1. Technology enhanced learning
as a site for interdisciplinary research
Draft Version 0.8
Gráinne Conole, Eileen Scanlon, Paul Mundin and Rob Farrow
Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, UK
Email: g.c.conole@open.ac.uk
Contents
1 Introduction.................................................................................................................2
2 Methodology ...............................................................................................................3
These themes are discussed in greater detail in Section Four........................................4
3 Locating the research in the wider literature...............................................................5
3.1 Definitions and key concepts...............................................................................5
3.2 The challenges of doing interdisciplinary research .............................................9
3.3 Epistemological and methodological issues ......................................................12
3.4 The use of technologies to foster interdisciplinarity .........................................13
3.5 Capacity building ‐ interdisciplinarity in undergraduate programmes..............17
3.6 The online discussion fora .................................................................................18
4 Perspectives on interdisciplinarity from TEL researchers ........................................20
4.1 Origins and current academic roles ...................................................................20
4.2 Influences, beliefs and theoretical perspectives ...............................................24
4.3 Methodologies, methods and tools...................................................................27
4.4 Challenges to Interdisciplinarity ........................................................................35
4.5 The benefits of interdisciplinary working ..........................................................44
4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................48
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2. 1 Introduction
The impact of the Internet on working practices and the way we share information
and communicate has been profound. Recent web 2.0 technologies appear to be
leading to a similar seismic shift in patterns of user behaviour – in terms of how
people communicate, collaborate and network, and in terms of the perceptions of
content in a world where it is free and multi‐faceted (Conole and Alevizou, 2010).
This leads to new challenges for the delivery of education across technological
platforms in their many guises (Technology Enhanced Learning, Networked Learning,
e‐Learning, Learning Technology, and Virtual Learning Environments). Consequently,
there has also been a growth in research into the use of technology in education to
meet these challenges. This has drawn together research teams from many
disciplines, including educationalists, computer scientists, psychologists, information
scientists, and educational technologists, as well as subject matter experts (see
Conole and Oliver, 2007 for a description of the emergence of the e‐learning field).
In parallel, increasing prominence has been given to interdisciplinarity as a means of
addressing cross‐discipline research challenges, where researchers from two or more
disciplines bring their approaches and adapt them to form a solution to a new
problem. Indeed, interdisciplinarity has become increasingly important as a means of
attempting to address complex, real‐world research problems and grand challenges.
This is particularly true of research concerned with the use of technology for learning
and teaching, which by its nature brings together researchers from different
discipline perspectives (education, computer science, psychology, information
science, etc).
This is evident in recent policy rhetoric, which encourages greater use of
technologies to support learning. Interdisciplinarity appears to be supported as the
favoured means of undertaking this research, such as in the Technology Enhanced
Learning (TEL) programme (ca. £15M over five years) funded by the EPSRC/ESRC. At
its core, the TEL programme is about tackling these challenges of educational
significance from an interdisciplinary perspective. The vision for interdisciplinarity in
a TEL context for this programme, as outlined in the original call was:
Technology enhanced learning (TEL) requires interdisciplinary collaboration across the
disciplines of learning, cognition, information and communication technologies (ICT) and
education, and broader social sciences… To achieve the highest ambitions for education and
lifelong learning we need to exploit fully what new technology offers – for personalising
learning and improving outcomes… for creating more flexible learning opportunities and for
improving the productivity of learning and knowledge building processes. But to do this, we
need a more explicit understanding of the nature of learning itself, both formal and informal,
and the way it is responding to changes in society and the opportunities created by new
technologies… [This] will support innovation from both research areas, each challenging the
other, to rethink ways of making learning more effective and to develop the new technology
solutions to make that possible. Such interdisciplinary research is intended to help build new
understandings of how technology can enhance learning. (This is no longer available online,
but is cited in Conole, 2008)
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3. However, to what extent is this vision grounded in existing practices in research,
teaching and learning? What is the nature of interdisciplinarity in TEL research?
What are the perceived benefits and the identified challenges? What strategies can
be put in place to promote better interdisciplinary approaches? These are some of
the key questions that are addressed in this report, which is divided into five
sections. This introduction sets the scene for the report and provides an overview.
The research questions and methodology are described in Section 2. Section 3
locates this work within the broader research literature. The main findings from
eighteen interviews with TEL researchers are discussed in Section 4. Finally Section 5
provides a conclusion to the report and suggestions for further work.
2 Methodology
The aim of this research was to explore if there is anything specific about
interdisciplinarity in a Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) research context, and to
identify strategies for supporting, communicating and documenting
interdisciplinarity. In particular, we were interested in what interdisciplinary working
might bring to multi‐discipline research teams to help them address challenges that
are too broad or too complex to be solved by a single discipline. The project set out
to explore what disciplines contribute to research into Technology Enhanced
Learning, to document their cognate disciplines and to elicit their diverse
epistemological beliefs, methodologies and approaches. It also set out to identify the
main research challenges for interdisciplinary teams.
The research consisted of three main activities. Firstly, Robert Farrow carried out a
literature review of interdisciplinarity in general, and more specifically research into
Technology Enhanced Learning. Secondly, broader consultation with the TEL‐
research community was conducted through two online fora. The first was as part of
a series of ‘hotseats’ associated with the Networked Learning conference. A
positional paper on methodological issues in Networked Learning was used as a
starting point for the discussion, along with a series of questions, including a number
specifically around interdisciplinarity in TEL research. The paper and associated
discussions can be found here
(http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/index.php/forum/forum?id=8). In
parallel a similar set of questions was posed on the social networking site,
Cloudworks (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/1954). Thirdly, eighteen
interviews were conducted with senior researchers within the field. The interviews
were conducted and initially analysed by Paul Mundin. The following methodology
was used to identify, gather, analyse and report on the information from the set of
interviews. The initial set of questions arose from the discussions on the Networked
Learning hot‐seat forum and the discussion on the Cloudworks site, and from themes
emerging from the literature review. The questions were constructed to explore an
interviewee’s experience in interdisciplinarity, and the nature of interdisciplinarity
both for research more generally construed, and specifically in Technology Enhanced
Learning. The questions covered the following areas:
• The interviewee’s current role, their original discipline (undergraduate degree),
their career trajectory, and any changing of disciplines throughout their career.
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4. • The interviewee’s experience of interdisciplinary research and what they felt was
distinctive about interdisciplinarity in Technology Enhanced Learning research.
• The challenges and benefits of working in interdisciplinary teams.
• The factors that have influenced their approach to working in an interdisciplinary
fashion (and in particular the people and key research texts they draw on).
• The theoretical perspectives, methodologies and methods they use.
• How are they using technologies to support their research practice, both in terms
of finding, managing and using information and for communicative and
collaborative activities?
A version of the questions was trialled internally at the Open University and revised
before twenty‐six possible interviewee candidates were identified. The factors for
inclusion included their experience of doing interdisciplinary research and
involvement in TEL research either as a researcher or at policy level. In addition, we
attempted to draw interviewees from across the HE sector with a mix of old and new
universities and different subject disciplines. From the list of candidates, eighteen
interviews were agreed and were set‐up. The interviews were held between 1st
February 2010 and 4th March 2010. Eight interviews were held face‐to‐face, and ten
interviews were held over the telephone. The interviews were coded [IntA] to [IntR].
All of the interviewees agreed to their interview being recorded, and for the output
of the interview to be used anonymously as part of the Interdisciplinarity project
deliverables. Each interview was transcribed into a MS Word document. The
research team then jointly reviewed three of the interview transcribes to agree on a
set of emergent themes. A document containing a list of twenty‐two themes was
created. This covered interdisciplinarity areas such as the origins, experiences,
challenges, benefits, and methodologies of the interviewee. The interview
transcripts were manually ‘tagged’ and copied to the appropriate theme or themes
in the document. The twenty‐two themes were then refined into five groupings
covering:
• Origins and career trajectories
• Influences, beliefs and theoretical perspectives
• Methodologies, methods and tools
• Challenges to Interdisciplinarity
• The benefits of Interdisciplinary working
These themes are discussed in greater detail in Section Four.
4

