This document contains presentation slides for a workshop exploring academic identity, disciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity in higher education teaching and learning. The slides cover defining academic identity, examining one's own disciplinary identity and how it shapes teaching practices, exploring disciplinarity through different activities, and considering interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. The workshop aims to help participants articulate their academic identity and consider how disciplinarity impacts their work.

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Academic identity and
disciplinarity
A workshop exploring the
relationship between disciplinarity
and academic practice

2. Session plan
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ntroduction http://www.freephotogaleries.com/picture/Orange_
water/category/1-abstract_stock
cademic identity/identities
xploring disciplinarity
isciplinarity and multidisciplinarity
ersonal theories of teaching

3. Session Aims
o articulate possible meanings for ‘academic identity’
and its impact on practice
o consider disciplinary, interdisciplinary and
multidisciplinary ways of working
o observe and compare teaching and assessment
practices in other fields
o set out ‘personal theories’ of teaching

4. What might we mean by identity?
In its very nature, being a member of a
disciplinary community involves a sense of
identity and personal commitment, a ‘way of
being in the world’, a matter of taking on ‘a
cultural frame that defines a great part of
one’s life’ (Geertz 1983, emphasis added).’
(cited in Becher and Trowler 2001)

5. Discussion: How has your academic
identity/ies developed?
hat routes have you taken through one or
more disciplines to arrive in your current
position?
ow has your entry into the disciplinary
community shaped your thinking and
practice?

6. Academic identity and teaching
‘One surely would assume that teacher identities
are constructed also in interaction with many
other factors (e.g., past and present learning
experiences, observations of past teachers, and
how one is uniquely positioned, within the
department but also the wider society, in terms
of the intersection of numerous other socio-
cultural factors, including race, ethnicity, age,
SES, religion, gender, sexuality, etc.)’
(Kreber, 2009)

7. Activity 1: Academic identity and
teaching – broader influences
fter reading Kreber’s quote on the previous
slide, please identify up to 3 factors that
contribute to your sense of ‘identity’, and that
influence your teaching. (It might also be
useful to think of these in terms of values or
ideals or Geertz’s ‘cultural frame’ on slide 4.)
an you suggest specific ways in which your
sense of academic identity has an impact
upon your teaching?

8. Activity 2: Disciplinary artefacts
Please present an object, picture, image or
text that you feel relates to your sense of
academic identity.
• Please describe your reasons for selecting the item.
• What comments do other members of the group have?
• How is your object similar or different from those chosen
by group members?
• Could you use an exercise like this with graduate
students?

9. Exploring disciplinarity
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10. Activity 3: Free writing
At the top of the page, please write the name
of a discipline with which you would associate
yourself. Now write continuously for 3-4
minutes on the ways in which this disciplinary
identity shapes your thinking or approach to
academic work.

11. Activity 3: Free writing
Please write a discipline with which you
would associate yourself. Now write
continuously for 3-4 minutes on the ways in
which this disciplinary identity shapes your
thinking or approach to academic work.
hat are some of the central characteristics of
ways of thinking and practising in your
discipline?

12. Activity 3: Free writing
Please write a discipline with which you would
associate yourself. Now write continuously for 3-
4 minutes on the ways in which this disciplinary
identity shapes your thinking or approach to
academic work.
hat are some of the central characteristics of
ways of thinking and practising in your discipline?

13. Disciplinary groups Nature of knowledge
Pure sciences (e.g. Cumulative; atomistic (crystalline/tree-like); concerned
physics): ‘hard-pure’ with universals, quantities, simplification; impersonal;
clear criteria for knowledge verification and obsolescence;
consensus over significant questions to address; results in
discover/explanation
Humanities (e.g. history) Reiterative; holistic (organic/river-like); concerned with
and pure social sciences particulars, qualities, complication; personal, value-laden;
(e.g. anthropology): ‘soft- dispute over criteria for knowledge verification and
pure’ obsolescence; lack of consensus over significant questions
to address; results in understanding/interpretation
Technologies (e.g.) Purposive; pragmatic (know-how via hard knowledge);
mechanical engineering, concerned with mastery of physical environment; applies
clinical medicine): ‘hard- heuristic approaches; uses both qualitative and
applied) quantitative approaches; criteria for judgement are
purposive, functional; results in products/techniques
Applied social science Functional; utilitarian (know-how via soft knowledge);
(e.g. education, law, concerned with enhancement of professional practice;
social administrations): uses case studies and case law to a large extent; results in
‘soft-applied’ protocols / procedures
From Becher and Trowler, 2001. p. 36

14. Activity 4: Please consider Becher and Trowler’s
table of disciplines on the previous slide
ffer a critique of the categories. How would you revise
them?
here in this schema (or in a revised one) would you
locate your own discipline?
rite a description of the ‘disciplinary group’ with which
you associate your work and the nature of knowledge
that emerges from this area
his framework was written in the 1990s. How have
conceptions of disciplines changed since then? What

