Education in formal institutions has historically been a site of both exclusion and oppression through various means, including the top-down imposition of curricula, knowledge, values and constructs. This institutional baggage, combined with entrenched and often outdated educational models, can be at odds with what is needed to deliver meaningful interdisciplinary learning and teaching. The approaches to interdisciplinary teaching and learning that we advocate demand a redistribution of power; decolonisation of knowing, teaching and learning; a reconceptualization of the notion of leadership and of expertise; and an appreciation of the ways educators and students, in bringing the whole self to the learning, are at times vulnerable in their openness to share and collaborate. There is clearly a need for educators and students alike to cultivate an ethical practice that upholds inclusivity, integrates reflective and diffractive practices and honours emotionality.

Although Ethical Practice is offered as a distinct section within this toolkit, it informs all the other methods and approaches that are included. Consequently, there will be regular references to and signposts for other TILT sections to support the integration of ethical practices into interdisciplinary learning and teaching. In this video, learners and educators on the University of Edinburgh’s Interdisciplinary Futures degree discuss the value of reflective practice and the potential for a careful, inclusive and ethical model of education.

Inclusivity

The very skills and strategies that interdisciplinary educators will have to both cultivate and practice, are also needed by the students that they teach – requiring a collaborative approach between both between learners and educators, with an emphasis on inclusive practices (see ‘Working in Groups’ in Collaboration). Doing this through the lens of inclusivity provides an opportunity to refine and champion educational models that empower historically marginalised populations through collaborative dialogue, co-creation process and critically reflexive thinking – as outlined in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). In this section we highlight various practical methods for doing this – alongside relevant practical recommendations and considerations.

Humble inquiry – Edgar Shein described this as the gentle art of asking instead of telling; of ‘drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.’ It is further described as an approach whereby researchers and practitioners (or staff and students) do ‘not just ask questions… but adopt a total attitude that includes listening more deeply to how others respond to the inquiry, responding appropriately and revealing more of themselves in the relationship-building process’ (Shein and Shein, 2021, 3).

Convergent facilitation – The humble inquiry approach can be embedded into other techniques, such as Miki Kashtan’s (2020) convergent facilitation – a participatory approach for collaborative decision making. Although it can be used for many types of group decision making, it is particularly effective for making difficult decisions, and in situations where groups can be polarised and hold divisive opinions. Crucially, Kashtan believes that inviting ‘outliers’ into decision-making processes elicits alternative perspectives that might enrich the conversation and strengthen the final decision by transcending dichotomous positions. Such ‘outliers’ and their ‘dissenting’ views can be ‘gifts’ that catalyse breakthrough moments. Ultimately, cultivating faith, trust and goodwill within the group from the very beginning is central to convergent facilitation; without this, a willingness to care for the whole – instead of fighting for one’s individual position – would be impossible.

Conflict resolution – As in challenge-led interdisciplinary contexts, such inclusive practices shift the role of educator from expert to facilitator; it is not so much about what one knows but about how one can bring together different perspectives and elicit ways beyond conflict. Wolfgang Deitrich’s (2014) ‘elicitive transformation resolution’ is one such method of conflict resolution which challenges notions of a finalised stage called ‘peace’ by instead ‘acknowledg[ing] that the energy for transformation is already in the dysfunctional system… [and] in the hands… hearts and the minds of the [participating] parties‘ (Dietrich quoted in UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies, 2014). Within in this approach, facilitators ‘do not know the result… but… [rather] elicit the potential of the parties to find new options for acting [and] interacting with each other and move away from dysfunctional modes’. Such an approach might be well placed in addressing the global challenge of conflict (see ‘Working with Challenges’ in Collaboration).

Redistribution of power – Inclusivity disperses any residues of the educator’s ‘power-over’ the learning process, instead embodying the ‘power-to’, ‘power-with’ and ‘power-within’ practices that can harness the potential of each participant/stakeholder (Pansardi & Bindi, 2021), something that can be at odds with existing power structures and hierarchies. As with Collaboration, Fielding’s (1999) three primary strategies for radical collegiality to make educational practice inclusive applies

(1) Energising equality: the power of peer learning,

(2) Students as teachers: teachers as learners,

(3) Taking democracy seriously: reconstructing education as a democratic project.