5. 3 Locating the research in the wider literature
This section locates the research reported here in the broader literature on
interdisciplinarity. Section 4 discusses the findings from the interview data in terms
of this larger body of knowledge. The review of print and online research literature
was primarily conducted by Robert Farrow. The key focus was to get an
understanding of the nature of interdisciplinarity in general and the particular forms
it can take in a TEL research context. Five main themes of relevance to this research
were evident from the review i) definitions and key concepts, ii) the challenges of
doing interdisciplinary research, iii) epistemological and methodological issues, iv)
the use of technologies to foster interdisciplinarity and v) capacity building –
interdisciplinarity in undergraduate programmes.
It should be noted that we do not attempt in this report to prescribe a final answer
to the subtle and complex epistemological problems raised by the term
interdisciplinarity. Rather, our focus in on understanding the nature of
interdisciplinarity in TEL research. In addition, we will explore the ways in which the
technologies themselves are being used in TEL research to facilitate interdisciplinary
working through communication, collaboration and networking.
3.1 Definitions and key concepts
This first section helps provide a definition for interdisciplinarity, considering it in
relation to individual discipline knowledge. Interdisciplinary working brings together
expertise from different realms of knowledge, and applies individual discipline‐based
skills to a specific research problem. This multifaceted or synthetic approach is often
advocated by those who believe that drawing on multiple disciplines is likely to lead
to a more comprehensive or holistic understanding of complex problems which do
not themselves respect disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinary researchers
acknowledge that no one discipline can provide an exhaustive account of all
phenomena, and that interdisciplinary collaboration can lead to findings that could
not have been achieved in other ways. Successful interdisciplinary projects are those
that tend to have a clear vision, and have safeguards to ensure that projects are not
realigned according to the disciplinary interests of one party.
To understand the nature of interdisciplinarity, it is first necessary to understand
disciplinarity. In order to ‘discipline’ knowledge, domains of inquiry must be
conceptually separate from one another so that knowledge can be created in
discrete, repeatable units. The term ‘discipline’ draws on the notion of specialised,
valued knowledge that necessarily excludes some other forms of inquiry: a
confluence of knowledge and power (Moran, 2010: 2). Interdisciplinary research
works by combining or recombining these discrete units of data. Yet this simplistic
formulation obscures a number of important questions about the nature and scope
of knowledge. For instance, there remains considerable disagreement over the
precise nature of interdisciplinarity and how it is to be distinguished from other ways
of combining research, such as transdisciplinarity, poly‐disciplinarity and multi‐
disciplinarity. (See Franks et al. (2007: 172‐3) for a detailed typology of
interdisciplinarity.)
5

6.
6

7.
Figure 1: Typologies of interdisciplinary teaching, learning and research (taken from Franks et al.,
2007, pp.172‐173)
7

8.
The last three hundred years have seen greater and greater degrees of academic
specialisation, with some disciplines becoming increasingly inaccessible to non‐
8

9. specialists. Yet the traditional disciplinary boundaries that strengthened in the first
half of the 20th century gradually gave way to a general project of knowledge
integration as a result of education reform in the 1960s and 1970s (certainly within a
UK context at least). This ongoing commodification of knowledge is closely linked to
the growth in the computability of knowledge, and communication technologies
increasingly mediate and validate the forms of knowledge, which are necessary for
the ‘knowledge economy’ (Oliver et al., 2007; Lyotard, 1979).
3.2 The challenges of doing interdisciplinary research
In practice, however, ‘true’ interdisciplinarity is rare, and can often be little more
than a cosmetic exercise. Achieving true interdisciplinarity is difficult for a number of
reasons, not least because academics tend to be very much rooted in their cognate
discipline and its associated epistemological and methodological tenets. It is difficult
to establish standards of validity across subject domains, and this presents
researchers with a challenge as they can lack effective criteria for evaluating or
planning interdisciplinary research. Because academic vocabularies and practices
are often discipline‐specific, there remain real challenges around managing the
transition between disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Spelt et al. argue that
interdisciplinary thinking is a complex cognitive skill, which integrates disciplinary
knowledge to produce a ‘cognitive advancement’ that would have been unlikely
through individual disciplinary means. Thus, interdisciplinarity is integrative, and is
associated with ‘boundary‐crossing skills… for instance, the ability to change
perspectives, to synthesize knowledge of different disciplines, and to cope with
complexity’ (Spelt et al., 2009: 366).
A perceived problem with the increasing shift towards disciplinary specialisation is
that the way knowledge is produced and used within the modern knowledge society
is increasingly disconnected. Frodeman and Mitchum have argued that the paradox
of modern interdisciplinarity is that ‘no attempt at interdisciplinarity has produced a
viable understanding of, or ongoing counterpoint to, specialization. Instead, each
effort at interdisciplinarity has served as a preamble to further disciplinary
specialization and production’ (2007: 510). The modernist disciplinary research
philosophy, they suggest, can only overcome its self‐imposed epistemological limits
by becoming critical, circumscribing disciplinary overproduction and moving into
dialogue with the public and private sectors and other community stakeholders.
This dialogic model may be understood with reference to ‘mode two’ knowledge
production, which is characterised by being carried out in the context of application,
bringing heterogeneous skills and expertise to problems, and by transdisciplinarity
(Nowotny, 2001; Oliver et al., 2007). The commodification of knowledge has been
complemented by a shift from ‘mode one’ to ‘mode two’ knowledge: from ‘is it
true?’ to ‘what can it do?’ (Giddens, 1999 cited in Oliver et al., 2007: 23). Nowotny
makes the case that, with the right kind of communication, a ‘feedback loop’
between science and society that will encourage more relevant and more effective
research may be established. As such, the base of those considered ‘users’ of
science must expand beyond the scientific community and into contexts of
application.
9

