McNair, Lisa D.; Newswander, Chad B.; Boden, Daniel; Borrego, Maura
description
Interdisciplinary teamwork is increasingly important for engineering graduates. Yet, the reality of teaching interdisciplinarity requires faculty and students to navigate structures of engineering programs that do not accommodate interdisciplinary work. The purpose of this study is to understand how students and faculty negotiate interdisciplinary identities and how self-managed work teams can be used as a pedagogical strategy for promoting interdisciplinarity.
Gee's concepts of affinity identity and institutional identity are used to theorize interdisciplinary teaming. Multiple data sets from observations and interviews are used to present a case study of one interdisciplinary design course from the points of view of faculty and students. This approach, combined with research literature, is used to propose a pedagogical model for interdisciplinary teaming. A pedagogical approach of self-managed teaming can promote interdisciplinary identities if (a) faculty model institutional identities as interdisciplinary researchers and instructors, (b) students are encouraged to perform as decision-makers in groups constructed through affinity identities, and (c) faculty provide
scaffolding for self-managed teams and encourage valuing of different disciplinary perspectives.
