Why Should You Teach An Interdisciplinary Course?
In this Kosmos podcast, I speak with Dr. Jason King, assistant professor of theology at St. Vincent's College, about why you should teach an interdisciplinary course, and how it can benefit both you and the students.
Jeanne Hoffman: Welcome to this Kosmos Online Podcast. I’m Jeanne Hoffman. My guest today is Dr. Jason King, assistant professor of theology at St. Vincent’s College who is joining us to talk about the benefits of interdisciplinary teaching. Welcome Dr. King and thanks for being on our podcast.
Dr. King: Thanks for having me.
JH: What are some of the benefits to you as a scholar from interdisciplinary teaching?
Dr. King: There’s a bunch of things. I think as a teacher, especially going to graduate school, you’re trained in a particular mode or way of thinking and you’re attentive to certain specific kinds of sources. And you really need to do that in order to learn the craft. But of course the limits of that, the dangers of that is you get a very narrow way of thinking and you don’t sort of consider other ideas. This engaging in other kinds of disciplines, I think it helps you do a bunch of things.
One, other disciplines think a little bit differently than you do and your discipline does so it shifts your way of thinking. Of course this helps you to rethink problems, rethink issues, rethink text, or maybe not rethink is not the right word but expand your understanding of it and I think that’s really at the end of the day when you’re looking at different material, different text, different problems, different issues, the interdisciplinary stuff just broadens your understanding and deepens your understanding of what’s going on there. And it’s that sort of delicate balance. I see you really need the training in your own discipline but you also can’t sort of just stay in that sort of narrow focus, you need to expand it and look at that. And so that, at least as a scholar that’s very helpful and of course, it’s a benefit for teaching. If it’s helping me do this, then only helps our students to do the same kind of things, to expand their understanding and help them both broaden their understanding but also to understand what they are doing in their own specific field of study.
JH: Okay, so I understand the benefits, but how did you learn enough about the other disciplines to feel comfortable teaching them in your classroom?
Dr. King: Yeah, this is a good one. Sometimes you don’t even feel qualified enough to teach your own discipline. But I went to a small liberal arts school in Kentucky and I had – I was a math major, I worked in the computer science lab. I picked up a philosophy major. We had a huge core curriculum, just enormous. We had public lectures that we were required to attend. And so I really had this really rich background. And of course after I majored in mathematics and computer science I went on to study theology. Just the logical leap and so I continued to – like you keep on expanding into different areas. And really what it was, I was just curious about a bunch of things and so I would read a bunch of stuff and then I’m surrounded in a college environment around a bunch of people that are really experts in the field and so I would sit down and talk to them. What should I read? What do you think about this kind of problem?
And so for me I started to feel comfortable teaching it, really from two things. One was the really friendships I developed with my colleagues around here asking them what do they think about this or if I had read something ask them to help clarify it, asking them if I understood it and they really helped me to feel a little bit more confident about the subject. And I also I think approached both my friendships and even the material that I introduce in class with a sense of humility. This is – here’s what I think I know, and let’s sort of put this out here. I think it’s important to know and understand but I also realize that I don’t know everything about this field and also that I’m coming at it from the perspective on my own training.
So I think both that sort of friendship, that curiosity really drives you to really read as much as you can and the humility that comes with. I will say I did have two teachers. One in grad school and one in undergraduate and they just told me, just read everything and get your hands on. And so I really took that advice to heart, and that really and I think the more you read the more comfortable you feel teaching about it. And even the more comfortable you feel teaching about it, the more willing you are to admit your limitations and so ask for more knowledge and more understanding, so I think those two things, that curiosity and humility and really that friendship of people helping you to understand a little bit more. All those things come together to make you feel comfortable with it.
JH: Do you ever feel that introducing these other disciplines cuts back on being able to teach your own area of study? Or do you worry that students aren’t learning your area deeply enough from the course?
Dr. King: Yeah, you know I don’t. I feel like I probably should, but two things I think really make me not worry about that too much. One is intrinsic to my discipline and one I think is intrinsic to teaching. Intrinsic to my discipline: the whole idea of theology used to be considered the queen of the sciences. I know it’s not now, but the idea behind it was that knowledge was related to one another, and that back in the middle ages theology was understood to be the discipline that relates one thing to another. At least now as I look at theology, it helps me to make all of these connections between different kinds of disciplines. I understand stuff more.