10.
Advocates of interdisciplinarity typically see it as a reflexive practice (Romm, 1998).
However, there are a number of challenges to any account of reflexive
interdisciplinarity. Firstly, there is the problem of applying reflexivity when
assumptions and values often remain opaque to those who hold them. Secondly,
efforts must be taken to ensure that epistemological differences do not split or
diminish research groups and their activities. Thirdly, there is always a risk that
political or entrepreneurial interests might dominate purportedly academic inquiries.
Funding and policy drivers dictate to a large extend what research is possible. The
shift to commodification of knowledge and the knowledge society (see above) is also
part of the problem. Fourthly, there is a need to consider and incorporate ‘the
improved focus, breadth, and creativity’ of interdisciplinary inquiry (Payne, 1999:
180).
Blackwell et al. (2009: 15‐17) report on a successful interdisciplinary innovation.
They framed the difficulties facing researchers from different disciplines in terms of
‘bounded knowledge’: the knowledge that is contained within a defined discipline
and ‘bounded off’ from others. In order to cross these boundaries, the authors
argue, interdisciplinary teams need to develop shared values and culture.
A number of researchers have studied the nature of interdisciplinarity in academia.
Traditional approaches to understanding disciplinary practices tend to emphasise the
‘tribalistic’ way that individuals are brought into a discipline through a process of
cultural acclimatisation or socialisation (Becher and Trowler 2001; Ylijoki 2000).
Brew (2008: 424) suggests that this so‐called ‘anthropological approach’ over‐
emphasises notions such as shared identity or the pursuit of common ends. She
goes as far as suggesting that disciplinary labelling is flexible, largely rhetorical, and
often subordinated to other institutional requirements (such as research
assessment, or securing funding). Brew argues that we need to keep our
understanding of disciplinary boundaries ‘open’ in order to allow for frameworks
that can adequately describe and differentiate interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity
and multidisciplinarity.
Augsburg and Henry argued that interdisciplinarity in the ‘strong sense’
(characterised by pedagogical experimentation, and rigorous scholarship) has been
supplanted by ‘weak’ interdisciplinarity which only has the appearance of genuine
cross‐disciplinary collaboration and is largely politically motivated (and is often
manifested in departmental closures, setting strategies which adhere to market
driven trends, and cultivating outside sources of funding). Specific strategies likely to
promote interdisciplinary research include mechanisms to support ‘self‐
consciousness about interdisciplinarity and integration’ (Augsburg and Henry, 2009:
238‐239); giving interdisciplinary programmes their own funding streams (even if
they do not exist in a dedicated department); and ensuring that it is clearly
communicated that this type of research is not being perceived as a threat to
traditional departments.
This may suggest that the obstacles to successful interdisciplinarity are primarily
institutional, rather than epistemological in nature. However, problems with the
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11. methodological validity of studies that transcend disciplinary boundaries remain.
One reason that these are rarely addressed directly is that effective forms of
interdisciplinary collaboration are situation‐specific, and hence unpredictable.
Interdisciplinary inquiry is both diverse and highly specialised, and the specialised
nature of interdisciplinary study means that it is hard to describe general rules for
effective interdisciplinarity. Some disciplines (or combinations of disciplines) are
more compatible with each other because they work from similar assumptions. For
those interdisciplinary configurations which incorporate less compatible
methodologies, however, the problems are compounded.
Another way in which issues surrounding interdisciplinarity have come to the fore is
in debates over academic freedom. With the boundaries between the public and
private sectors becoming increasingly unclear, the academic freedoms once
guaranteed by classical Liberalism are increasingly marginalised in favour of
entrepreneurial activity and the empowerment of managers (Slaughter, 2007).
Working within a single discipline means being subject to increasingly inflexible
institutional rules: but once released from disciplinary contexts, different kinds of
research questions and methods become available to researchers, who are thus able
to take more critical attitudes towards institutional and disciplinary structures.
However, supporting and fostering such interdisciplinary approaches remains an
intransigent problem.
Because interdisciplinarity need not respect the long‐standing traditions of subject
disciplines, it is sometimes referred to as a ‘deviant’ or ‘transgressive’ form of inquiry
(Nowotny, 2001). According to Moran, one of the virtues of interdisciplinarity is its
ability to disrupt and challenge the ‘deceptive smoothness’ of the disciplines
(particularly the notion that the sciences represent a value‐neutral form of inquiry).
The vision of interdisciplinarity subsequently endorsed is a way of living with the
disciplines more critically and self‐consciously, recognizing that their most basic
assumptions can always be challenged or reinvigorated from elsewhere. The
corollary to this is that academics working within established disciplines need to
remain ‘permanently aware of the intellectual and institutional constraints within
which they are working, and open to different ways of representing and
understanding their world’ (Moran, 2010: 181). However, the transgressive qualities
of interdisciplinarity raise problems for gauging validity and quality assessment:
effective quality control is normally ensured by disciplinary standards, but these are
precisely what are subverted by transdisciplinarity.
Lattuca (2001: 14‐15) notes that the tendency toward academic specialisation
among disciplinary researchers is set against a growing boldness among
interdisciplinary researchers to demolish disciplinary boundaries. For
interdisciplinarity to succeed, Lattuca suggests, we need to revise our definitions of
interdisciplinarity and construct a better understanding of interdisciplinary work,
especially in light of the claim (Klein, 1990) that the majority of literature on
interdisciplinarity is largely anecdotal rather than empirically grounded or
epistemologically reflective.
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12. From the perspective of ‘transgressive’ interdisciplinarity, the traditional vision of
interdisciplinarity supported by open‐mindedness, inclusivity and tolerance (e.g.
Szostak, 2007) may seem naïve. But these are simply two perspectives within a
much wider debate about the opportunities, challenges and validity of
interdisciplinary research.
3.3 Epistemological and methodological issues
Despite the fact that the idea of successful interdisciplinarity has become widely
accepted across academia, interdisciplinarity rarely fulfils its promise in practice (see
Klein, 1990: 111‐118 for a brief history of interdisciplinarity). To some extent, this is
because academics tend to remain wedded to their cognate disciplinary mindsets,
and rarely embrace the kind of epistemological or methodological holism required of
truly interdisciplinary researchers. A further compounding factor is that there has
been relatively little research into how to foster and promote interdisciplinary
research groups.
The challenges facing interdisciplinary research include the way that disciplinary
norms and a culture of specialisation have been embedded in higher education, the
difficulties surrounding any attempt to define interdisciplinarity, establishing
alternative forms of peer review, the problem of obtaining consensus among
researchers from different disciplines, the need for a common language that can
facilitate reaching mutual understanding, and the difficulties of securing financial
and institutional support for interdisciplinary research. Achieving effective co‐
operation between different specialists or organisations thus necessitates effective
methods for communication, collaboration and evaluation.
The complexity and diversity of contemporary research means that disciplines are
often brought together around a single research question, but disciplinary practices
are seldom properly understood outside of the communities within which they
usually take place. This is one prominent reason why the familiar mechanisms of
disciplinary academia can be so difficult to transcend. It is unreasonable to expect
interdisciplinary researchers to master more than one discipline to the same
standard that a disciplinary researcher would be expected to attain. Disciplinary
experts may be useful for assessing disciplinary contributions, but not the
relationships between the contributions of the different researchers, or materials
from outside their home discipline: interdisciplinary activities should be “judged on
how well they achieve their objectives and how well they integrate knowledge”
(Østreng, 2010: 67).
Consequently, interdisciplinary researchers need to engage with complex
epistemological and methodological questions about the emergence, status, and
validity of knowledge. Since these constitute the background to a given discipline –
indeed, to a large extent these are what define a discipline – they are rarely the
focus of those who work solely within particular disciplinary boundaries. Lunca
(1996) suggests that the shortcomings of most interdisciplinary research may be
largely explained with reference to levels of awareness about the kind of cognitive
and epistemological commitments made within disciplines. More specifically, there
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13. are two issues of particular importance for interdisciplinarity. Firstly, there is the
question of how to generate a procedure for deciding how to approach particular
problems that transcend disciplinary borders. Secondly, it is necessary to find a way
of reconciling the disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the research
question in order to render them compatible. As a result, researchers can improve
the interdisciplinarity of their work by “learning the language of the epistemological,
logical and philosophical analysis of their speciality” which “will enable them to enter
into interdisciplinary collaboration” (Lunca, 1996: ii‐iii). This process, driven by the
aim of increasing solvability through translating disciplinary languages, is what Lunca
refers to as ‘interdisciplinarisation’ (Ibid.,14).
Holley raises the worry that the potentials of interdisciplinary research are often
overstated in the literature, in spite of the language that surrounds it:
”interdisciplinary research topics”, she writes, ”are not inherently innovative, timely,
or applicable to contemporary problems”. (Holley, 2009: 64) Interdisciplinarity must
constantly demonstrate the way in which it adds value to disciplinary inquiry if it is to
live up to its potential as the form of investigation best suited to addressing the
complexity of contemporary intellectual problems.
In addition to these concerns surrounding the inherent academic worth of
interdisciplinarity, there are a number of issues arise because of the traditional
structural organisation of universities and how they are managed. On the whole,
universities are organised around traditional discipline boundaries and new
emerging research fields or those that adopt an interdisciplinary approach do not
easily sit within this traditional structure. Conole, White and Oliver (2007: 77) chart
the emergence of e‐learning as a research field and note the tensions this created on
existing structures, noting the constant changing structures and functions: ”[j]ob
titles and structural units within support services have been in a constant state of
flux in the last few decades as institutions struggle to keep up with the impact of
changing technologies”. It seems evident that the future of any successful
interdisciplinarity is dependent upon the relationships interdisciplinary studies has
with other departments and the administrative structures of the university,
particularly in the form of senior managers who can champion and support
interdisciplinary research. However, the specific organizational forms that would
give interdisciplinarity the best chance for being effective remain unclear.
3.4 The use of technologies to foster interdisciplinarity
There are a number of ways in which technologies could support interdisciplinary
collaboration. Section 4.3 will articulate the wide range of tools that TEL researchers
are using to support both the collection and analysis of data, as well as for more
general communication and collaboration. This section provides an overview of the
more general uses of tools evident in the broader literature.
A taxonomy derived by Conole (2006) provides a classification of tools according to
use: text/data manipulation, presentation/dissemination, data analysis, information
seeking/handling, storing/managing information, personal management, project
management, communication, visualisation/brainstorming, guidance/support. Not
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14. surprisingly word processing, email and internet technologies emerged as the tools
that had made the most significant differences; changing the way people create and
distribute information, altering organisational structures and associated roles with
some roles disappearing and new professions emerging, and arguably even altering
the very nature and worth of knowledge itself. Returning to the list a few years later,
Conole (Forthcoming, 2010) demonstrated the impact of Web 2.0 technologies,
finding more evidence of collective used of tools online (such as GoogleDocs or wikis
for co‐creating texts, Slideshare for distributing Powerpoint presentations and social
media tools for communication and networking).
In addition to creating and connecting online research communities, these tools
offer new possibilities for participatory or collaborative design. Communication
technologies are uniquely able to create feelings of interconnectedness and
community over geographical distance; making it easier for stakeholders to have
their voices heard. Digital repositories and other online tools mean research results
can now be made available to a much wider audience than in the past. Open access
practices are increasingly evident. For example, the Open Educational Resource
movement in teaching has been mirrored in the research community by the Open
Access Initiative, whereby researchers are choosing to make their research
publications freely available via institutional research repositories; thus challenging
traditional publication channels, such as journals and books. Some researchers are
even going a step further and advocating the notion of making original, raw data
publically available for scrutiny and manipulation by others. The so called ‘Web 2.0’
technologies in particular foster co‐construction of knowledge and active user
engagement, prompting some researchers to choose these technologies as their
preferred mechanism of dissemination over traditional recognised publication routes
(Conole and Alevizou, 2010).
Technology offers an obvious way to break down the disciplinary boundaries in
traditional academic practice because it is the medium through which research
findings are translated into cultural products. As both material objects and narrative
devices, technologies have as much to do with re‐imagining and presenting
normative accounts of society as they do with providing local solutions to practical
problems (Moran, 2010). Seen in this light, the sphere of ‘techno‐culture’ shows
that science is unavoidably interdisciplinary because it is always part of other
narratives and other (putatively non‐scientific) forms of knowledge and inquiry.
Moran notes that all of the major developments in communication technology –
including books, photography, radio, television, the computer and the internet –
have all influenced the writing, publication, marketing and distribution of academic
‘texts’ (construed as part of wider economic and cultural practices). Arguably the
affordances of new technologies offer something of a step change; providing a wide
variety of different ways in which academics can now communicate, collaborate,
critique and share knowledge.
However the effective use of new technologies requires new forms of literacies and
new uses of technology (Jenkins, 2009), as well as a conscious understanding on the
part of the researcher as to what kind of digital identity they want to portray. The
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15. development from print‐based communication to plural and diverse information
media has led to calls from educational theorists for a re‐evaluation of traditional
concepts of literacy and teaching and learning relations in light of technologically
mediated access to and relations with knowledge (Luke, 2003). The suggestion
made by Cook‐Sather and Shore (2007) is that to remedy the over‐specialisation of
disciplinary research, we must think of the university ‘faculty’ as a much wider group
– including staff and students – all involved in the same process of knowledge
production. The authors support this view with a case study concerning an
interdisciplinary summer school where professors were required to rework and
adapt the syllabi on the basis of collaboration with librarians, information
technologists, and (disciplinary) academics. Under this system, considerable
importance was placed on overcoming barriers to communication, and on the value
of guaranteeing the relationships between faculty, student, librarian, and
technologist that are most appropriate for interdisciplinarity. Information
technologies can help the exchange of ideas and data to remain focused, meaningful
and pertinent.
One implication of procedural approaches to interdisciplinarity like this one is that
ideal forms of interdisciplinary collaboration are unique and unpredictable. Since
they cannot be prescribed in advance, the tools and technologies specific to one
project are unlikely to be of use in another without being adapted or rethought.
Østreng (2010) suggests, by contrast, that interdisciplinary collaboration can be
supported by a number of shared methodologies. These include concepts, methods
and theories originating from specific disciplines. Of particular importance, he
argues, are methodologies that transcend the qualitative/quantitative distinction. In
any case, it’s clear that communication and collaboration tools of a more general
nature remain useful to any interdisciplinary project.
Educationalists have presented a number of practical suggestions for facilitating
interdisciplinary research. These include: clearly defining the scope of
interdisciplinary research projects; encouraging personal relationships and research
communities across disciplinary fields; setting up dedicated interdisciplinary research
areas or faculties, and integrating interdisciplinarity into the structural and cultural
priorities of the university; and ensuring that interdisciplinary projects are
adequately supported financially.
One of the main impacts of recent developments in communication technology is
the growing rapidity of linguistic change, resulting from the breakdown of
geographic, generational, and cultural barriers that is being facilitated by online
technologies. Although Luke does not make the following suggestion with explicit
reference to interdisciplinary research, it does neatly encapsulate how
interdisciplinarity could work within a TEL context: ‘[…] in digital knowledge and
networked environments, critical understandings of the relations between ideas,
their sources and histories, intertextual references and consequences, are as
important if not more so than mastery, reproduction, and recombination of discrete
facts or units of information’.(Luke, 2003: 400) The right kind of communication for
interdisciplinary collaboration is likely to feature a ‘critical’ IT literacy at its heart.
15

