The call for interdisciplinary curriculum and research on environment
and development issues is familiar to the point of being a cliché,
nevertheless it remains largely an unfulfilled ambition, and a
fringe activity within the mainstream of universities worldwide.
There are many important reasons for this, including concerns
over the lack of rigor, as well as structural barriers such as
tenure and promotion criteria, external funding priorities, and
the intellectual and financial interests of discipline-based departments
within universities.
As with many of the concepts associated with sustainable development,
"interdisciplinary curriculum and research" can become
a slogan, thus masking the formidable philosophical, conceptual,
and institutional problems inherent to integrating disciplinary
theories and methods. Moreover, as a form of academic jargon,
it can also reduce the search for holistic or integrated understanding
to a set of technical problems that separate values, knowledge
and skills. In this sense, the term interdisciplinary could be
more of a problem than a solution.
While the notion of interdisciplinary knowledge and skills strikes
an intuitive chord with policy makers, faculty, researchers, and
students interested in solving environment and development problems,
it remains a confusing objective. To begin with, the language
is awkward and unclear. Interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary,
and transdisciplinary are often used interchangeably. For some,
the concept is constituted by collaboration between any two disciplines,
while for others it must integrate two classes of knowledge, such
as the sciences and humanities or biophysical and social sciences.
There are others still that advocate a transcendental-like notion
of interdisciplinarity which has its own experts and literature.
This linguistic confusion reflects a deeper set of conceptual
and organizational constraints to integrating islands of knowledge
and facts, and reconciling them with ingnorance and uncertainty.
These constraints relate in part to the question: Can disciplines
be integrated and remain disciplines? If the answer to that question
is no, then how far will the international academic community
pursue integration?
It also reflects a tension between professional standards of
legitimacy within academia and the relevance of curriculum and
research to social needs. Balancing the standard of rigor-often
assumed to be discipline-based and achievable only through application
of the scientific method-with that of relevance or utility in
improving quality of life by solving social problems that do not
conform to disciplinary models is difficult and contentious to
say the least. This tension goes right to the heart of the responsibilities
and mission of higher education in the search for sustainable
development.
Whatever else can be said of sustainable development, it is not
about knowledge for knowledge sake or the perpetuation of the
status quo. It is an ideal to be realized through purposeful intervention
into social processes to solve pressing problems and avoid future
ones. Even a cursory review of the emerging international regimes
linked to sustainable development, including Agenda 21 and the
Biodiversity and Climate Change conventions, makes clear the fact
that sustainable development contemplates nothing less than a
willful collective action to change the course of contemporary
history.
The recommendations resulting from the 1994 International Conference
on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo offer an important
example. By viewing population in an integrated way, the ICPD
Programme of Action articulates a goal of reforming the global
economy to serve social development and protection of the poor,
and in particular, women. This contrasts sharply with the goal
of achieving demographic targets through the distribution of contraceptive
services that has characterized earlier international approaches.
The international community moved from the pursuit of demographic
targets to global economic reform by recognizing the interdependence
of consumption, production patterns, economic development, demographics,
and ecosystem health. A narrow, but apparently manageable, technical
and quantitative focus was thus supplanted by a broad, apparently
unmanageable, qualitative, and political focus. While the broader
goal of subjugating the global economy to ethical guidelines clearly
relies on the availability of contraceptive services, its objective
of empowerment is markedly divergent to that of demographic targets.
In terms of higher education, it could be argued that our current
approach is designed to serve, and in fact spawned, the narrow
and apparently manageable technical ends and means approach of
dealing with population growth and environmental degradation.
The culture of specialization, in effect, abdicates if not eschews
any responsibility for constructing an ethical consensus across
the numerous political, institutional, cultural, and economic
boundaries that criss-cross the global economy.
Reflecting on the role of higher education, if we construe the
problem of environmental degradation as simply a matter of overpopulation,
then universities can produce specialists to devise technical
interventions aimed at achieving demographic targets. On the other
hand, if the problem is a culture of greed and institutionalized
environmental incompetence on an international scale, then higher
education's role is quite different.
Socially and ecologically responsive curricula and research do
not have to compromise the pursuit of knowledge. On the contrary,
successful examples demonstrate that by articulating a common
goal, specialized knowledge of many disciplines is contextualized,
and the whole person is engaged in the learning process-this is
sound pedagogy. What also emerges from these examples, is that
their objectives and outcomes are more accurately described as
"holistic" and "integrated" rather than "interdisciplinary."
Environmental literacy requires that we build bridges that connect
the individual disciplines and departments to the challenge of
defining and realizing sustainable development. If we assume that
the power of holistic thinking is that it makes clear how single
disciplines, and the professions they underpin, both aggravate
problems and contribute to their solution, then "interdisciplinary"
curriculum and research is an essential first step toward holistic
understanding. By ensuring that students clearly understand these
connections, they can build the ethical and technical skills to
contribute to sustainable development in their professional and
civic lives.
RETURN TO TOP
|
 |