Decolonising education, teaching and learning – True inclusivity within education can only emerge if all stakeholders not only acknowledge education’s colonial history, but also challenge and dismantle its colonial legacy. Cherrington et. al (2018, 1) believe that ‘decolonisation in education … [demands] expressions of enactments aimed at disrupting prevailing power structures and institutional cultures to shed light on democratised practices and spaces that bring to the fore previously marginalised voices and knowledges’. But it also necessitates honest interrogation of the assumptions of what does and does not constitute ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’. Indeed, Indigenous and non-Euro-Western researchers, scholars and educators have long emphasised that processes of knowledge production – what is considered valuable and valid and what is not – negate the diverse ways of being, knowing and becoming that are integral to their respective cultures and traditions (Kimmerer, 2013; Narvaez, 2014; Chilisa, 2020; Topa and Narvaez, 2022; Mungai, 2022). If interdisciplinary education is to eschew rigidity and stasis, to co-create new shared spaces for learning (see What is Interdisciplinarity?), educators and students must heed Chilisa’s (2020, 5) call to conduct research and engage in learning ‘without perpetuating self-serving Western… paradigms that construct Western ways of knowing as superiors to the Other’s ways of knowing’. All need to critically reflect on and question their own assumptions about knowledge, knowing and learning and be proactive in broadening these conceptualisations to include the diversity of human worldviews and experience.

Reflection, Critical Reflection, Reflexivity and Diffraction

Alongside more discrete approaches outlined earlier (e.g. humble enquiry), techniques such as reflection, reflexivity and diffraction give learners the time, space and frameworks to capture (amongst other things) the output and wider impact of these approaches, in the broader context of their learning and development. Reflection (and reflective practice) has a long tradition going back to the seminal work of Dewey (1933) on reflective thinking for personal and intellectual growth. 

Reflection can be defined as ‘the conscious examination of past experiences, thoughts and ways of doing things. Its goal is to surface learning about oneself and the situation, and to bring meaning to it in order to inform the present and the future. It challenges the status quo of practice, thoughts and assumptions and may therefore inform our decision, actions, attitudes, beliefs and understanding about ourselves’. The main premise of reflection is that participants need to critically reflect on what is going or went well, and what is not (or did not) go well (and their role in this), and to then deeply consider how this will inform what they do next (Boud et al., 1993, Schon, 1983). Crucially, the literature suggests that reflection is not something that happens at the end of a course but should be integrated meaningfully throughout it.

Reflective practices help learners reorientate their relationship with learning and teaching, provoking them to focus on how rather than what they learn, and how this can be situated in broader contexts. Reflective practices nurture awareness of self, others and the socio-cultural, political, economic and historical contexts within which one researches and learns. Reflection is also the basis on which reflexivity can be developed, both are essential for educators and students to nurture an inclusive learning environment, by helping them to recognise the emotional experiences of others before, during and after the learning. All the considerations educators take when using reflection as a mode of assessment should also be acknowledged in the development of and application of their own educational practice. When Practising reflection in one’s teaching is an opportunity to model, in real-time, how reflective practices can enrich their ability to work and learn effectively and meaningfully both independently and in groups. Reflection can be used as an approach to inform learning with and from others, from the perspective of both the educator and the learner. 

Reflexivity

While reflection is primarily focused on having an awareness of self and applying this accordingly by reflecting on what they have learned and what this means to them (based on the idea that there is a reality from which we can separate ourselves), reflexivity takes this process further – where implications from learning are considered in a much wider and fluid context (based on the idea that we continually construct the meanings of our worlds and ourselves). Rather than analysing what has happened (and using this to inform what happens next), reflexivity is about automatically self-assessing and reacting to circumstances as they unfold. Reflexivity is about finding strategies that can be used to question and challenge attitudes, assumptions and beliefs – and to help understand how complex roles are related to others.

Diffractive Practices

Believing that reflection and reflexivity ‘only displace the same elsewhere’, Haraway (1997, 273) moved beyond reflective practices by calling for ‘diffraction’, describing it as ‘an optical metaphor for… efforts to make a difference in the world’. Instead of mirroring, reproducing or representing sameness, diffraction elicits ‘another kind of critical consciousness’. This provocation has since been championed by Barad, who continues to pioneer diffractive methodologies by ‘reading insights through one another in attending… and responding to details and specificities of relations of difference and how they matter’ (Barad, 2007, 71). Barad emphasises that diffractive practices are not representational, but performative, embodied and dynamic, consequently making ‘manifest the extraordinary liveliness of the world’ (Barad, 2007, 91).

