Barriers Against Interdisciplinarity: Implications for Studies of Science, Technology, and Society (STS

Bauer, Henry H.

doi:10.1177/016224399001500110

Cited by 114 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Research investigating interdisciplinarity has explored its utility in academic, educational, and practical contexts (Choi & Pak, 2006), factors mitigating against its occurrence (Bauer, 1990), and whether indications of its presence actually reflect cross-pollination between different disciplines (Schummer, 2004). There has also been research examining how the level of interdisciplinarity in a field changes over time.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who studies MOOCs? Interdisciplinarity in MOOC research and its changes over time

Veletsianos

Shepherdson

2015

IRRODL

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The complexity of digital and online education is becoming increasingly evident in the context of research into networked learning/participation. Interdisciplinary research is often proposed as a way to address complex scientific problems and enable researchers to bring novel perspectives into a field other than their own. The degree to which research on Massive Open Online Courses suggest that empirical research on xMOOCs may be more interdisciplinary than research on cMOOCs. Greater interdisciplinarity in xMOOC research could reflect the burgeoning interest in the field, the general familiarity with the xMOOC pedagogical model, and the hype experienced by xMOOCs. Greater interdisciplinarity in the field may also provide researchers with rich opportunities to improve our understanding and practice of digital and online learning. (Pellmar & Eisenberg, 2000). KeywordsNevertheless, in their assessment of proposals submitted for funding under the MOOC research initiative (henceforth MRI), Gašević, Kovanović, Joksimović, and Siemens (2014) show that more than 50% of the authors in all phases of the MRI grants were from the field of education, even though a common perception in the field is that the MOOC phenomenon is "driven by computer scientists" (p. 166). Research into emerging forms of digital learning is likely to suffer if driven by education researchers alone or computer scientists alone. As Gašević and colleagues note, disparate involvement in MOOC research "could be a worrying sign of the fragmentation in the research community", and as such there is a need to "[increase] efforts towards enhancing interdisciplinarity" (p. 134).We have recently completed a systematic review of the empirical MOOC literature published between (Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2015, and as a result of that study, we can use bibliometric data to investigate the extent to which interdisciplinarity is present in the published literature on MOOCs. Thus, in this paper, we combine our data with data from Gašević et al. (2014), and data used in a past systematic review of the literature (Liyanagunawardena, Adams, & Williams, 2013), to examine interdisciplinarity in the MOOC literature, and whether and how this has changed over time.To examine these issues, we review relevant literature and explain why this study is significant; describe the methods used to conduct this investigation; present the results; and conclude by discussing the implications and limitations of the findings. Who Studies Moocs? Interdisciplinarity in MOOC Research and its Changes over Time Veletsianos and ShepherdsonThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 3 Literature ReviewInterdisciplinary research is "any study or group of studies undertaken by scholars from two or more distinct scientific disciplines" (Aboelela et al., 2007, p. 341). The value of interdisciplinary research and collaboration rests in both the complexity of the problems societies are faced with (Pellmar & Eisenberg, 2000), and in the novel perspec...

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who studies MOOCs? Interdisciplinarity in MOOC research and its changes over time

Veletsianos

Shepherdson

2015

IRRODL

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“…(Taylor 1976: p131) Taylor adds that these myths are 'vast generalisations which have the basic role of creating an overall purpose and cohesion', a summary which fits well with postcolonial theory. Bauer (1990) also perceives complex tensions between disciplines, even when supposedly collaborating, and employs metaphors of xenophobia to underscore the contempt between discipline communities which he has observed, an analytical framework which can readily be aligned to a postcolonial analysis of disciplinary relationships:…”

Section: Discipline 'Stories' As Colonial Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Disciplines, discourse and Orientalism: the implications for postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching in higher education

Wareing

2009

Studies in Higher Education

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Despite national requirements for accredited teaching qualifications to promote understanding of 'how students learn, both generally and in the subject ' (HEA, 2006), there is a lack of literature internationally on disciplinary differences in student learning in higher education. Academics at a UK research intensive university were asked to report on the existence of literature or folkloric knowledge concerned with how students learnt in their subject. No relevant literature or folklore were identified but responses did demonstrate a discourse in which the academics constructed their discipline as 'better' than other disciplines: the finding with which the present paper is concerned. The discourse of the distinctiveness and superiority of ones own discipline can be understood as a form of 'Orientalism'. A postcolonial analysis of the discourse of disciplinary relationships offers a partial explanation for challenges made to the validity of cross-university activities, such as postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching.

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“…Collaboration across these different roles or perspectives in projects can be quite challenging, because the different roles have diverse objectives and methods (Bauer 1990). Project team members have different ways of knowing (Harris 2007, Barth 2002) and often lack tools to facilitate knowledge exchange and negotiation of meaning (Wenger 1998).…”

Section: A Model To Facilitate Interdisciplinary Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Model of Change: A Way to Understand the How and Why of Change

Entwistle

Rasmussen

2014

Ethnographic Praxis

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Barriers Against Interdisciplinarity: Implications for Studies of Science, Technology, and Society (STS

Cited by 114 publications

References 4 publications

Who studies MOOCs? Interdisciplinarity in MOOC research and its changes over time

Who studies MOOCs? Interdisciplinarity in MOOC research and its changes over time

Disciplines, discourse and Orientalism: the implications for postgraduate certificates in learning and teaching in higher education

The Model of Change: A Way to Understand the How and Why of Change

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