Teaching Research Across Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity and Information Literacy

Abstract

Chapter 9 • • • • • • • • Teaching Research across Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity and Information Literacy Maralyn Jones The human mind does not think in disciplines. ~Renate Holub Introduction As this volume shows, interdisciplinarity is an increasingly large part of twenty-first-century universities at both the faculty and undergrad- uate levels. Researchers in fields from the sciences to the social scienc- es and the arts and humanities are making use of theories, methods, and sources from other fields to enrich their own understanding and to grapple with problems that are simply too complex to understand with the tools of a single discipline. 1 Beyond the explicitly interdisci- plinary fields such as area studies, ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, and environmental and resources studies, interdisciplinary approaches are used in such traditional disciplines as literature, his- tory, anthropology, political science, public policy, and public health. Interdisciplinary research is more challenging than researching in a single discipline because of the fragmentation of scholarly information and the difficulty of gaining sufficient understanding of the methods, tools, and theories of multiple disciplines. Librarians who provide re- search instruction for students doing interdisciplinary assignments need to develop a specific skill set for this work. This chapter is intended for librarians asking themselves, “How should I teach interdisciplinary re- search to maximize critical thinking and information literacy?” Theories of Interdisciplinary Research Definitions of Interdisciplinary Research A favorite activity of interdisciplinary scholars is attempting to define interdisciplinarity and to parse the different degrees of disciplinary in-

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