INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES (IRANIAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH)
Year:2012 | Volume:4 | Issue:1 (13)|Papers Count:8

Interdisciplinarity is a sign of crisis in traditional approaches to the science, conventional models of planning and curriculum, and customary academic departments. The aim of this article is contextualizing of interdisciplinarization, its driving forces, capabilities, limitations, vulnerabilities and requirements; emphasizing the planning in higher education .The research method is qualitative meta-analysis. Eight factors have been studied as following: 1.functional and structural changes in science, 2.paradigmic evolutions, 3.changing information and communication technologies, 4.change of external expectations in science, 5.changes caused by demand pull, 6.globalization, 7.institutional changes and 8.technology factor.Capabilities and limitations of disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity have been compared. Frontier science is a forerunner approach for developing the social world based on the knowledge, and this is not possible without interdisciplinarity paradigm and network view. In spite of that interdisciplinary fields have many efficiencies, we ought to be considerate in it due to its vulnerabilities. Seven strategic requirements for educational and research activities together with their executive mechanism have been found. Finally the interdisciplinarization need to a complex approach in the philosophy of science that synthesizes differences and similarities of the sciences.

The goal of this paper is the evaluation of role and status of interdisciplinary in relationship of university-industry. With evaluation of science production process and review all of three exist paradigm in sociology of science, recent paradigm introduce relationship of university-industry as a pattern of science production. But, this relationship isn't a simple and without problem. In other hand, interdisciplinary educations and researches have increased in recent years. With evaluation of effective factors on interdisciplinary works and its limitations, results showed that exist challenges and problems in relationship of university- industry are same cases that concerned to effective factors on interdisciplinary and if these factors weren't been, they would cause disorder in interdisciplinary work and challenges due to relationship of university-industry. So emphasizing on interdisciplinary educations and researches can solve huge part of exist challenges and problems in relationship of university-industry. Key words: methodology, method, communicative action, critical hermeneutics.

Establishing and expanding the Interdisciplinary Higher Education has been one the major concerns and programs of the Ministry of Science between 1385 and 1388. A brief look at the programs, activities and results of establishing and expanding the “Interdisciplinary Higher Education” plan shows that the universities, Scientific Community, and even relevant staff of the Ministry of Science have been reluctant towards the plan. This approach is generally due to lack of conceptual quality and practical context, not being dependent to the requirements of the national Interdisdplinary environment, incompatible with the social and knowledge context, and specifically Studies in the Humanities due to preferring the Interdisciplinary education to research, unavailability of the 3 teacher-content, and unclear pattern of the Interdisciplinary education.Considering the origin and source of the idea of the Interdisciplinary knowledge, Abstract this paper tries to study the barriers which prevent moving from the Discipline- Based Education to the Interdisciplinary Education and Learning, in the context of expanding the frontiers of knowledge, new learning approaches and special emphasis on the experience of Iran. Then, two patterns of Discipline-Based Education and Interdisciplinary-Based Education will be compared and the features of the Interdisciplinary Education will be discussed. In the end, some plans for improving and changing the process of Interdisciplinary Education and the pattern of E-Learning and Web-Based Learning as a new and effective capacity for achieving the Interdisciplinary goals will be studied.

Responsibility of the universities for human capital development faced major difficulties to solve economic - social problems. Iranian graduates from the higher education in the present framework have not covered the needs of our idea logic society. This paper is explanatory one; aim to cover interdisciplinary studies as a solution to overcome the difficulties. Logical covering of interdisciplinary weight the aim of coherent among new experts, can help the economic structure of Iran- faced disequilibrium; to direct the country to improve productivity of social- political system.Openness, activation & reflexivity are three principal in higher education, which can help dynamic reactions. Integration of the present knowledge with the creation of new experts, changes the universities structure. These changes at the logical framework should bring confidence among new students for higher studies. Preparation of the society for reactions should increase productivity of social- political system, in order to support a strong economic structure.

Purpose, although literature has focused on explaining theoretical background in the area of interdisciplinary studies, a few empirical studies has paid attention to the main reasons of performing interdisciplinary projects. To fill the research gap, current study tries to identify challenges and motivations of interdisciplinary studies for researchers to participate in interdisciplinary projects. The main purposes of the research are: 1) identifying the challenges and motivations of interdisciplinary studies implying on interdisciplinary methodology, 2) determining the degree of importance of the above elements regarding interdisciplinary studies.Methodology, current study is an exploratory in terms of methodology, descriptive in terms of research design, and development in terms of purpose. This study employing an interdisciplinary team firstly investigated theoretical background and prior research on interdisciplinary studies, identified challenges and motivations of the studies. Secondly, a structured interview performed with five interdisciplinary researchers. To investigate the identified elements empirically, a self-administrated questionnaire was used based on the literature and interviews. The questionnaire was distributed among 64 researchers from different disciplines who had experienced interdisciplinary activities. Data was analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis, composite reliability, one-sample t-test, Friedman test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) using LISREL and SPSS. Results indicated that recognized motivations except for public learning and satisfying psychological needs, and identified challenges have considerable effect on performing interdisciplinary studies.

It is an important question “what does a translator do when he or she translates?” From one aspect, it seems that there is a direct relationship between translation and being interdiscipuiary. In this paper it would be argued that translation is an interdisciplinary action. Translators, when translating, do more than one task and engage in more than one discipline. So, it can be said that translation as an interdisciplinary enterprise refers to a historical context, in which we can regard it as the first historical knowledge which began with interdisciplinary approaches. One reason for this phenomenon is that translation has no specific subject; rather the translators when begin translating a work need to concentrate on a special theme; accordingly, translation as an action in every field is doing as an interdisciplinary.

The aim of this study is the introduction of a kind of integrative and interdisciplinary knowledge for university teaching. This kind of knowledge is a special integration of pedagogical knowledge and specific content knowledge which university teacher supposed to teach that and it is called pedagogical content knowledge(PCK). Although this knowledge is known as the most influential kind of teaching knowledge which could make the university teaching discourse more specific, the nature of that is vague in higher education curriculum. The reason of being vague is related to the interdisciplinarity nature of this kind of knowledge. This paper would anatomy this kind of knowledge which has an integrative nature. To this aim, the subject of mathematics has been selected as a case study. Data of this study have been collected through semi-structured interviews and observations from 27 of university mathematics teachers who were in a spectrum from beginner to the teachers with more than 30 years of experience. Data were analyzed through coding and making themes and resulted in a model with 4 main themes. This model makes a more discussable about this kind of knowledge an university teaching. Furthermore, it could make an appropriate framework for designing interdisciplinary fields of study which are the result of integration of two kinds of knowledge of pedagogy and specific field like mathematics and science.