16. This would go beyond IT skills training, and include reflections on metaknowledge,
the effective use of collaborative tools and problem‐based learning, as well as a
critical analysis of the cultural and political contexts within which information and
communication technologies are used. These new forms of computer‐mediated
communication emphasize ‘intertextuality, transcultural communication,
intermediality, metamedia, and multimodal multiliteracy’ (Ibid., 401‐402). Luke
argues that the multimedia, multimodal, rhizomatic and integrative features of
contemporary ICT are based on a kind of ‘horizontal’ or ‘lateral’ cognitive mobility in
contrast to the ‘vertical’ or ‘disciplinary’ cognitive mobility associated with
traditional forms of academic inquiry.
In addition to facilitating communication, technologies can also be use to support
the management and analysis of research in a variety of ways. There are now a
wealth of software tools for organising and analysing both quantitative and
qualitative research data. Clearly such tools are helpful in that they free the
researcher from the more mundane aspects of managing data, however arguably
they also change the way in which the researcher is interacting with and hence
understanding the data. Technologies also play an important role in terms of
broader dissemination of research findings and can be used to assess the impact and
dissemination of interdisciplinary research. The printed book or journal article is
now just part of a spectrum of different dissemination mechanisms academics can
use – blogs, wikis, social networking sites and even Twitter now offer
complementary modes of communication. Most importantly these Web 2.0
technologies can help spread research findings far more quickly that traditional
publication routes. Furthermore because of their inter‐connected nature they offer
the possibility of ongoing interaction and dialogue between the researcher and the
broader community. Leydesdorff (2007) proposes the concept of ‘betweenness
centrality’ as an indicator (in local citation environments and after normalisation) of
the interdisciplinarity of journals. The idea of ‘betweenness as a measure of
centrality’ is identified with Social Network Analysis (Freeman, 1977) where
‘betweenness’ is a measure of the frequency with which a node is located on the
shortest path between other nodes on the network. This is then applied to any
‘citation matrix’ to indicate the extent to which a piece of research has influenced
researchers from different disciplines.
Dron (2007) assessed the potential of social software (blogs, wikis, link sharing,
tagging, social networking) in educational contexts. His focus is on the use of these
tools for learners, but the general arguments he makes are relevant here,
particularly if researchers shifting from single disciplinary to interdisciplinary
perspectives is see as a form of ‘professional learning’. The author’s theory of
‘transactional control’ is a refinement of Moore’s theory of transactional distance in
distance learning, and emphasises the extent to which different parties exercise
control over the learning situation. Social software allows for the collective creation
of meaning, sometimes in unexpected ways. They allow learners to exercise control
over the learning trajectory based on the emergent properties of the group activity
as a whole. Dron identifies ten design principles for educational social software that
meets the needs of learners. These are: the principle of adaptability (compatibility);
16

17. the principle of evolvability (unfixed systems); the principle of parcellation
(connections between systems should emerge and not be prescribed); the principle
of trust (goodwill); the principle of stigmergy (using signs to guide, not constrain);
the principle of context (awareness of virtual ecosystems); the principle of constraint
(awareness of what is excluded); the principle of sociability; the principle of
connectivity (interconnectedness); and the principle of scale (where small iterations
underpin larger ones). Translating such principles into practice remains a challenge
for educational technologists.
3.5 Capacity building ‐ interdisciplinarity in undergraduate programmes
Developing interdisciplinarity at the undergraduate level can be seen as one strategy
for capacity building and creating the interdisciplinary researchers of tomorrow.
Although interdisciplinary teaching has undoubtedly been developed and explored
more than interdisciplinarity in research – particularly in the USA, where
‘interdisciplinary’ degrees are relatively common at liberal arts colleges – it remains
the case that the genuinely interdisciplinary use of ICT in education is presently
encouraged by a small number of enthusiasts within subject specialisms (Sefton‐
Green, 1999).
Interdisciplinary programmes are often caught up in the wider economic and
political struggles of the university and its institutions. Augsburg and Henry
characterise the discourse of interdisciplinarity as a “discourse of uncertainty and
change” (2009: 2), and argue that the combination of the “politics of
interdisciplinarity” and a widespread tendency to disciplinary hegemony explains
why interdisciplinary syllabi have generally failed to find a permanent place in
university curricula (Ibid., 227).
Existing research into interdisciplinary teaching suggests that successes are typically
supported by a wider culture of collaboration. Some educators continue to
discourage disciplinary prejudices by grouping academic staff along multidisciplinary
lines to separate them from their original disciplines; what Braddock et al. (1994)
refer to as the ‘lifeboat model’. Other strategies to promote interaction between
staff include the setting up of co‐operative programmes, provision of a shared
common room, the establishment of applied research teams, and the random
allocation of offices, rather than on fixed discipline boundaries. There is evidence to
suggest that these approaches can contribute to “the continued communication,
recognition and acknowledgement of interdisciplinary achievements, structures and
outcomes”, while affording teachers as much autonomy as possible (Franks et al.,
2007: 182).
Helping academics make better use of technologies in their teaching is one example
of where an interdisciplinary approach has been adopted. The state of Connecticut
promoted a training programme in educational technology focused on ways in which
educators can make use of educational technology. The advanced components of
the course are designed to cross disciplinary boundaries. The three main principles
upon which the programme is based are: evidence‐based decision making;
engagement with educators across the arts and science; and the development of an
17

