Abstract
This chapter discusses a practising educator’s experience with the theme-based model for interdisciplinary education that underpins the curriculum at Amsterdam University College (AUC), a liberal arts and sciences undergraduate college in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Drawing on the author’s contribution to the “Cities and Cultures” themed programme at this college – one of the six themed programmes which it currently runs – its concern is with how theme-based teaching may enable students’ interdisciplinary learning. More specifically, the chapter aims to show how students’ interdisciplinary skills can be honed through a critical and participatory pedagogy that promotes cross-disciplinary dialogue and interaction as well as reflective awareness of disciplinary boundaries and predilections. A programme built around a larger theme functions as a productive setting for such an approach, or so this chapter argues, to the extent that it enables “conversations” between disciplines – theoretically, methodologically, and conceptually – in which students’ various disciplinary interests and identifications are simultaneously recognized and challenged.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In emphasizing the relevance of interdisciplinary pedagogy for citizenship skills, this chapter is broadly in alignment with educational thinking in the American pragmatist tradition (Nussbaum, 1997; Redaelli, 2015; Roth, 2014). It is also informed by the notable turn towards thinking about citizenship and education in Europe at this point (Laker, Naval, & Mrnjaus, 2014).
- 2.
- 3.
For purposes of delimitation and coherency, the discussion here shall focus on theme courses; AUC’s Big Questions courses are discussed elsewhere (Klein Bog & van der Wende, 2016).
- 4.
The most elaborate articulation of AUC’s interdisciplinary curricular vision is to be found in the Faculty Handbook, especially in Sect. 2.3 (Amsterdam University College, 2015).
- 5.
- 6.
The point about primary and secondary aims or functions is all the more pertinent if one considers that a designated citizenship and values course, which makes citizenship skills the primary learning objective, easily induces resistance on the part of segments of the student public, e.g. for reasons to do with its programmatic character. For a case study that would seem to support the point in reference to a teaching experiment at AUC, see Bal, Grassiani, & Kirk, 2014.
- 7.
- 8.
Specifically, the project referred to here was a Principal Educatorship which ran from 2013 to 2015. It focused on the development of the “Cultural Memory Studies” course in the “Cities and Cultures” programme context, with specific attention for strengthening links between the Humanities and the theoretical Social Sciences in students’ learning experience at AUC.
- 9.
It deserves to be stressed here that in contrast to American programmes, European undergraduate programmes (like their equivalents in the UK) traditionally are substantially more specialized. Although this has been shifting for some time now, both in liberal arts and sciences colleges and at the comprehensive universities – in the Netherlands and elsewhere on the continent − the assumption of disciplinary specialization continues to be deeply rooted: both on the part of faculty and on the part of students and those who fund them, such as parents. LAS colleges wishing to realize interdisciplinarity thus always work practically in a kind of tension with monodisciplinary assumptions and expectations.
- 10.
- 11.
This passage draws on Redaelli (2015), especially pp. 340–341.
- 12.
Quotes from the course evaluations of the Spring 2016 and Fall 2016 versions of the “Cultural Memory Studies” course.
References
Amsterdam University College (AUC). (2015). Faculty handbook 2015–2016 (internal document).
Anderson, A. (2006). The way we argue now: A study in the cultures of theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bal, E., Grassiani, E., & Kirk, K. (2014). Neoliberal individualism in Dutch universities: Teaching and learning anthropology in an insecure environment. Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 46–72.
Brookfield, S. D., & Preskill, S. (2005). Discussion as a way of teaching: Tools and techniques for democratic classrooms (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
de Greef, L., Post, G., Vink, C., & Wenting, L. (Eds.). (2017). Designing interdisciplinary education: A practical handbook for university teachers. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Frodeman, R. (Ed.). (2010). The Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Germano, W. P. (1999). Why interdisciplinarity isn’t enough. In M. Bal (Ed.), The practice of cultural analysis: Exposing interdisciplinary interpretation (pp. 327–334). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hirsch, M., & Kacandes, I. (Eds.). (2004). Teaching the representation of the Holocaust. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
Klein, J. T. (2010). A taxonomy of interdisciplinarity. In R. Frodeman (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity (pp. 15–30). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Klein Bog, D., & van der Wende, M. C. (2016). Liberal arts and sciences education for the 21st century knowledge economy: A case study of Amsterdam University College, The Netherlands. In I. Jung, M. Nishimura, & T. Sasao (Eds.), Liberal arts education and colleges in East Asia: Possibilities and challenges in the global age (pp. 113–124). Singapore, Singapore: Springer.
Laker, J., Naval, C., & Mrnjaus, K. (Eds.). (2014). Citizenship, democracy and higher education in Europe, Canada, and the USA. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lattuca, L. R. (2001). Creating interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary research and teaching among college and university faculty. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Moran, J. (2002). Interdisciplinarity. London/New York: Routledge.
Newell, W. H. (1994). Designing interdisciplinary courses. In J. T. Klein & W. G. Doty (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies today (pp. 35–51). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Redaelli, E. (2015). Educating for participation: Democratic life and performative learning. The Journal of General Education, 64(4), 334–353.
Roth, M. S. (2014). Beyond the university: Why liberal education matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Small, H. (2013). The value of the humanities. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
van der Wende, M. C. (2011). The emergence of liberal arts and sciences education in Europe: A comparative perspective. Higher Education Policy, 24(2), 233–253.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
de Waard, M. (2019). Theme-Based Teaching and Interdisciplinary Learning: A Case Study at Amsterdam University College, the Netherlands. In: Nishimura, M., Sasao, T. (eds) Doing Liberal Arts Education. Education Innovation Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2877-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2877-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-2876-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-2877-0
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)