should be seen as complementary; and that a more comprehensive approach to the study of knowledge production in contemporary society can be developed by combining them. We illustrate this with an empirical example from the field of biotechnological science and innovation, and end the paper with a few proposals for fruitful ways of combining and juxtaposing the perspectives developed within the three discourses.
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    Scholarship About Interdisciplinarity: Some Possibilities and Guidelines
    (Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2004) Navakas, Francine; Fiscella, Joan
    This article proposes some guidelines for scholarship about interdisciplinarity. They are both inductively and deductively generated, drawing on a collaborative book project at the author’s institution as well as on Glassick, Maeroff, and Huber’s Scholarship Assessed. The intent is to encourage more faculty to write about interdisciplinarity for scholarly publication, propose some suggestions for the process, and consider how this scholarship might be evaluated.
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    An Interdisciplinary Approach to Web Design
    (Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2004) Navakas, Francine; Fiscella, Joan
    The theory of interdisciplinary studies can be understood to apply to the creation, not just the study, of a complex system; in this case, to the creation of a Web site. We examine the aspects of a Web site that make it complex, and the disciplines used in its creation. After interpreting the steps in Web site design as steps in the interdisciplinary process, we critique specific Web sites and show how they could be improved through a more fully interdisciplinary Web design process. We conclude with recommendations for making more interdisciplinary both the education of Web designers and their organization into Web design teams.
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    Generating Integration and Complex Understanding: Exploring the Use of Creative Thinking Tools within Interdisciplinary Studies
    (Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2004) Navakas, Francine; Fiscella, Joan
    The following paper examines the links between the interdisciplinary process and the creative process and reviews the potential for the literature on creativity to propose and advance tools for promoting interdisciplinary understanding. By comparing the steps involved in the interdisciplinary model proposed by Newell (2001a) to the steps involved in each of the creativity models proposed by Wallas (1926), Treffinger, Isaksen, & Dorval, (2000), and Rossman (1964) as well as to the definition of creativity proposed by Torrance (1988), this paper aims to uncover clues to the techniques and methods found to be useful in producing synthesis and creative understanding. These tools are not the sparks that arise mysteriously from the mind of genius. On the contrary, they are tools that are known and that may be learned and honed; they include, but may not necessarily be limited to: observing, imaging, abstracting, recognizing patterns, forming patterns, analogizing, body thinking, empathizing, dimensional thinking, modeling, playing, transforming, and synthesizing (Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 1999).