Knowledge Integration in Interdisciplinary Learning

• In Event: Knowledge Integration: Trajectories, Opportunities, and Future Directions

Abstract

Objectives. This poster explores expanding the knowledge integration (KI) rubric (Liu, Lee, Hofstetter, & Linn, 2008) to assess interdisciplinary understanding.
Perspectives. We refer to interdisciplinary understanding as synthesis of ideas, data, information, methods, tools, concepts or theories from two or more disciplines. We merged interdisciplinary learning as a pragmatic constructionist view (ILPCV, Boix-Mansilla, 2010) and KI (Linn 2006, Linn & Eylon, 2011) based on the focus of both frameworks on integration processes to promote cognitive advancement as illustrated in Table 1.
Methods. We used the merged framework to design the Boundary Breaking for Interdisciplinary Learning (BBIL) instructional model (Kidron & Kali, 2015) and develop a rubric for assessing interdisciplinary understanding. We designed a semester-long interdisciplinary course which was based on the generic BBIL model. The course used learning technologies to break boundaries between disciplines with an interdisciplinary curriculum, and between learners by using a learning community approach (Bielaczyc& Collins, 1999). We applied the rubric to synthesis essays written by 34 undergraduate students who studied the interdisciplinary curriculum. Combining KI and ILPCV enabled us to exploit their unique strengths: the conceptualization of interdisciplinarity in ILPCV, and the systematicity of quantification in KI. We adopted four criteria for assessing interdisciplinary writing (purposefulness, disciplinary grounding, integration, and critical awareness) from the ILPCV rubric (Boix-Mansilla, Duraisingh, Wolfe,& Haynes, 2009), and added two other criteria ('disciplinary analysis through integrative lens' and 'synthesis implications'). From the KI framework (Liu et al., 2008) we adopted the technique for assessing and quantifying the thoroughness of students' answers based on the number of connections between well-explained concepts. We defined an interdisciplinary link as a connection between ideas from different disciplines, whereas in the original KI rubric a link represents a connection between ideas in any knowledge domain. In addition, since our synthesis question was open-ended and students' responses were longer than typical KI responses as described in Liu et al. (2008), we expanded the definitions of levels to include more links.
Data sources. Data was collected through a task that was assigned once in the middle of the course and once at the end. Students were required to individually answer a question regarding the course interdisciplinary theme in a 1,000-word essay, and integrate ideas from three disciplinary domains taught in the course.
Results. Students’ interdisciplinary understanding improved significantly between the essay they wrote for the mid-course assignment (M=67.2, SD=29.4) and the essay they wrote for the final assignment (M=82.5, SD=22.0) [t(31)=2.96, p<0.01, d=0.59].
Significance. Rubric design challenged the traditional boundaries between disciplinary and interdisciplinarity reasoning. As both theoretical frameworks acknowledge, complex disciplinary topics just like interdisciplinary topics, require integrative thinking. Viewing these two constructs as residing on one continuum, rather than being qualitatively distinct, can provide a new perspective for research and practice in general, and for the KI framework specifically.

Authors

• Adi Kidron, University of California - Berkeley

• Yael Kali, University of Haifa