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Research on interdisciplinary science has for the most part concentrated on the institutional obstacles that discourage or hamper interdisciplinary work, with the expectation that interdisciplinary interaction can be improved through institutional reform strategies such as through reform of peer review systems. However institutional obstacles are not the only ones that confront interdisciplinary work. The design of policy strategies would benefit from more detailed investigation into the particular cognitive constraints, including the methodological and conceptual barriers, which also confront attempts to work across disciplinary boundaries. Lessons from cognitive science and anthropological studies of labs in sociology of science suggest that scientific practices may be very domain specific, where domain specificity is an essential aspect of science that enables researchers to solve complex problems in a cognitively manageable way. The limit or extent of domain specificity in scientific practice, and how it constrains interdisciplinary research, is not yet fully understood, which attests to an important role for philosophers of science in the study of interdisciplinary science. This paper draws upon two cases of interdisciplinary collaboration; those between ecologists and economists, and those between molecular biologists and systems biologists, to illustrate some of the cognitive barriers which have contributed to failures and difficulties of interactions between these fields. Each exemplify some aspect of domain specificity in scientific practice and show how such specificity may constrain interdisciplinary work.

BackgroundSocietal challenges that call for a new type of engineer suggest the need for the implementation of interdisciplinary engineering education (IEE). The aim of IEE is to train engineering students to bring together expertise from different disciplines in a single context. This review synthesizes IEE research with a focus on characterizing vision, teaching practices, and support.PurposeWe aim to show how IEE is conceptualized, implemented, and facilitated in higher engineering education at the levels of curricula and courses. This aim leads to two research questions:What aspects of vision, teaching, and support have emerged as topics of interest in empirical studies of IEE?What points of attention regarding vision, teaching, and support can be identified in empirical studies of IEE as supporting or challenging IEE?Scope/MethodNinety‐nine studies published between 2005 and 2016 were included in a qualitative analysis across studies. The procedure included formulation of research questions, searching and screening of studies according to inclusion/exclusion criteria, description of study characteristics, appraisal, and synthesis of results.ConclusionsChallenges exist for identifying clear learning goals and assessments for interdisciplinary education in engineering (vision). Most pedagogy for interdisciplinary learning is designed to promote collaborative teamwork requiring organization and team management. Our review suggests that developing interdisciplinary skills, knowledge, and values needs sound pedagogy and teaming experiences that provide students with authentic ways of engaging in interdisciplinary practice (teaching). Furthermore, there is a limited understanding of what resources hinder the development of engineering programs designed to support interdisciplinarity (support).

In this paper we take a close look at current interdisciplinary modeling practices in the environmental sciences, and suggest that closer attention needs to be paid to the nature of scientific practices when investigating and planning interdisciplinarity. While interdisciplinarity is often portrayed as a medium of novel and transformative methodological work, current modeling strategies in the environmental sciences are conservative, avoiding methodological conflict, while confining interdisciplinary interactions to a relatively small set of pre-existing modeling frameworks and strategies (a process we call crystallization). We argue that such practices can be rationalized as responses in part to cognitive constraints which restrict interdisciplinary work. We identify four salient integrative modeling strategies in environmental sciences, and argue that this crystallization, while contradicting somewhat the novel goals many have for interdisciplinarity, makes sense when considered in the light of common disciplinary practices and cognitive constraints. These results provide cause to rethink in more concrete methodological terms what interdisciplinarity amounts to, and what kinds of interdisciplinarity are obtainable in the environmental sciences and elsewhere.

Can you ask students from three different bachelor programmes to help solve planning and routeing problems for hospitals? In the presented case an interdisciplinary approach was shown to be successful after some redesign. Students from Applied Mathematics, Civil Engineering and Industrial & Engineering Management jointly designed solutions for 'traffic' to and through the hospital using stochastic modelling. Importantly this project was scaffolded through coursework, supervision and problemdesign. The particular scaffolding strategy employed by the teaching team offers other teacher teams ideas for making interdisciplinary project-based learning a more effective learning opportunity. At the same time we need to ensure that students feel at home in their own programme and will be empowered to work with other specialists.