Please describe your project
Title of Project
Drawing on disciplinary perspectives and integrating their insights and modes of thinking to advance understanding of a complex global problem (INT 105).
Project Description
Students will engage in a multi-step interdisciplinary research process to develop capacity to integrate knowledge, modes of thinking, and education experience, and apply skills to real-world problems beyond the university. Students will reflect on their epistemic positions and move toward developing a sophisticated epistemic position of critical pluralism which requires seeing multiple and often conflicting perspectives as partial understandings of the subject to be integrated in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.
This assignment will be completed in steps (both in class and at home) during the full semester.
Step 1: Students will identify a global issue of interest to research as a class and develop a complex research question about the issue researchable in interdisciplinary sense. (Frame: Research as Inquiry).
Step 2: Students will identify all potentially relevant disciplines in investigating the issue and create a research map outlining the purpose of research, potentially relevant disciplines, their perspectives, and major assumptions. Students will conduct an initial literature review to finalize the list of 2-3 most relevant disciplines to consider as a class and reevaluate the research question, if needed. (Frame: Research as Inquiry).
Step 3: Students will be divided into small groups. Each group will be assigned a discipline to draw insights from. Groups will conduct a comprehensive literature review to discover disciplinary scholarly knowledge on the topic and develop adequacy in their assigned discipline: identify disciplinary perspective on the issue, assumptions, concepts, theories, and methods in order to understand the disciplinary insights concerning the issue. Students will summarize their findings in a group literature review data table and present their findings to the class. (Frames: Searching as Strategic Exploration).
Step 4: Students will reflect on their disciplinary understanding of the global issue and evaluate insights using disciplinary perspectives, major assumptions, and consider strengths and limitations. (Frame: Scholarship as Conversation).
Step 5: Students will integrate disciplinary insights using the Broad Model. Together, students will identify conflicts between disciplinary insights and reflect on why these conflicts exist. Students will create common ground between disciplinary insights to create a more complex understanding of the issue. (Frame: Scholarship as Conversation).