Creating Transformative Interdisciplinary Learning Opportunities for College Students

Transdisciplinary

The literature indicates that terms such as interprofessional, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary point to overlapping and similar concepts. Though we feel our project is more accurately described as transdisciplinary, we will be using the term interdisciplinary education (IDE) throughout this paper. This is largely because of the convention that exists within the college, where interdisciplinary education has been identified as a college-wide strategic commitment (Camosun College, n.d.).

While an interdisciplinary approach primarily looks for common ground between different academic specializations, a transdisciplinary approach takes a more collective, holistic view that includes personal voices (Brown et al., 2010). Transdisciplinary refers to the collective understanding of an issue, including personal, local, strategic, and specialized knowledge (Brown, Harris & Russell). It goes further than interdisciplinary to include “all validated constructions of knowledge and their worldviews and methods of inquiry” (p. 4). “The focus is on the organization of knowledge around complex heterogeneous domains rather than the disciplines and subjects into which knowledge is commonly organized” (p. 18). It involves transgressing boundaries, going beyond current knowledge, cross-fertilizing, and combining hard as well as soft knowledge.

Experiential Learning: Enabling Transformation

From the outset, we hoped the learning experience for students would be beyond the mere transfer of information and be transformative (Mezirow, 2000).

Informative learning involves a kind of … filling of the form. Trans-form-ative learning puts the form itself at risk of change… Both kinds of learning are expansive and valuable, one within a pre-existing frame of mind and the other reconstructing the very frame. (Kegan, 2000, p. 49, p. 49)

Hoggan (2016) refers to transformative learning as “processes that result in significant and irreversible changes in the way a person experiences, conceptualizes, and interacts with the world” (p. 71).

Experiential learning theory describes a cyclical process of learning that has the potential for transformation—from experience to reflection, abstraction, and active experimentation (Kolb & Kolb, 2017). According to Kolb (2017), experiential learning is a “major process of human adaptation involving the whole person” (p. 11). Slavich and Zimbardo (2012) argue for the importance of stimulating the affective domain through experience in learning and helping learners understand how theoretical concepts function in the real world. Building on these insights, our project aimed to engage learners in an embodied experience, by taking the issue of homelessness and bringing it into their reality.

Transformative learning is provoked when we experience the dissonance associated with encountering the “other.” As Freire says, “solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is in solidarity” (Freire, 1983, p. 34). By exposing students to differing perspectives, including the stories of those with lived experiences of homelessness, then engaging in discourse—“dialogue involving the assessment of beliefs, feelings, and values” (Mezirow, 2003, p. 59), we hoped to encourage critical thinking, self-reflection, and socially transformative learning.

Holding Environment

The term holding environment, originally referring to what a nurturing parent can provide for their child (Winnicott, 1960), captures the essence of what a transformative, interdisciplinary learning environment might look like. A holding environment needs to be a physically, emotionally and spiritually safe space, where people can trust enough to give and receive feedback, and take emotional risks (Palmer & Zajonc, 2010; Titchen & McCormack, 2010; Woodhill, 2010), as we “make ourselves vulnerable to honest exchanges, new ideas, and hopes for change” (Palmer & Zajonc, 2010, p. 138). When encountering differing viewpoints, we need to feel supported and seen—to nurture receptivity to new information, negotiate difficulties, and inhibit reactivity (Cranton, 2016; Siegel, 2010).

“Transformative work calls us into relationships with the ‘other’, that which is new, different and foreign to our experiences and beliefs, creating tension that is supportive of challenging existing belief systems and patterns of action” (Southern, 2014, p. 62). Yet fear and anxiety can cause us to revert to “habits of mind,” which reinforce existing views (Mezirow, 2003; Senge et al., 2004, p. 58). IDE holds the promise of transformative learning by bringing together a diversity of voices with alternative perspectives and possibilities, then having students collaboratively work through the contradictions and dilemmas they encounter. But the greatest gift of IDE—bringing together a diversity of perspectives, is also its greatest challenge, as we work to create an empathetic connection to bridge across differences. Paying attention to the quality of the holding environment we construct for these exchanges is essential.

