Reflections on Designing a Biology/Humanities Interdisciplinary Module.
2013
This paper uses the reflections of a recent workshop on biology and the humanities subject
areas to consider the potential for designing a first year interdisciplinary module that brings
together teachers and learners in the Biosciences with their counterparts in English and
History. It considers three building blocks of module design: aims and objectives; teaching
and learning strategies; and assessment; and provides a commentary on the discussion of
interdisciplinarity in the broader literature. The authors argue that interdisciplinary teaching
and learning must be transformative, but not in the way many previous advocates of
interdisciplinarity have assumed. Rather than transcending disciplines, the authors contend
that the aim should be to enhance disciplinary understanding. Learners should emerge
from the interdisciplinary module not having lost their identity as biologists, but having
enhanced it. They should have become ‘better’ biologists in the sense of having developed
a broader, critical understanding of the precepts of their discipline, as a first step to an
understanding of biology inflected with a literary and historical awareness.
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