Interdisciplinarity in engineering education: An empirically grounded typology

Abstract

Background

The concept of interdisciplinarity has gained considerable traction in engineering education. However, research has primarily focused on its impact on students' learning experiences and outcomes, while relatively little is known about how engineering teachers conceptualize interdisciplinary education. Additionally, there have been calls for theoretical insights into interdisciplinary education.

Purpose

Drawing on Weber's concept of the “ideal type,” which aims to capture salient theoretical features of social phenomena, this paper seeks to contribute to a theoretical understanding of how engineering teachers conceptualize the nature of interdisciplinary education.

Design/Method

Eighteen engineering teachers from three universities across three Nordic countries, all experienced in teaching interdisciplinary courses, participated in semi-structured interviews. The analysis proceeded in two stages. First, an empirical analysis, where the interview transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis. Second, a theoretical analysis developed an ideal-type conceptualization of interdisciplinary education and examined it through a socio-cultural lens.

Results

The analysis led to the development of a typology comprising of four ideal-type conceptualizations of interdisciplinary education. The typology, taking the form of a two-by-two matrix, advances theoretical understanding by discerning two modes of disciplinary interaction (epistemic and social) and two roles of integration (integrationist and generalist) in interdisciplinary education.

Conclusions

The typology weaves together our empirical findings with key theoretical strands and positions on interdisciplinarity identified in the scholarly literature into a cohesive framework that informs both the theory and practice of interdisciplinary education. The typology can be used as a “boundary object,” a conceptual tool that facilitates collaboration between teachers across disciplinary boundaries.