15. Discussion point: What is your response to
Henkel’s point about disciplines and
specialisation?
‘As disciplines subdivide, multiply
and become more specialised,
they become a more
disintegrative force as far as the
enterprise [university] is
concerned. It is more difficult for
their members to make
connections with each other, let
alone across disciplinary
Photo: Jim Forrest. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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boundaries …’ Henkel, 2000, p. 20

16. Activity 5: Disciplinary perspectives
lease see Activity 5 on the Workshop guidance file for this
workshop
(DiscThinkAcademicidentityWorkshopguidance.doc).
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17. Interdisciplinarity and
multidisciplinarity
f courses, disciplines are
not single, fixed,
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monolithic entities.
ncreasingly, students and
academics work in
interdisciplinary or
Photo: EllasDad. CC BY 2.0
multidisciplinary
contexts.

18. Activity 6: Interdisciplinary/
multidisciplinary work
lease think of an example of interdisciplinary (or
multidisciplinary) work that you have been
involved with. This could be a piece of research, a
shared course, a project, etc. Please jot down
some notes about
• a brief account of the work
• ways in which different subject practices were evident
• Benefits of working within a mutidisciplinary group
• Challenges of working in a multidisciplinary.

19. Activity 7: Devising and solving
interdisciplinary problems
lease see Activity 7 on the associated Workshop guidance file
for this theme.
(DiscThinkAcademicidentityWorkshopguidance.doc)
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-textures

20. Devising/solving interdisciplinary
problems
lenary discussion about the task:
• What worked well in this task?
• Did your group draw on the different disciplinary
backgrounds of its members?
• How could the creation or performance of the
problems be improved?
• How could an activity like this be used in

21. What does this mean for practice?
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22. Teaching practices and departmental
cultures
Kreber (2009) reminds us that sometimes
teaching, learning and assessment practices
are attributed to disciplines, but may equally
have much to do with the local culture of
departments or other internal university
structures.

23. Personal theories of teaching
‘However, although both the disciplinary and
departmental context likely exert an influence on the
ways in which faculty approach teaching and
assessment, individual teachers’ “personal theories of
teaching” as well as their perceptions of self, surely
also play a significant role. “Personal theories of
teaching” refer to how we conceptualize teaching and
learning (e.g., do we think of teaching as transmission
of information and of learning as accumulation of
facts, or do we think of teaching as promoting
conceptual change and of learning as a transformative
process possibly leading to the creation of
knowledge?)’
- Kreber, 2009, drawing on Prosser and Trigwell, 1999

24. Activity 8: What are your personal
theories of teaching?
lease jot down 2 or 3 ‘personal theories’ or
general principles that characterise your
approach to learning, teaching and
assessment.

25. Identity, disciplinarity and the
curriculum
Traditionally for a would-be academic the
process of developing that identity and
commitment may well begin as an
undergraduate, but is likely to be at its most
intense at the postgraduate stage, culminating
in the award of a doctorate…’ (Becher and
Trowler 2001)

26. Postgraduate study and academic
identity formation
Structures that determine the nature of a PhD also
have an impact on the type of researchers that are
accepted onto PhD programmes and the type of
research that is carried out. (Frederico Braga de Matos, unpublished PhD, 2012)
hat kind of subject specialists are you hoping that your
graduate courses inspire?
hat would be the attributes of a newly qualified PhD in
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your field?
es/category/1-abstract_stock
ow does your graduate curriculum support the
development of these qualities?
Photo: Andrei Ceru. CC 3.0

27. Activity 9: Disciplinarity as part of
the curriculum
Please consider a teaching programme on which
you work. (This could be an entire degree course or a
subsection.)
here are the opportunities for students to talk about
what it means to be a discipline specialist (eg. A
biologist, an engineer, a historian, etc.)
ow could tacit awareness of the discipline (or

28. References
echer and Trowler (2001) ‘Academic Disciplines’ in Academic
Tribes and Territories. 2nd Edition. SRHE/Open University Press.
raga de Matos, Frederico (2012) Unpublished PhD: Change
and Perception of Change in the PhD in Social Sciences. A case
study. UCL.
enkel, M. (2000) Academic Identities and Policy Change in
Higher Education. London: JKP.
reber, C. (2009) The University and its disciplines: Teaching
and learning within and beyond disciplinary boundaries, Ed.

29. Learning Resource Metadata
Field/Element Value:
Title Disciplinary Thinking – Academic identity and disciplinarity: presentation
Presentation slides for a workshop on academic identity, disciplinarity and
Description interdisciplinarity in HE teaching and learning.
Theme Academic identity and disciplinarity
Subject HE - Education
Author Colleen McKenna & Jane Hughes: HEDERA, 2012
Owner The University of Bath
Audience Educational developers in accredited programmes & courses in higher education.
Issue Date 24/05/2012
Last updated Date 07/08/2012
Version Final
PSF Mapping A5, K1, K2, K3, PV1, PV3
License Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
ukoer, education, discthink, disciplinary thinking, hedera, university of bath,
Keywords academic identity, disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity