In this post, Jenny Scoles shares her experience of researching interdisciplinary learning and teaching and details how she and colleagues are conducting a longitudinal, qualitative study to explore how undergraduate students and teaching staff conceptualise and experience interdisciplinarity in the classroom. Jenny Scoles is an Academic Developer in the Institute for Academic Development. This post is the final post in the ‘Navigating complexity through interdisciplinary teaching and learning‘ Hot Topic series.
In 2022, I was lucky enough to be seconded from the Institute for Academic Development to Edinburgh Futures Institute as a Fellow for 18 months, helping design, plan and teach for the new undergraduate programme MA (Hons) Interdisciplinary Futures, specifically for the year-long module ‘Researching Global Challenges’. Alongside this teaching work, I was also welcomed onto the “Crossing the Line: Understanding the interdisciplinary classroom” research project led by Dr David Overend, which was funded by the Principal Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS). This project was multi-pronged, and afforded the research team time and space to gather data around their own research questions emerging in interdisciplinary learning and teaching (referred from now on as IDLT).
For me, I was curious to know not only how both students and staff conceptualised IDLT, but how this changed or shifted once IDLT unfolded in practice, specifically at programme level. I had this sense at the start of the research project that, from the academic side, there was almost an idealistic vision of how IDLT would play-out in the classroom, with history students having heated debates with physicist students about a specific topic, slapping the table and proclaiming, “that’s not how we would do it in our discipline!”. But initial interviews from another part of the project revealed that students’ experience of interdisciplinary were much more nuanced. For example, the students were not aware of any overt ‘clashes’ of disciplines, and IDLT materialised on a more social level, such as, “I would never have met a student from math if it wasn’t for this course”.
These initial findings, coupled with the argument from some that surely you need to have a disciplinary background before you can truly enact interdisciplinarity (and note that we were researching undergraduate students) are now underpinning a longitudinal qualitative research project. Clare Cullen (former-PTAS Research Assistant) and I are now in the middle of following the first cohort of the Interdisciplinary Futures students and teaching staff throughout their 4-year programme and into the workplace. All 32 students in the inaugural 2023 cohort were invited to participate on the project and the majority signed consent forms. Tutors, seconded staff members and permanent teaching staff were also invited to participate.
Data collection
In year 1, we collected open-response questionnaires for both staff and students at the end of Semester 1 and 2 plus corresponding follow-up focus groups. In Year 2, we just ran end of Year focus groups (one for staff and one for students) as PTAS funding had run-out and we could no longer compensate students and zero-hour contract staff for their time. Encouragingly, the students were very keen to continue unpaid out of interest, enjoyment and curiosity and have committed to attending the focus groups in the upcoming years. Ideally, we hope to follow the students into employment once they graduate, shifting from interviewing the staff to their employers.
A few key questions that we ask the students and staff in the focus group (and will be repeated each year) include:
- What do you think interdisciplinary learning and teaching is, or should be?
- How far have your experiences of interdisciplinary teaching and learning met your initial expectations?
- Can you give a example of when you thought you saw interdisciplinary learning happening? What was going on in that moment?
- Was there anything about your experience of being part of the programme this year that surprised you?
It is important to note that student data is collected from students who are a self-selecting sample, and are not representative of the whole cohort. These students proactively want a platform for their voices to be heard about their experiences (good and bad) of the programme. They are also characterised by being bold risk-takers, not only entering into a new programme that has no alumni or chartered pathway, but also stepping into a whole new post-disciplinary field – with ‘unconventional’ pedagogical approaches – in Higher Education in general.
Clare and I are pausing now at the end of Year 2 as this seems a really crucial point to analyse the data so far. Throughout the first two years, the students referred to themselves as ‘pioneering guinea pigs’ and took delight – as well as trepidation – in this status. At the end of Year 2, they reflected that while they had adjusted and moved on from the initial Year 1 ‘guinea pig’ feelings and experiences, they were now anticipating a new level of guinea pig anxiety where their grades started to count (moving from pre-honours to honours) and are faced with optional years abroad, different electives, and their final year project.
More importantly, the students in the focus groups started voicing frustration in our discussions when I talked about how much interest the research project was generating in our initial dissemination attempts (blog posts, conference presentations, discussions with colleagues etc). They said they would love to shift positions from being talked ‘about’ as objects to being part of the research process itself as active subjects. Therefore, all the students who participated in at least two out of the three focus groups were invited to join Clare and I as student researchers. Sora Choo, Sara Albakri and Polly Dipper volunteered, and we are now working together on our first paper, which is exploring the students’ experience of the first two years of the programme.
We meet regularly (online and in-person where we can) to read through literature, analyse the data and write the paper together. We are – at different times – spread across Zambia, Singapore, Washington DC, Netherlands, Jordan, England and Edinburgh! For the analysis, we are zooming in on each focus group transcript separately to look for emerging themes at the end of Semester 1 and 2 (Year 1) and end of Semester 2 (Year 2), but then we are also zooming out to analyse if there is movement in how students are experiencing, conceptualising and practising IDLT. Ethically, the students will not be looking at the staff data set – Clare and I will write a second paper on this separately.
As a taster, a few core themes emerging include:
- A shift from an individual mindset to a collective mindset;
- An increasing sense of ‘trusting the process’ in the programme, and the letting go of the need to be taught through content delivery, grading and exams;
- The importance of bringing the ‘whole self’ into the classroom;
- The continuing struggle to find an academic identity;
- A core appreciation from students to actively create a sense of community, mattering and belonging from the outset, which is strongly linked to in-person engagement;
- The affective dimension and associated (and often unexpected) emotions of entering into the challenges, unknown territories and surprising opportunities of IDLT.
For now, we hope to have the paper ready for the very exciting opportunity of presenting at the upcoming Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Conference, which will be hosted by EFI and the University of Edinburgh will be hosting on 16th April, 2026.
Jenny Scoles
Dr Jenny Scoles is the Chief Editor of Teaching Matters. She is an Academic Developer (Learning and Teaching Enhancement), and a Senior Fellow HEA, in the Institute for Academic Development, and provides pedagogical support for University course and programme design. She leads the University’s Learning & Teaching Conference, Board of Studies Network, and her research interests include student-staff co-creation, climate pedagogy, interdisciplinary learning & teaching, professional learning and sociomaterial methodologies.