A good holding environment for students is supportive, yet also challenging. It provides a context to support and empower learners to engage in dialogue with differing perspectives. Exposure to other views helps us to see and examine our assumptions and beliefs and takes us beyond what we already know (Woodhill, 2010). A holding environment that is both supportive and challenging can help us make our “big assumptions… [that is,] assumptions-taken-as-truth,” more explicit (Kegan & Lahey, 2001, p. 68). We can examine the sources and consequences of our assumptions when we bring them into awareness (Cranton, 1994). As we get more familiar with challenging individual and collective underlying assumptions, we can begin looking at possibilities that have not been considered, helping to develop new insights (Burke, 2009).

Given these important insights from the literature, we focused on developing an IDE event that would provide students with an embodied experience, where the whole person was engaged in learning. The structure of activities aimed to balance support with challenge, by creating a safe environment where students could express their views and critically reflect on their assumptions. Through engaging with multiple perspectives, and linking individual experiences to the larger socio-political context, we aimed to have our learning activities invite students into action. As learners approached the active experimentation process in the experiential learning cycle, we hoped the focus would be on perspective transformation leading to “emancipatory social action” (Hoggan et al., 2017, p. 58).

Interdisciplinary Education Event Development and Delivery

Eight faculty members from Early Learning and Care, two Mental Health and Addiction programs, Marketing, Nursing, Sociology, and the Teaching and Learning Centre volunteered to meet regularly for over a year. During this phase, our conversations focused on designing an IDE student event that would act as a holding environment with the potential for transformative learning. We developed an overall structure including learning activities, objectives, and assignments to expose students to different perspectives and to engage them in critical thinking, self-reflection, and dialogue. The structured activities enabled faculty to step back and students to step forward, interrogating their perspectives together as peers in a safe environment.

Community Partners

Early on, we decided to focus on the topic of homelessness as sufficiently complex and relevant. At the time, the city had been involved in an intense debate spurred by the emergence of tent cities in the downtown area. A key decision was to involve community partners, recognizing that individuals who had experienced homelessness, including frontline workers, would bring an essential perspective, and that discussion of any solutions should include those who have been directly impacted. A grounding in lived experience became fundamental to our approach and may be overlooked when considering disciplinary perspectives only.

We partnered with two not-for-profit agencies involved with homelessness to expose students to the perspectives of those with lived experience. Before attending the event students watched recorded interviews with frontline workers from Pacifica Housing On the day of the event, The Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness Speakers Bureau provided three speakers with lived experience of homelessness.

The Event

On Sunday, February 26, 2017, 140 students met for a four-hour IDE event, supported by the eight faculty members. We began in an auditorium listening to three speakers share very diverse stories of their lived experiences of homelessness.

Afterward, all the students dispersed into six classrooms and formed small interdisciplinary working groups of six or seven, with representation from each of the courses. Faculty were available in each room to monitor the time and answer any questions related to the activities. Students took turns facilitating the conversation, allowing them to freely and safely discuss their views without faculty input or scrutiny. Students were given instructions to guide them through four activities including introductions, first impressions of the speakers, influences on homelessness (including how personal challenges might be shaped by a larger socio-political context), potential individual and societal actions (with consideration of feasibility and impact), and finally summarizing key learning into overall themes, collated across all 140 students. (See Supplementary Appendix A for details of activities). Activities were structured to allow time for individuals to reflect and record their thoughts before sharing with the group. The input was compiled on sticky notes and large paper. The community partners stayed throughout the day as consultants -providing the expertise of lived experience. They floated between each classroom to join in on conversations as requested by students. The day ended by reconvening in the auditorium for closing comments.

Participants

All students who were part of the IDE event were invited to voluntarily participate in the research by attending a focus group a few days later, and/or by submitting an anonymized copy of their reflective assignment through an online dropbox. Invited participants came from five different courses across the college (Early Learning and Care, two Mental Health and Addiction programs, Marketing, and Sociology), and spanned first year to post-degree levels of education. A researcher visited the classes, explained the study, and provided students with consent forms. Faculty involved in the learning event were also invited to participate in the research portion by attending a faculty focus group and submitting post-event reflections. Researchers found that after examination, there was not enough data to develop a thematic analysis of the faculty perspective. However, we have included some faculty reflections later in the paper.