So when you talk about theology and Jesus talks about you need to be attentive to the poor. It seems like well, you’ve got to know something about economics, and so you start reading those things and it pushes you in those directions. Or you know, love your neighbor, you have to figure out who your neighbor is so it drives you maybe into psychology or sociology, so there is something that enriches my own discipline by looking into those other disciplines. I don’t ever feel like it cuts away from what I need to be studying, but seems to enrich it, but that’s sort of intrinsic to the way I understand what I’m doing.
But extrinsic, if you look I think at learning, if you keep throwing so much information at them, they don’t pick it up. They only pick up so many bits and pieces of information. And so I’ve been over the course of years been scaling back the amount, the number of readings I should say, not necessarily page numbers or how much you have to write, but the number of different assignments and trying to sort of delve in depth to a fewer number of issues. Being able to do that and sort of cutting back in general helps you to delve more deeply into it and then draw that extra material in, I think just makes it even more sticky I guess would be the word. It makes students grasp onto it more because you don’t have 45 issues you’re trying to remember, you have 7 issues that you’re trying to remember. And yet in those 7 issues there’s a lot of depth to them, they’re easier to sort of connect, you can walk them together because they hang together pretty well. So again, I feel like I should have a problem with that but because of the discipline I think it just sort of helps out, teaching in a more limited number of topics.
JH: So when you have interdisciplinary course, students from different disciplines tend to be attracted to that. What are some of the challenges of having such a varied student body in your classroom?
Dr. King: Yeah, it’s tough. This is a chronic problem for me. I teach theology so a lot of my students will come from the core and so they’ll have a variety of different knowledges. I mean people from elementary ed will know something totally different from people in the fine arts, something totally different from people in psychology, something totally different from people in math and economics or management and marketing. It’s hard to address all of those disciplines when you don’t have a common base of knowledge to rely on. So I think that’s part of it.
When you’re drawing them into the material I keep trying to come back to them and ask them to think about the issue sometimes from their own discipline. I think this helps to get them to think about two things: it helps them to think about what they’re doing, but also it makes them aware that other people are doing things a little bit differently, or thinking about different kinds of issues, issues that might be affecting a sociologist or an elementary ed person are not what the economist or the mathematician, are not the same issues that are on the forefront of their mind. But if they start to get into that and understand that, the conversation helps. I think it's hard for the students, I think the real difficulty for me is getting students to recognize some of these different sorts of backgrounds and the way that they’re thinking about those issues. And as a result it's hard for them to think about what they’re doing in their own disciplines, and that I think is sort of a challenge, that sort of broadening. For me its making a more liberal mind, a mind that’s sort of more open to ideas rather than one that is just sort of narrowly determined by what they learned their sophomore year in college.
I think that challenge though is to get that broader perspective, they’re more comfortable in their narrow disciplines, they’re more comfortable in what they’ve been studying and to sort of think out bigger and broader is just always challenging for them. Even when I bring stuff from their own discipline into the classroom it’s very hard for them at times because they feel like they know the discipline and so to get them to think or re-think or expand their knowledge from a class that’s not necessarily in their discipline, that’s sometimes hard for them. They have to trust that I know what I’m talking about, so I guess that’s part of the challenges.
JH: So what are some of the hot areas right now that are conducive to interdisciplinary teaching?
Dr. King: This is good, I don’t know what is hot in general. I know sort of what’s interesting, hot in my subject. I know theology and economics is very important, given the whole economic crisis of a few years ago, it’s roles, how economics sort of helped that sort of cross-disciplinary stuff, understanding how it works, why it works, what works, what’s doesn’t work, what is good, the values that are embedded in direct free markets, that’s definitely sort of a field of growing interest.
I think too, politics is such in the front of people’s minds and politics as the result of the upcoming elections, politics also as a result of the bailouts that happened a few years ago, people are interested in that. It is the nature of politics, how does religion factor into this, I think that’s a topic too because for a long time people sort of thought religion was fading away and then it keeps coming back. People are trying to figure out, well why is this and if it’s here to stay, how, does this affect our economics, how does it affect our politics. These are the two areas I’ve seen where that cross-disciplinary stuff has happened. It’s hard for me to know what’s going on outside of my discipline, even here talking to other colleagues, trying to interdisciplinary stuff, it’s hard to keep track of everything that’s going on.
JH: So the faculty in the other departments, do they ever perceive you as intruding on their turf?
Dr. King: I could totally see how this would happen. Definitely you get territory wars all the time. I have not, I have been fortunate enough for it not to happen here. I can’t figure out why it hasn’t happened here because I keep anticipating it to happen. People definitely feel like if you’re talking about a discipline other than your own you don’t know what you’re talking about. So maybe it’s that the Benedictines here have been very committed and the faculty for a long time has been very committed to a kind of liberal arts education, so they’re a little bit more comfortable I think with those kinds of crossings of boundaries.
