‘A curriculum is not a concept; it is a cultural construction. That is, it is not an abstract concept which has some existence outside and prior to human experience. Rather, it is a way of organizing a set of human educational practices.’

Shirley Grundy

Before jumping immediately into heated discussions about the content of the programme, project or course, it can be helpful to stand back and take a look at how to run through the development stages. What can you roughly expect at each stage? What are the different tasks, questions and problems at each stage? Recognising these problems and tasks is essential in making the process work. This chapter gives an overview of all the stages, while the following chapters delve deeper into the different stages of curriculum design.

Starting with an interdisciplinary development team

Many innovation projects start by putting together a team based on their substantive knowledge and expertise. For developing an interdisciplinary programme, project or course, this usually means that faculty from different disciplines and departments are asked to join a development team. This requires a specific attitude, one in which disciplines can complement each other instead of being in competition with each other (as is sometimes the case when departments compete for research funding). For example, in the first meeting of a development team for a new Master's degree in Data Science, the computer science engineers claimed that all data science is computer science, which led to their domination of the meeting. There was hardly any dialogue between the various research communities at the table, and it took quite some time before members felt equally appreciated and comfortable within the team. In the end, they worked together to produce a challenging interdisciplinary programme.

Team members should display a willingness to see their discipline through the eyes of other disciplines. They must be comfortable with ambiguity and wary of absolutism. For this, collaborative and reflective skills are needed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to education will challenge the existing beliefs and values of faculty as well as students. Despite the growth of interdisciplinary studies, most academic staff members are still rooted in disciplines, usually surrounded by strong departmental boundaries.