Data Sets

Data was collected from multiple sources including 21 reflective paper assignments, audiotape and transcription from a student focus group, and anonymous statements collected during the IDE event that captured the summary of key themes and significant learnings from the day.

The reflective paper assignment was developed in collaboration with all participating faculty. It included a series of open-ended questions that invited the students to critically reflect on their learning (What did you take away from this experience? How has this experience influenced your opinion and knowledge around homelessness? How has this experience influenced your opinion and knowledge around working in teams with multiple perspectives?). Although all participating faculty integrated the IDE assignment into their various courses as part of their assessment criteria, not all students chose to participate in the research. The focus group was run by two researchers who were not involved in a teaching relationship with any of the students. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to guide the conversation and researchers used probes to deepen the conversation when needed.

Triangulation by using different methods of data collection allowed us to gain insights into the impact of the learning event from the perspective of the groups (summary statements), the disciplines (reflective assignments), and a deeper insight into the opportunities and challenges of the learning event (focus group).

Data Analysis

Data were uploaded into Nvivo (qualitative data analysis program) for thematic analysis following the procedures laid out by Braun and Clarke (2006). Thematic analysis is an approach that searches for meaning and patterns in the data.

Validity in qualitative research means the researcher must answer the question, “why should we believe you?” (Maxwell, 2005, p. 105). Research findings are considered valid when they correspond with reality in a way that makes common sense (Maxwell). In general, qualitative validity can be reached by documentation of all procedures, checking transcripts for any obvious mistakes, regularly comparing data to categories, self-reflection, peer debriefing (Creswell, 2009; Glesne, 1999), and triangulation (Heale & Forbes, 2013)

To facilitate validity, and to help counteract desirability effect bias, the data was read and codified independently by each researcher, extracting raw segments for themes and patterns, with the research questions in mind. This was an iterative process between the researchers, as we compared developing themes, looking for links, similarities, and differences between students. Throughout this process, we critically reflected on our meaning-making and engaged in dialogue on our assumptions and beliefs.

Four major interconnected themes appeared as important to understanding the impact of the interdisciplinary learning event on students: authentic engagement, transcending perspectives, collective responsibility, and cultivating curiosity. The data suggests students moved from opening their hearts and minds, toward a desire to take action.

Benefits of Interdisciplinary Education

Transcending Perspectives

This theme captures the emergence of critical and systemic thinking and the affective, cognitive, and relational shifts that occurred as our students worked together to understand the causes and potential solutions to homelessness in the context of their city. The activities posed specific challenges for problem-solving that required collaborative decision-making. The process enabled learners to transcend their perspectives, and together create new conceptualizations and solutions to homelessness. As they sorted through potential causes and solutions, students were exposed to multiple points of view that were considered impactful, including personal, experiential, cultural, and disciplinary narratives:

Experiential Narratives. The community partners modeled vulnerability, and this may have encouraged the students to be more open about their personal experiences. Several of the students had themselves experienced homelessness. As one student reflected, “I believe that the encouragement to bring personal experiences into the group work helped people feel more invested in both their tasks and their partners.” Experiential narratives were significant in raising student’s awareness of their own biases and increasing their understanding of the complex pathways into homelessness. As one learner described it, “This experience, particularly listening to the guest speakers, forced me to consider my own thought patterns and realize how flawed they are.” Another student commented, “there are several factors working against the person simultaneously. This creates a tangle of circumstances keeping the person trapped.” Many of the students mentioned that “homelessness can happen to anyone” reflecting a shift in their stereotypical views on homelessness.

By opening their minds, learners were able to see the problem with fresh eyes and notice the resilience of people impacted by homelessness. “A couple of the speakers referred to homelessness as a ‘full-time job’ and M. had said he went through three pairs of shoes in six months.” This narrative of resilience and persistence is one the public rarely hears. Another student reflected:

Many in our society look at homelessness as a disgrace and embarrassment so it was encouraging to hear that even while these speakers have witnessed and endured so much, they did not wish to change their pasts, and in fact found strength in their history.

Cultural Narratives. There were several international students at the event. Some shared a cultural perspective about homelessness from their country of origin. These additional narratives seemed to increase students’ awareness of commonalities and differences in pathways and solutions to homelessness. Here a student described making connections between Canada’s and India’s experience of colonization:

I had a girl at our table who was from India…she just talked about what homelessness is like back in India. We actually got talking about residential schools…she started talking about how that same sort of thing was definitely happening in India, as it was a British Colony.