Two I think, at least for me I haven’t had problems because I usually try to talk to people. So if I'm going to do some literature in my course I’ll talk to some of my friends and colleagues in the English department. I’ve got one or two good friends over in the economics department, so if I’m doing theology and economics I can go talk to them about some of the things I’ve been reading, what they think about it. And so when I’m doing that there’s not a lot of my colleagues that have a suspicion about what I might be doing or that I might be sort of stepping into their field of interest. And I'm also willing, if people challenge me, I’m also willing to examine if I made mistake, if I’m not being fair to what's going on.
For me at least, and I think a lot of the people here, you’ve got sort of well established cultural liberal arts here, there are people open to those cross-disciplines and I’ve been very intentional about making sure I’m in contact with people from different disciplines so that they’re not suspicious about what I’m doing. I think if you don’t have those two things people can be very suspicious. And I think at bigger institutions especially where its harder to get to know people, I think that boundary issues, crossing boundaries and crossing disciplines can be very contentious. If you add it to budget issues it’s even more so.
JH: So for our listeners, if one of them wanted to propose an interdisciplinary class how should they go about that?
Dr. King: I think there are three factors that go into this. Usually institutions have a policy for introducing courses and they vary wildly from one college to the next and so one of the things to be aware of is how do you get courses into catalog, how do you get courses offered. Make sure you know that process, because if you don’t follow the process, even if you have a great idea people will stick it to you for not dotting all your I’s and crossing all your T’s. The first place I worked at you went to the schools and to the school’s dean. The second place I worked with you went through the chair and then you went to a faculty wide committee, and here at St. Vincent's you go just directly to the chair and nobody else has a say in it. And sometimes there’s a lot of oversight and sometimes there’s not, but make sure you’re aware of those institutional pieces; I think that’s the first one.
The second thing is harder to figure out. You’ve got to figure out the history of a place. And I say this because you can follow the process to a T and still get in trouble, there are sort of landmines; people are carrying grudges from 20 years ago and they’re going to use you or use this idea to fight a battle they’ve been fighting for 20 years. So you’ve got to be aware of the history of the place. Are people going to receive this idea as a good idea, are people going to receive this idea as a threat, who is going to oppose it, why are they going to oppose it, does it have anything to do really with you as a person, or your proposal, is it really because they don’t like your colleague in your department or they didn’t like the colleague before you? It's really important to know the history of the place, know the lay of the land, like a map of the place. I mentioned this earlier, here they have a longstanding tradition of liberal arts so they’re much more comfortable with crossing those boundaries so it's easier to get those things down. But at other institutions, two of the previous ones I’ve worked at there’s some really serious battles going on over about 20 years so it was really impossible to offer any new courses much less interdisciplinary courses because everything was sort of considered to be an assault. So you’ve really got to know the history of a place and what’s going on there to get that stuff through.
The other things is, so you’ve got to know the institutional process, sort of the history of the place, and another thing I’d say is if you want to go about getting a class in there, go talk to your colleagues. See if they have any ideas, see if they have any recommendations, especially one if you’re looking to cross a particular discipline, talk to people in there. I find that if you’re honest and straightforward with people, like everything’s sort of above board, everything’s sort of straightforward, they can ask you questions, then it’s easy to get stuff through because people aren’t suspicious of you. So I’d go to talk to people. Go talk to people sort of beforehand, informally, if you ask specific questions you can talk to them beforehand. I would just sort of talk to people and get advice so that people sort of know the idea, it’s circulating around before you sort of go along in the process.
But those are the three things. You’ve got to know the institution; you’ve got to know the history of the place, and then get to know your other colleagues to sort of help you out. And if those things go then I think there are a lot of people who really want to encourage you to do good stuff, do interdisciplinary stuff, expanding people’s thinking beyond their own narrow confines of their discipline. All of those things I think work, and if that’s really what you want to do that’s what I would sort of say. And some of those might be very easy problems to solve but some of those might be very difficult problems to solve but you’ve got to figure out how to solve all of those three.
JH: Well thanks so much for joining us Dr. King.
Dr. King: Thank you very much, thanks for the conversation and the questions.
JH: And for more interviews on teaching advice visit kosmosonline.org. Providing career advice and intellectual resources to academics, and this is Jeanne Hoffman, signing off.
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