Diffraction promotes diversity, inclusion and justice by inviting into learning experiences the plurality of individual experience and perspective, thereby disrupting rigid constructions of societal stereotypes to create space for complex dynamism of individual identity. Diffraction can enhance thinking and learning in many ways that promote both interdisciplinarity and ethical educational practice:

• Diffraction is not only an endeavour of the mind; it is an embodied practice that engages in fundamental ways with how the body, emotions and spirit are implicated in knowing and experiencing the world (Barad, 2007; Bozalek & Zembylas, 2016). Thus, diffraction provokes educators and learners not only to bring ‘the whole self’ to the learning, but to honour ‘the whole self’ brought by others into the new shared interdisciplinary space(s) between them.
• Diffraction demands ongoing questioning: asking questions, and then addressing the prior questions about the assumptions of those questions, and so on, to acknowledge that ‘questioning is part of the world and the reworlding of the world’ (Barad and Gandorfer, 2021,18). For some practical activities for asking diffractive questions, see the section on What is Interdisciplinarity?. Crucially, ethical diffractive questioning necessitates an approach like that encapsulated in ‘humble inquiry’: seeking to learn and understand with sensitivity, humility and respect towards the dignity of others.
• By reconfiguring the boundaries between theory and practice, diffraction can deconstruct dualisms and blur boundaries, thereby disrupting practices that reinforce injustices to cultivate new ways of thinking for learners and educators alike (Spector, 2015).
• Diffraction does not conceive bodies or beings as static and is open to the diversity of identity, perspective and experience that exists in the world. Diffraction also seeks to understand difference and connection, rather than sameness and separation/distinction. Striving to engage in ‘more-than-reflection’, Hill (2017) advocates for diffractive practices in education through cultivating the relational ontology of ‘becoming-with the world’; ‘displacing and diffracting the selves who teach’; and ‘embracing difference, interference and spaces-in-between’.
• Diffraction disrupts linear notions of time, and thereby honours the complex multidimensional and multidirectional ways that experience and learning intra-act. Diffraction is also ‘attentive to the details of the phenomena we want to understand’ (Barad, 2007, 73) and therefore, enables learning about the ‘specific material configurations of the world’s becoming’ implicit in phenomena and their very nature (Barad, 2007, 84–85).
• Diffraction provokes its practitioners to explore the myriad ways they are rendered ‘response-able’ by others, how they render others response-able in turn and ‘at what cost borne by whom’ (Haraway, 2016). Through cultivating ‘response-ability’, educators and students become more able to respond ethically to, and to take ethical responsibility for, the challenges of 21^st century (Barad, 2007; Barad and Gandorfer, 2021).

Practical examples of diffractive practices in a range of educational contexts:

• Murris, Karen. Karen Barad as Educator: Agential Realism and Education. Singapore: Springer, 2022.
• Spector, Karen. ‘Meeting Pedagogical Encounters Halfway’. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 58, no. 6 (February 3, 2015): 447–50. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.382.
• Bozalek, Vivienne, and Michalinos Zembylas. ‘Diffraction or Reflection? Sketching the Contours of Two Methodologies in Educational Research’. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 30, no. 2 (June 30, 2016): 111–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1201166.
• Hill, Cher M. ‘More-Than-Reflective Practice: Becoming a Diffractive Practitioner.’ Teacher Learning and Professional Development 2, no. 1 (June 2017): 1–17. https://journals.sfu.ca/tlpd/index.php/tlpd/article/view/28/pdf.
• Cullen, Clare, David Jay, David Overend, and M Winter. ‘Creating Edinburgh: Diffracting Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching in the Contemporary City’. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11 (1) (September, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03566-5.

Emotionality

Emotionality and emotional engagement (both positive and negative) are key and often under-recognised factors in the interdisciplinary classroom. Crucially, many students will experience a range of emotions as they transition from disciplined pedagogies to those of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This undisciplining process elicits uncertainty, feelings of being overwhelmed, anxiety, frustration, conflict and the challenges of navigating social relationships (Kurchik & Overend, 2022). But the undisciplined spaces of interdisciplinary education also generate excitement, wonder, a sense of freedom to explore and self-direct learning. Within the authentic nature of interdisciplinarity, students have space to become emotionally invested in their projects and will often experience both the joys and frustrations associated with developing higher levels of knowledge and skills (Moon, 2004; Boud & Miller, 1996). This raises several questions (summarised below) for both educators and students – both in surfacing and accepting the range of emotions that can be experienced and supporting them through this.

• What are the benefits to learning (and how can they be realised) if educators and students acknowledge the emotional vulnerability, uncertainty and unpredictability that often presents when students transition from a familiar, stable disciplined approach to the often messy interdisciplinary contexts, and the undisciplining that is needed in these?
• How can educators recognise, validate and support students’ emotionality in an ethical way during this process of undisciplining?
• How can students check-in with, and stay true to their own emotions (and those of their peers) during this process in a way that is inclusive, empathetic and ethical?
• How do educators surface and recognise positive emotions as a key carrier of learning, alongside the sense of achievement often found when overcoming challenges (Erk et al. 2003; Roth, 2001; Schleich, 2003)?