Intersections
University of Valencia
Innovating through Interdisciplinary Pedagogy and Instruction: Learning Together to Work Together View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patricia Oswald, Katherine Zaromatidis
Many disciplines/professions are recognizing the benefits of educating students through an interdisciplinary lens. Some fields, like medicine, have had interprofessional requirements for many years, while others are now beginning to explore the benefits of interdisciplinary training. Furthermore, some professional associations are requiring interprofessional experiences as necessary components for student training. Within Iona College, there are several innovative, pedagogical models bringing psychology, business, the natural sciences, humanities, education, and several other disciplines together to enhance student learning. Curricular strategies include the use of co-taught courses, development of modular units that can be infused into existing curriculum, and use of collaborative, project-based assignments. Skill development is accomplished through interdisciplinary experiential activities and fieldwork that emphasize interprofessional communication, exploration of shared best practices, and team work. Iona’s interdisciplinary programs prepare students for real-world challenges by having them learn and work together across disciplines. Specific programs such as the curriculum bringing business finance and psychology together will be highlighted. Collaborative training of psychology and education students will also be explored. Finally, development of new interdisciplinary majors/minors will be discussed. Barriers to such initiatives will be outlined with possible solutions offered.
The Complexities of Engagement: Moving beyond Tolerance in a Multilingual University Classroom
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sharon Rudman, Jacqueline Luck
Though communities and classrooms globally have become more diverse, co-existence in a communal space does not imply meaningful knowledge of one another nor harmonious interactions and relationships. In fact, dominant discourses in such spaces are often of conflict and discrimination. Although individuals are not completely ‘spoken’ by their discoursal contexts, their perspectives are often dictated by the ideological spaces with which they are most familiar. A circular causality, existing between the discourse community and the individual, contributes to the persistence of common-sense assumptions which ‘other’ those perceived as different. Tolerance’ is often put forward as a panacea in addressing conflicts and misunderstandings. However, ‘tolerance’ often cements distance and difference by evading opportunities for real engagement. Tolerance, generally implies that although we don’t understand or like one another, we will agree to tolerate one another’s existence on the condition that we maintain our distance and remain within our boundaries (Žižek, 2010). Suspicion and hostilities are consequently often glossed over rather than negotiated and resolved. This paper references a South African university classroom intervention which found that divisions are more effectively addressed through facilitation of interactions addressing difference and division head-on. These interactions thus accommodate negotiation and resolution of real and imagined hostility and difference. This study frames the community and the individual as complex systems with a number of different elements interacting in different ways, prompting the emergence of particular patterns and trends that reflect transformative understandings and engagements with difference (Cameron and Larsen-Freeman 2007).