18. induction programme to share knowledge (Moss, Osborn and Kaufman, 2008).
Academics from different departments had to collaborate to construct meaningful
learning environments. Working across discipline boundaries in this teaching context
also helped them develop the skills needed to undertake interdisciplinary research.
More generally, promoting interdisciplinarity is seen as beneficial in a number of
respects. According to Szostak (2007), interdisciplinary courses encourage students
to make connections between different courses and help them to recognise the
different insights that emerge from different disciplines. They learn how to resolve
conflicts between disciplines and it gives them experience of how to work in
interdisciplinary contexts. Ultimately, these interdisciplinary courses provide a
foundation for future generations of researchers, who will be more likely, have the
necessary skills to undertake interdisciplinary research.
3.6 The online discussion fora
The previous sections have outlined some of the key characteristics of
interdisciplinarity, debates over its definition, and how it relates to single‐discipline
research. The emergent picture shows both the benefits and challenges of
attempting to do interdisciplinary research. The review also explored how new
technologies are being used to support interdisciplinary practices. The review also
highlights the fact that doing interdisciplinary research requires a particular skills set
and hence the last section discussed one aspect of capacity building, namely
examples of how interdisciplinary practices are being introduced at the
undergraduate level. These themes will be returned to in the discussions around the
interview data in Section 4. In the final part of this section, we summarise some of
the discussions from the online fora, showing how the themes from the literature
review also emerged in the interview data.
A number of characteristics were identified as being needed to do interdisciplinary
research: the ability to be open to unfamiliar methodologies, the collective
development of a shared vision and the ability to be flexible were the three most
importance characteristics cited. One interesting perception was that, because TEL
many researchers typically come from other disciplines, that they may be less likely
to be attached to discipline‐specific assumptions and methodologies.
A number of strategies for good working practice were suggested. Firstly, that
researchers need to make an effort in terms of understanding each other’s language.
Secondly, specific goals for collaboration must be set. Thirdly, there needs to be a
shared consensus about the methodologies adopted. Some of the benefits of doing
interdisciplinary research cited were:
• Overcoming the ‘tunnel vision’ that can affect those entrenched in
disciplinary mindsets
• Working towards unified theories which provide greater explanatory power
while making fewer methodological assumptions
• Expanding stakeholder base by offering different perspectives on issues
18

19. • Personalisation/customisation of teaching and learning programmes
• Bringing together expertise across different (and potentially diverse) domains
• Possibilities for making special use of researchers with unique skill
combinations
• Recognition that no one discipline provides an exhaustive account of
phenomena
• Interdisciplinary collaboration, as a means of learning new things, drawing on
expertise from other disciplines
• Organising research partners and projects according to a clear vision which
provides focus to disparate activities
And similarly some of the suggested barriers to interdisciplinary activities included:
• Institutional constraints (and an outmoded institutional model of education)
• Instances of interdisciplinarity are not merely cosmetic
• Difficulty in agreeing on methodologies and standards of validity across
subject areas
• Difficulty in providing adequate training for graduate students and
postdoctoral scholars
• Difficulty in providing effective criteria for evaluating interdisciplinary
research
• Mismatch between new practices and popular methodologies/metrics
• Learning to take up reflective distance from one’s core discipline’
• Preserving research focus
• Managing transitions between disciplinary and cultural boundaries
• Difficulty in creating robust and coherent frameworks and tools which
accommodate different levels and forms of analysis
• Consolidation/ standardisation of vocabularies
• Frameworks for synthesising micro/meso/macro perspectives; combining
qualitative and quantitative research data
• Distinguishing inter‐disciplinarity from multi‐disciplinarity
• Lack of intellectual or methodological ‘openness’ among academics
• There is a risk that individual institutional or personal aims may supersede
the overall project goal.
Here are some of the key questions and challenges for interdisciplinary research that
arose:
• What are the key guidelines for supporting team‐work in an interdisciplinary
setting?
19

20. • How can we make best use of the technology available to us to support good
communication and collaboration whilst at the same time avoid
overwhelming partners with an array of unfamiliar technologies?
• What kind of safeguards might help ensure that interdisciplinary research
projects remain focused – and not realigned to the disciplinary interests of a
particular academic (such as the Principal Investigator)?
• Are there some research topics that lend themselves more readily to
interdisciplinary research than others?
• Is interdisciplinarity better suited to longer‐term (or larger‐scale) research
projects?
• In terms of learning, how explicit does the focus on interdisciplinarity need to
be? Do people need to know if they are involved in interdisciplinary learning,
or could this distract from their own learning experiences? Should models of
interdisciplinarity be discussed by learners, or should they simply inform
lesson design, etc.?
• Do new disciplines arise from the combinations of different disciplines, or
should these all be referred to as ‘interdisciplinary’?
4 Perspectives on interdisciplinarity from TEL researchers
The data derived from the interviews complement the material collected through
the literature review and the open consultation work through the Networked
Learning hotseat and on Cloudworks. Eighteen interviews were carried out with
academics that have experience of interdisciplinary working in their subject areas,
and more specifically have experience of interdisciplinary working in Technology
Enhanced Learning research. The methodology is described in Section 2. Key findings
from the interviews are discussed here.
4.1 Origins and current academic roles
The breakdown of the eighteen interviewees by ‘origin’ or undergraduate discipline
is given in the figure below. It shows the diversity of background and current spread
of those working in TEL research. However it is notable how many of the researchers
have a science background. I t is interesting to reflect on the reasons why such a
trend might exist. One possible explanation is that early work on computer‐assisted
learning materials, e‐assessment and early use of the web was pioneered in the
science subject areas. For example, chemistry was one of the first subject areas to
fully exploit the use of interactive, 3D molecules using a programme called Rasmol
(e.g., Lancaster, 2000) and there are many excellent examples of interactive
computer‐based packages for teaching science generally (e.g., Scanlon et al., 1993;
Scanlon et al., 2004). In terms of current location, the researchers are spread across
a range of different departments; some are located in individual cognate discipline
departments (like education or computer science), others are located in what might
be termed ‘central services’ and one is located in a subject area (dental education).
20

21.
Collectively, therefore the TEL field is drawing on a rich range of theoretical
perspectives and methodologies. All of those interviewed stated that they had had
some experience of working in a range of disciplines during their career trajectories
from their original discipline to their current role. And felt that exposure to working
in multidisciplinary contexts was valuable.
‘I’ve picked up something from all of them.’[IntM]
Some interviewees identified the significance of their ‘home’ [IntI] discipline,
although it is worth countering that others saw it as less important.
‘One of our findings was the real significance of a home discipline, that most
people are active interdisciplinary researchers, have very clear signs that they
have been imprinted with the legacy of their first undergraduate degree.’
[IntI]
The tension between the individual discipline perspectives and the holistic cognitive
skills necessary for an interdisciplinarity mindset were evident through the
interviews with the TEL researchers, who recognised the need to both draw on – and
move beyond – their original disciplines. Echoing Spelt et al.’s argument (Spelt et al.,
2009) that interdisciplinary thinking is a complex cognitive skill. The value of the
‘home’ [IntI] discipline seemed to centre on the ways in which it helped the
individual frame their thinking – seeing patterns, oscillating between textual,
mathematical and visual representation and making sense out of complexity:
‘Geographers are really good at synthesising key ideas out of complex data…
the tradition is that geographers make the best managers.’ [IntL]
‘Computer scientists when they do requirements capture and develop a
system and develop it, they evaluate using paradigms and methods…that
would be quite different from psychologists and logicians.’ [IntP]
21

