‘The thoughtful use of questions is the quintessential activity of an effective teacher.’

Jon Mills

Interdisciplinary understanding is one thing, but teaching it can be quite another. In this chapter we take a closer look at how interdisciplinary classes are managed in practice. We offer suggestions on how to teach and support your students in their development as interdisciplinary scientists and/or professionals. The chapter starts with the most important prerequisites for interdisciplinary classes. We then go on to discuss how to teach the most important skills for interdisciplinary understanding, namely, reflective functioning, collaboration and critical thinking. The chapter ends with a case study of teaching an interdisciplinary capstone project.

Important prerequisites for interdisciplinary classes

As stated before, the success of interdisciplinary classes rests on fostering an environment in which team collaboration can flourish. Important factors that can lead to effective classroom experiences include mutual confidence and trust between teachers and students, matching perceptions about learning between teachers and students and among students themselves, and a feeling of self-efficacy. Creating a safe learning environment, having the right mindset, and getting students to communicate with each other are vital prerequisites for interdisciplinary classes.

Create a safe learning environment

Learning requires many things of the student. It requires openness to new experiences and new ways of thinking. It involves putting themselves in situations they have not experienced before and connecting with unfamiliar learning material or people. It also calls for students to be open to the possibility of discovering they are not as competent, smart or capable as they had hoped. We may say that learning in general can be risky. This holds especially true when taking an interdisciplinary approach. These new situations require students to seek out perspectives they may find uncomfortable, to reflect on the weaknesses of perspectives they favour, and to find the useful kernels of truth in perspectives they dislike. It does not merely ask students to tolerate those perspectives; rather, it asks them to embrace (albeit critically and partially) those perspectives. By challenging the sometimes unquestioned embrace of disciplinarity as default doctrine, students eventually realise that learning in an interdisciplinary course, project or programme can challenge their own beliefs. It precipitates a strong sense of critical thinking towards not only students’ beliefs but ultimately their own identities.