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Universities are increasingly expected to prepare students to engage with complex problems that transcend disciplinary boundaries, such as climate change, political polarisation and economic restructuring. Interdisciplinary teaching is an effective way to equip students with skills to cope with a complex and uncertain world. 

Many teachers encourage interdisciplinarity in their courses but often the concept feels vague and abstract to students. As such, interdisciplinarity does not often emerge naturally in the classroom; it requires intentional choices. Here are tips that are relevant to a range of disciplines.

Recognise disciplinary perspectives

One of the easiest ways to facilitate interdisciplinary thinking is to have students identify how different disciplines look at the same issue. For example, because I work at a Hong Kong-based university, I have used the housing problems in Hong Kong to do this in my public administration class. But before asking students to suggest solutions to these problems, I ask them to consider how different experts might approach the issue. For example:

• What might an economist ask about land supply, housing affordability, market incentives or the effects of public expenditure?
• What might a historian want to know about how housing policy, urban development or migration patterns have continued and changed over time?
• What might a politician ask about who is responsible for housing decisions, whose interests are represented and overlooked and how competing policy priorities are negotiated?

After considering these perspectives, I prompt students to reflect on what types and sources of evidence each expert would look for to support their arguments. For instance, economists analyse land demand and supply data, historians look at archives and politicians track legislative debates. I want my students to recognise that each perspective defines and analyses the problem in a particular way, and relying on just one of them will not lead to a thorough analysis. 

Develop disciplinary fluency

Interdisciplinarity also requires disciplinary fluency to help students  understand what differences across discipline actually mean. One simple way to build this fluency is to analyse how a common concept changes as it moves across disciplinary boundaries. Students can begin with a familiar term and investigate how its meaning, use and implications differ across various disciplines.

For example, in an introductory political science course, I introduce the concept of equality, asking students to compare how scholars across several disciplines define and use the term. For example:

• In economics, equality is understood through the distribution of measurable goods or outcomes, such as income and wealth.
• In sociology, equality is analysed through patterned differences between social groups and structures that reproduce them, such as class and gender.
• In law, equality is framed in terms of equal legal status and protection, and procedural fairness, such as norms, rules and institutions.

I also invite students to explore relevant scholarship to consider and compare how scholars engage with these terms. They must look at their underlying assumptions, their plausible conclusions and their ways of justifying and evaluating claims. I want students to realise how different or even conflicting disciplinary perspectives can come together in interdisciplinary contexts.

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Negotiate interdisciplinary judgements

Another way to promote interdisciplinarity is to get students from different disciplines working in small groups. They can draw on their developing expertise to work together and challenge each other’s thinking.

For example, in a general education course on disability studies, a teacher could design an experiential project in which students examine everyday activities – such as dining and shopping – in a specific area from the perspective of people with specific disabilities. Students then observe and document accessibility barriers, such as the design of entrances, lifts and toilets. They can then develop recommendations to address the issues. The key is that each group’s analysis should draw explicitly on the disciplinary expertise of each member.

• Students with medical or health-related backgrounds might focus on proposing interventions that deal with hygiene and safety issues.
• Students with engineering and architecture backgrounds might examine the technical aspects of designing spatial layouts and building features.
• Students on law and public administration courses might think about the details of implementation, such as the alignment with law and regulation.

As students work together, they must develop a shared response. They need to explain what each perspective contributes, identify tensions between competing priorities and decide which trade-offs are acceptable before completing the final report. This exercise helps students understand that interdisciplinary collaboration does not require all participants to reach the same conclusions or that disciplinary differences should be overlooked; it means we must value all perspectives to reach compromises.

Interdisciplinarity forces students to learn how disciplines construct and evaluate knowledge and to make sound, collective judgements as a group. 

Developing an interdisciplinary mindset will not only help students become better collaborators, it will also equip them with the attributes they need to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. 

Adrian Man-Ho Lam is course tutor in the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong.

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