22.
From mathematics… ‘I still tend to see patterns.’ [IntC]
From chemistry ‘I’m always trying to classify and taxonomise things… and
being able to see things in three dimensions.’ [IntA]
‘Particularly the AI (artificial intelligence) background…it’s probably the case
that most of the research I do isn’t what you might strictly see as artificial
intelligence but it influences the way you think.’ [IntQ]
‘I am only just starting to realise… how much of the kind of computer science
background I often bring with me.’ [IntQ]
Alignment with their conceptions and views of the world from their background
within the context of doing TEL research is at the heart of much of what defines TEL
interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, many of the interviewees also felt that, broadly
construed, education is necessarily an interdisciplinary endeavour.
‘I would take the view that almost any team which is focused on education is
almost by definition interdisciplinary, because people come to it from quite
diverse backgrounds.’ [IntL]
‘We’re always saying it but education is already interdisciplinary.’ [IntK]
‘Because in a way education is very interdisciplinary in its own right isn’t it? In
that you get people who come to education from the psychology background
who have also perhaps a background in, you know, learning theories or even
experimental psychologists in terms of, you know, very narrow perspectives
on learning, for example. And then you get people who come from a
sociology background, who come from a philosophy education background.’
[IntQ]
And therefore researchers in the field need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to
Technology Enhanced Learning.
‘So I think it’s interesting in that education in the TEL part of the equation is
in itself interdisciplinary.’ [IntQ]
Interviewees were keen to stress the ways in which traditional subjects already
accommodate a degree of intellectual diversity, and that being interdisciplinary for
some was inherent in the academic work they undertook.
Psychology – ‘I enjoyed the range of topics that it allowed me to study,
perception and individual differences and cognition and social psychology
and psycholinguistics.’ [IntP]
22

23. Artificial Intelligence – ‘brought together all my psychology, my education
and my interest in computing, all into sort of one focus.’ [IntP]
Geography – ‘Is probably in a reasonably easy position there, because of the
diversity within the subject.’ [IntH]
Geography – ‘You can’t really work in a modern geography department
without having to accommodate quite what in other cases might be… greater
breadth that would cross other interdisciplinary divides.’ [IntH]
Education – ‘I think is essentially interdisciplinary, so as part of that…we
would be reading the work of a psychologist, but I might also be reading the
work of sociologists.’ [Intk]
Education – ‘Is already interdisciplinary, because we have people who come
from critical theory backgrounds, or counselling backgrounds, or narrative
methodology.’ [IntK]
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence ‐ ‘within the school of Cognitive
and Computer Science…was interdisciplinary at core.’ [IntQ]
The interviewees were selected because of their experience in interdisciplinary
research in a general context, and specifically in relation to their experiences of
working in interdisciplinary teams in Technology Enhanced Learning research. When
they were asked about the distinctiveness of working interdisciplinarity, a number of
themes emerged.
Firstly, as a relatively new field, TEL research has attracted people from different
disciplines, each bringing with them different theoretical and methodological
perspectives. See also Conole and Oliver (2007: 1‐15).
Secondly, TEL research by its nature is complex, and is concerned with improving
education through use of technology – it therefore needs to draw both on subject
areas concerned with learning and teaching (education, psychology, etc.) and those
concerned with technology (computer sciences, information sciences etc.), as well as
understanding the local nuances and cultural differences across different subject
domains. Bringing these different aspects together effectively is a key challenge of
TEL research and therefore it needs the different interdisciplinary perspectives to
understand it; i.e. interdisciplinarity is a core facet of TEL research. If TEL research is
going to work, it has to be interdisciplinary and people need to bring a wide range of
different skills, perspectives and research tools to bear upon a particular problem.
Many felt that interdisciplinary approaches to TEL research were superior to single
discipline approaches because they bring together a productive mixture of
perspectives and encourage debate.
Thirdly, there are huge and interesting cognitive, technical and social questions
surrounding the delivery of technology enhanced learning. For example, how should
23

24. the cognitive and the social be integrated? How should knowledge be organised?
How should classroom practice be managed? These are highly complex questions
and need more technical resources than other areas of educational research. Indeed,
a common theme across the interviews was the opinion that you cannot do a TEL
project without lots of multi‐disciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise. Also the
products or artefacts produced then need an interdisciplinary approach to
evaluation.
Fourthly, a number of strategies need to be in place to support TEL research
practices. Researchers need to be helped to develop the skills needed to undertake
interdisciplinary research. Institutions need to have in place appropriate career paths
to foster and promote interdisciplinarity. This has not always been the case and
some TEL researchers have found that they had reached a ceiling in their institution
in terms of promotion, having to either revert to more traditional roles/job titles or
move into managerial positions. It was felt that often the value of TEL research
groups in terms of institutional support remains to be fully exploited and, that
interdisciplinary research groups could be playing a more proactive role within
institutions, helping them make strategic decisions on the effective use of
technologies to support learning and teaching. It seems that TEL research groups
often find themselves outside of formal institutional decision making mechanisms.
Fifthly, some tensions were evident between the disciplines. TEL research has to
meet the research agenda of the disciplines involved, and, in particular, the needs of
both computer scientists and educationalists. Some interviewees felt that,
historically speaking; educational technology/TEL research has been dominated by
the educationalists. Indeed, one of the aspirations behind the establishment of the
ESRC/EPSRC TEL programme, referenced at the beginning of the report, was to
address this by ensuring that genuinely interdisciplinary teams were set up to tackle
real TEL research challenges. There remains a tension between technologists and
educationalists because of this dominance. There is also an inherent tension
between the level of precision needed from a computer science perspective and the
less well‐defined nature normally associated with educational design, where design
is more based on practice and experience than rules and methods.
4.2 Influences, beliefs and theoretical perspectives
Interviewees were also asked to identify the key influences (people and texts) in
their work, and to articulate any beliefs and theoretical perspectives they carried
with them from their original disciplines. The aim was to try and ascertain whether
there was a common core of influences and what the spread of influence was from
the original or ‘feeder’ disciplines. Most of those interviewed recognised the role
their background played in shaping their approach to research:
‘We are all victims of our own histories’ [IntL]
A group of influential thinkers were identified by most of the interviewees, and there
does appear to be a common shared discourse underpinning the field. Socio‐cultural
approaches – in particular the work of Vygotsky (1978), Engeström (1987) and others
24

25. around Activity Theory – surfaced a number of times. Laurillard’s ‘Rethinking
university teaching and learning’ (Laurillard, 2002) acted as somewhat of a
watershed in the field as it was published at a key time and, unsurprisingly, the
conversational framework introduced there and the formative work by Pask on
Conversation Theory which inspired it were also mentioned by a number of those
interviewed. Robin Mason (See for example Mason and Kaye, 1989), another
prominent and prolific publisher was credited by one interviewee as someone
‘who really set the scene for flexible learning and I think she gave so many good
indications and foundations for what we’re all doing now’ and ‘she was really an
icon to many people.’ [IntN]
Listing others mentioned gives some indication of the theoretical perspectives these
researchers are drawing on: Alan Collins (Collins, 1993) (design‐based research);
Michael Patton (Patton, 2002) (utilisation focused evaluation); Barbara Rogoff
(Rogoff and Lave, 1984) (cultural psychology); Maggie Boden (Boden, 1977/1987)
(artificial Intelligence and psychology); Lave and Wenger (Lave and Wenger, 1991)
(communities of practice); Alan Blackwell (Blackwell et al., 2009) (interdisciplinarity);
Howard Gardner (Gardner, 1983) (multiple intelligences); James Wertsch (Wertsch,
1998) (mediating artefacts); and Michael Cole (Cole, 1996) (Activity Theory).
Looking at some of the specific texts that were cited as influences is also insightful.
These included ‘Educating the Reflective Practitioner’ (Schön 1987), ‘Academic Tribes
and ‘Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Discipline’ (Becher &
Trowler 2001), ‘Distributed Cognition’ (Salomon 1997), ‘Rethinking university
teaching’ (Laurillard, 2002), ‘Plans and situated actions: the problem of human‐
machine communication’ (Suchman 1987), ‘A dynamic medium for creative thought’,
(Kay, 1972), ‘‘Doing Research/Reading Research Re‐interrogating Education’,
(Dowling and Brown, 2009), and ‘Common and Border Lands’ (Strathern 2004).
These individuals and texts give a flavour of what is shaping the field and the broader
literature that is being drawn on. It demonstrates that the field is indeed
interdisciplinary, because these texts are drawn from a broader set of disciplines,
than research that can be purely labelled ‘TEL’. However, there is an additional
important aspect to the nature of interdisciplinarity in TEL research, both in terms of
the actual processes involved and how individuals react with and benefit from the
other researchers. A number of interviewees indicated that it was the nature of
interdisciplinary working itself that was more influential in the way they worked,
rather than either a specific person or text.
‘I honestly couldn’t say that it was because I’ve been reading about
interdisciplinarity, or was inspired by some great speaker… it hasn’t come
about that way, it has been through approaches from individuals,
opportunities to be involved in particular projects.’ [IntH]
‘What’s really more influenced me is being keen to work with people who I
think are good and strong in the area that I’m working in.’ [IntK]
25

