I have been seeing many universities both in Europe and the US advertising about their transdisciplinarity.
Why is this transdisciplinarity so important (to them, or why is it important in general)? Why are some schools trying to have a education and curriculum structure which emphasizes transdisciplinarity?
I had never heard the term “transdisciplinarity” before, so I searched and found the following article:
The article tries to make distinctions between multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary approaches (and maybe a few other such terms). I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether these terms mean the same thing or different things. In any case, the point is that to further understanding of new things, we need to take ideas from several disciplines.
Interdisciplinary Professional Education (IPE) is very hot right now- is that what you’re seeing? One of the ideas is that most people work with people of a variety of disciplines in our professional life, so incorporating this in education can deepen understanding of those related professions and better inform how we do our own. We benefit from incorporating ideas from other disciplines.
Something like this: Interdisciplinarity - Wikipedia
I understood what you meant even if the term wasn’t specifically familiar to me. There have always been interdisciplinary programs in U.S. colleges and universities. One example that I am familiar with is ‘American Studies’ that combines Political Science courses with American literature and other subjects like Economics to better captures big picture approach. There are other areas like Latin American studies and African Diaspora that try to do the same thing. You can’t teach a student everything they need to know about those areas if they are focused on one department like History or general Political Science.
Perhaps the best example that I know of is my own academic background of behavioral neuroscience. There is no single department that can give you an understanding of everything you need to know if you have an interest in that subject. It tends to based in Psychology departments but, because it is also a hard science, requires an exposure to everything from Molecular Biology to hard Mathematics to Chemistry. As an undergraduate and graduate student, I had to take classes in many different departments including medical school. All were very beneficial and had their own approaches to the same subject. I sometimes helped them as much as they helped me (for example, I could not even begin to imagine why someone would care about single cells when all I cared about was the end result in behavior and yet they saw things the opposite way; you need both).
Overall, I would say that the trend is a very positive one. Almost all subjects are cross-disciplinary to some degree and forcing academic co mingling and helps foster more creative thinking and less academic incestuousness.
I wonder when they will actually offer courses in Spin Doctoring ?
Or they consider that done - they even have degrees called Marketing