Interdisciplinary Narratives. Disciplinary-specific perspectives played a smaller role than anticipated, likely because students were typically novices. However, disciplinary biases did emerge and were challenged by the potential of what other disciplines could offer.

As this student expressed:

I have a low opinion of most marketing students, but that is because I have had bad experiences in the past…. I had a bias based on experience, which was proven to be false, which I appreciated. I like to be proven wrong in that sort of thing.

Another student said:

What a mental health and addiction worker might think of as routine and obvious might seem cruel to someone from a background in marketing. How to handle an upset youth may look quite different to an early learning and care worker than to a sociologist. This causes discussion and challenges our thinking, helping us to understand why we do what we do and to see where perhaps things need to change.

Confronting initial biases can be difficult, but if the learner persists, there can be enthusiasm about working with multi-perspectives, as this student expressed:

It became exciting to hear what each person would say and bring up. I can see how important and vital it is when dealing with issues, such as homelessness, to have team members from multiple perspectives and backgrounds since there could be certain areas that get left out otherwise.

Besides being exposed to other perspectives and opportunities for creative problem-solving, students also commented on the value of learning to work collaboratively with students who come from different disciplines. As this student said:

When you have people from different fields working together you can broaden the group’s overall perspective. Working in different fields gives individuals unique skill sets, knowledge bases, experiences, and biases. What one person may see as an insurmountable obstacle may have a solution that is more apparent to someone with a vastly different perspective.

Another student spoke to the value of working with diverse perspectives in preparation for her career. “I think that experience would be super valuable because part of what we are going to be doing while we are out there is advocating for people, which means that we need to be comfortable standing up.”

Reflecting on the benefits of IDE for stimulating change, this student said:

Though I still do not cherish group work, I am feeling more and more optimistic about the use of group ‘conversations’ to stimulate change. Ultimately, the more diversity that exists in these groups and conversations, the better the outcome will be, in terms of both solutions and representation.

Another important shift was an appreciation for complexity and the emergence of systemic thinking. As this student reflected:

Before this experience, I had very little knowledge of homelessness … I think I would have described ‘homelessness’ as people living without shelter, but after this event, it is clear that homelessness is so much more. That to address the situation we must really look at all the factors coming into play, and that there is no one influence to homelessness. Income, addiction, and poverty play a large role, but that there is a systemic problem of lack of support and preventative measures.

Another said, “I began to have a deeper understanding of how interconnected many contributing factors for homelessness are… how each person’s experience is unique and complex. There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer for everyone.”

Collective Responsibility

This theme captures the shifts in perspective that occurred as students became more politically conscious and willing to act. Okri (1996) inspires us to think of the power of stories in transforming action, claiming that if you “change the stories individuals or nations live and tell themselves, you change the individuals and nations” (p. 21). Transformation first happens in an individual’s depths but then cannot help but become political through interaction within the larger context (Abalos, 1996).

A major finding was that our learners began to conceptualize homelessness as a societal problem and something they felt collective responsibility to address. As this student expressed:

… The activity on being able to critically place the ideas that we came up with as being more or less feasible and more or less impactful really brings light to what can be done or what is going to require a lot more work and effort. It’s easy to brainstorm and list together ideas that could help in reducing homelessness but when looking at how this can be implemented, I can see that it can be overwhelming unless we work together in unity in the efforts to make a difference. Therefore, I can see how necessary it is to be more community and collectively minded instead of individualistic.

Reflecting on the shifts in their thinking, this student stated:

I can painfully admit that my views on homelessness were biased and judgmental. I had become fairly desensitized to the subject as a whole. After reading the articles and listening to the speakers, I understand that homelessness is everyone’s problem. No one person deserves to live in fear, without a roof over their heads and the community needs to advocate for change.

Another student expressed their intention to change in this way:

I was struck by the complexity of it, and how there are so many pieces of the puzzle that need to be addressed in order to end homelessness. It is clear to me that I need to pay more attention when there are government elections to which party is prepared to take on more social issues.