26.
‘I have looked at them. And I haven’t found honestly… much which has
helped in anyway at all. What I have found more useful is working within the
team.’ [IntJ]
‘It was just some recognition about everybody’s in the same boat, you know,
we’re all struggling with this. But I can’t honestly point to any theory that’s
been particularly helpful.’ [IntJ]
‘I don’t think there’s a text I would use to describe interdisciplinarity but I’m
aware of quite useful debates on this that have been written.’ [IntB]
Interviewees also identified the need to bring background theoretical perspectives to
interdisciplinary research to the fore to contextualise the research being undertaken:
‘Blending what you already had.’ [IntN]
‘I always want to make sure that we’re using the appropriate measures to
gain the outcomes that we want from our research.’ [IntN]
A number of interviewees also considered what might be the best approach to
achieving this:
‘How can we integrate theories to produce a composite perspective?’ [IntM]
Also two interviewees identified the challenges of using existing theoretical
perspectives:
‘So we are using theories of collaboration but we don’t think they are
adequate enough for what we need, so we are developing our own theories.’
[IntF]
‘I’m interested in exploring other perspectives because I think we’re now
getting into quite a challenging state with the TEL research that we do need
to broaden much more.’ [IntA]
A flavour of the diversity of believes, approaches, and theoretical positioning is
reflected in the following series of quotes. They demonstrate how the interviewees
draw on but extend beyond their disciplinary origins and how they weave their
particular interests into the approach they take:
‘I believe that knowledge is self constructed and I’m sympathetic to the
tradition of Dewey and Piaget,,,.’ [IntP]
‘I would be called a constructivist, I believe that single, that patterns of
instruction don’t work for everybody, and that individuals self construct their
26

27. knowledge in a highly individualised way, and that learning level transitions
for individuals are very personal.’ [IntP]
‘Well I’m a big sucker for Tony Becher’s book on Academic Tribes and
Territories, in other words a sort of sociological analysis of the academic
world and the way that works and the way that creates social networks which
are relatively, you know, internal and comfortable and that generates ways of
thinking, social practices, which is part of the problem because
interdisciplinarity in itself means breaking out of an existing set of social
relations and meeting other people.’ [IntR]
‘I’m always trying to classify and taxonomise things, even though I know that
this kind of messy complex world… I’m always trying to make sense of things
into some kind of patterns or structures’ [IntA]
‘I think the other thing is I hinted at earlier on, moving from a science parallel
to a non science one was really, really tricky, I found it personally very hard
because it completely went against my training and all my belief sets.’ [IntA]
‘I think I have quite a strong belief in empirical research, you know, in the
sense that, you know, I am quite experimentally driven and therefore started
out in research projects with quite a quantitative approach to things, you
know, controlled experiments.’ [IntB]
‘The notion of complex socio‐cultural contexts in which learning takes place I
think speaks to me as a way of thinking about the sort of work that we’re
doing.’ [IntB]
‘I’m quite interested in what might be called inherent tensions in your theory
and not trying to think you have to resolve them. And that would be
something that would help when you are working in an interdisciplinary way,
because if you find some conflict between what somebody thinks and what
somebody else thinks, you don’t have to say well that has to be resolved.’
[IntK]
‘I think quite a lot of my attitudes of the way that knowledge is constructed
as a series of social relations and so on, has probably made me pretty
anthropological in my thinking.’ [IntI]
‘At heart I’m a real believer in socio‐cultural approaches, and they are
interdisciplinary.’ [IntQ]
4.3 Methodologies, methods and tools
This section provides a commentary on the methodologies, methods, and tools
interviewees have brought from their disciplinary backgrounds to interdisciplinary
research working.
27

28. During the interviews there was some blurring between the definition of a
theoretical perspective and the methodology used, and a methodology and a
method. Activity Theory, for example, was discussed both as a theoretical
perspective and a methodology. There was general consensus that there is a link
between the theoretical perspective, the methodology and the methods from your
background that you use, and also that the background theoretical perspective
informs the methodological approach used in research. The following methodologies
were mentioned specifically:
• Socio‐cultural research
• Activity Theory
• Qualitative Research Methodology
• Design Research Methodology
• Grounded Theory
A number of interviewees felt that new methodologies were emerging as a result of
interdisciplinary research.
‘Some of the methodological approaches I have been adopting I am not sure
if we have a label on them yet. I think we are starting to…see some new
methodological approaches developing but that’s a risky thing to say.’ [IntA]
The potential for new thinking and the emergence of new methodologies, links back
to the notion of interdisciplinarity as ‘deviant’ or ‘transgressive’, discussed earlier
and its ability to challenge existing assumptions (Nowotny, 2001; Moran, 2010).
Interviewees recognised that interdisciplinary research work is unlikely to be
addressed adequately – or fully understood – within a single disciplinary approach,
and hence that there is a need for a portfolio of mixed methodologies/methods to
be selected for interdisciplinary research. An ‘emergent’ tradition for
interdisciplinary research involving combinations of complementary methods was
identified, and interviewees reported experience of such ‘mixed method’ projects
which placed equal value on both qualitative and quantitative approaches (Greene
and Caracelli,1997).
Two specific new methodologies identified were socio‐cognitive engineering and
collective intelligence. Socio‐cognitive engineering takes an engineering approach to
developing an interaction between people and technology. The starting point for this
methodology is Don Norman’s notion of cognitive engineering and designing
cognitive enhancement systems, which is then applied to the interaction between
people and technology in a social setting. Collective intelligence is another approach
that was cited as being something that could be used for interdisciplinary work.
Collective intelligence may be thought of as both a theory and a methodology
because it values all the different pieces of evidence or different ideas. There are
the methods around the evidence or ideas which are to do with taking things which
exist and categorising them to make it more evident how they connect.
28