As this student reflected, “I know that I want to be open to the opportunities that may be in front of me to speak up when I can and to also help when I can.”

By the end of the day, student conversations moved from reflective to action-oriented. What stood out most significantly for students was the importance of education to raise awareness and end stigmatization. In addition, many commented on the desire to take personal responsibility—to “be part of the solution.” The famous quote “be the change you want to see” was popular. Other popular phrases that students generated during the final activity included: “Solutions need to be collaborative and integrative”; “Solutions in partnerships”; “Social corporate responsibility”; and “Our perspectives have changed, and we’ve become more empathetic and grateful.”

Challenges of Interdisciplinary Education

Experiential Learning

The IDE learning event incorporated an active and experiential environment, where students were given the task of making sense of causes and potential solutions to the complex issue of homelessness. The experiential learning cycle provided a method for transformation to emerge. The experience—hearing the stories of those with lived experience of homelessness, challenged some taken-for-granted assumptions. The learning environment was stimulating for students, encouraging their full participation and engagement. It allowed for both individual reflections on questions being posed as well as group dialogue. The faculty were no longer experts and holders of knowledge; instead, students were given the task of problem-solving. Activities required their whole selves to be present. The final activity of the day asked interdisciplinary groups to reflect on what they would take away and what was most impactful for them. Student’s critical reflections after the event identified that they felt called to action by the IDE event and the perspectives that were shared.

Privileging Narratives

Privileging the experiences of community partners was pivotal. It shaped the transformative direction of the learning event. The community partners humanized the issue of homelessness, lending an air of authenticity, immediacy, and reality to the experience by providing glimpses into their subjective world. Positioning community partners as experts for the students to consult gave an important message that challenged the stereotypical view of people who experience homelessness as victims or outsiders. It allowed students to connect with the other, increasing empathy and prompting them to question their perspectives. Hoffman (1990) connects empathy with motivation for social justice. When the distance between oneself and the sufferer is diminished through perceiving the world through their eyes, a deeper connection is made. We may become motivated to help. Given the important advantages narratives play in education and their potential to transform perspectives, we will continue to include the perspectives of those impacted in future IDE projects.

Multiple Perspectives

Interdisciplinary education by design exposes learners to multiple perspectives and possibilities. However, from our findings, we realized that beyond exposure to other disciplinary perspectives, and to stories of lived experience, students were impacted through interactions with all the diverse aspects of self each student brought into the conversation. The ‘whole person’ was present, with all the many aspects that contribute to a worldview or perspective. A multiple perspectives approach embraces and highlights all the diversity of views students bring to the table. We recognized that indeed, students brought more than their novice disciplinary knowledge with them to the conversation. Engaging with these multiple dimensions of a person is key to transformative learning (Tolliver & Tisdell, 2006).

In addition, we noticed that the more diverse the disciplinary background, the more likely students were challenged to think through their values and biases. For example, having students from marketing was provocative to students in the social science disciplines.

Critical Reflections on the Faculty Experience

Because of the significant role faculty played in creating the learning event, we have chosen to include our reflections. These reflections provide an understanding of the process that led to the development of a transformative learning experience.

Faculty experience mirrored that of learners. We too had to navigate working together and being open to differing perspectives as we designed the IDE learning event. However, faculty, unlike students, came to the project out of interest and had time to build relationships for more than a year. As one faculty member reflected:

One of the things that stands out is passion. I was so impressed… everybody kind of gave 110% to this. I think for me, one of the important lessons that I want to carry forward is that we came to this because we were interested. Nobody was mandated to do this.

The relationship-building among faculty promoted engagement. Faculty felt comfortable speaking up and sharing their perspectives, as well as sharing the workload and leadership. As one faculty stated:

...one of the secret ingredients, is that willingness… to voice your opinion, which took great courage … and then also being willing to kind of go with the will of the group…

Another faculty remarked, “One thing I think I really valued about this is that it was completely peer-based and shared leadership.”

Key to our experience was the recognition that effective faculty collaboration requires trust, passion, and freedom to experiment within a peer environment. Part of the trust was a willingness to engage in an emergent process, forging new territory and not knowing exactly what the outcome would be. As one faculty put it “emergence and just letting this evolve was just so neat. I have learned a lot about that in and of itself.”