Tools for Transformation
Funded Proposals
College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Office, Social Sciences Division
Faculty members in the social sciences will develop and team-teach new interdisciplinary core courses focussing on conceptual and methodological questions as they relate to substantive issues in the social sciences. Each of the three new courses will be thematically based and involve students in inquiry-based learning at the introductory level. Students will study different methods of data collection and levels of analysis that are embedded in different disciplinary approaches. A new rubric "Social Sciences 200" has been created, and the first new course, The Family: Social Science Perspectives, is being taught spring quarter 2000 by an economist, a psychologist and a sociologist.
In September 2000, the College will sponsor a one-day retreat for faculty members interested in developing or teaching interdisciplinary social science courses. The teaching and assessment team for the pilot course will present results from evaluation of the course to interested faculty members. The College will then issue a call for proposals for interdisciplinary courses from social science faculty. One proposal will be chosen for development in year two of the project; and one for year three. Each of the three new courses will be taught for three years; and one new course developed each year to replace the one that is cycling out. In this manner, many faculty members from different departments will have the opportunity to teach in an interdisciplinary format.
| Contact: |
Paul LePore
Director, Curriculum Transformation Project, Dean's Office, Arts & Sciences leporepc@u.washington.edu |
| Allocation: | $193,753 |
| Date Funded: | March 2000 |
In 1999, The College of Arts & Sciences received a grant from the Tools for Transformation Initiative for faculty members in the social sciences to develop and team-teach new interdisciplinary core courses. These courses introduce freshmen and sophomores to inquiry-based learning and methods of data collection and analysis in different disciplinary perspectives. Faculty members use central issues and concepts in the social sciences to illustrate the value of both disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. The grant funds the development of three new courses. The College will maintain three interdisciplinary course offerings on a regular basis, cycling in new courses as needed to replace those developed with grant funding.
Course Development:
Two courses have been developed: SOC SCI 200 The Family, Social Science
Perspectives; and SOC SCI 201 Human Rights, Global Concerns, Local Struggles. The
first course, The Family: Social Science Perspectives, was taught spring quarter
2000 by Dr. Ana Mari Cauce (psychologist), Dr. Julie Brines (sociologist), and Dr.
Shelly Lundberg (economist). It has been revised and will be taught by Drs. Cauce
and Brines winter quarter 2001 (Dr. Lundberg is on sabbatical.) The course has been
approved by the College Curriculum Committee, which also approved the new rubric SOC
SCI, administered by the Dean's Office for all future interdisciplinary social
science courses.
The second course is being developed by Dr. Eugene Hunn (anthropologist), Dr. Lucy Jarosz (geographer) and Dr. Karen Litfin (political science). They will offer it spring 2001.
A call for a final course to be developed under the Tools for Transformation grant will be issued in January 2001. Members of the first two teaching teams presented a seminar on their course experiences for interested faculty members in November. There are several course ideas under development that will be submitted for funding.
Preliminary Results:
An assessment team composed of Dr. Betty Schmitz (project director), Dr. Rick Roth
(Geography) and three undergraduate majors, Zahra Karmali (Sociology), Jennifer Shea
(Psychology), Adam Topkis (Economics) used a variety of methods to assess the impact
of the course on the family. The undergraduate majors observed all meetings of the
course to document use of disciplinary and interdisciplinary content. They noted
examples of mingling of interdisciplinary perspectives to elucidate topics;
connections made by faculty members across disciplines to explain concepts; use of
different disciplinary arguments; and syntheses of different disciplinary
perspectives. Professor Rick Roth and Project Director Betty Schmitz conducted a
post-course interview with faculty members and teaching assistants to ascertain
their perspective on the success of their use of interdisciplinary perspectives;
their satisfaction with the course; and their analysis of how this course differs
from disciplinary-based courses. To measure interdisciplinary learning by students,
the assessment team collected and analyzed: 1) a pre- and post-test case study; 2) a
mid-term exam essay question; and a final exam essay question.
As planning progressed, the team began to see how they could interrelate their perspectives more closely. They defined what they meant by the term interdisciplinary as the purposeful connecting and synthesis of perspectives of the disciplines of economics, psychology and sociology to elucidate the study of the topic of family.
The course met twice each week for 80 minutes. Depending on the topic, one faculty member would present the first lecture on a topic from their disciplinary perspective. In the second weekly lecture, the two other faculty members would comment on the topic from their perspectives and make comparisons, so that each topic was analyzed from the three points of view. As an example, when teaching the unit on Dating and Mating, Cauce concentrated on personal attributes of partners and why people choose the mates they do; Brines presented historical and social phenomena that have constrained and facilitated dating and mating; and Lundberg presented an economic model for selection of the best mate. The faculty team modeled argumentation skills by explicitly noting the limitations of data and by demonstrating competing theories and how to select those that are the most convincing. For example, in the study of fertility, Brines presented concepts of period and cohort to explain historical patterns and taught students how to select the compelling argument. Also in the second weekly lecture and in review sessions, faculty members synthesized what is known about a given topic by drawing upon all three perspectives. In this manner, they emphasized the explanatory value of each perspective in accounting for family trends and behavior, and the limitations of each perspective to provide a full view.
These learning goals fit well with the second notion of perspective that the faculty members wished to introduce-a research perspective. In the introductory lecture, Cauce told the students, "you'll be learning how the best minds in the field approach the study of families" and how we know what we know about families. In addition to the textbook, articles on new research on the family were assigned weekly. The weekly two-hour laboratory sections were used primarily for introduction to basic social sciences methods, including how to use large-scale data sets on the web, how to write a research paper using scholarly sources, how to identify variables and use SSPS to analyze data, and do a cross-tabular analysis of a family phenomena.
Both the interdisciplinary perspective and the research perspective are unusual learning outcomes for introductory-level social sciences courses, and faculty members commented repeatedly in their exit interview how hard it was to teach this way. Lundberg pointed out that true interdisciplinary work requires a deep understanding of each perspective, something that is very difficult for students to follow. But just the notion of disciplinary perspective, which students did learn, as will be discussed below, is an important outcome for an introductory course. Brines felt that in teaching this course she was constantly operating on three levels of abstraction: the level of content on the family (what do we mean by family), the level of her own disciplinary approach (what is sociology of the family) and the interrelationship among the disciplines (what do mean by family as seen through multiple lenses). The goal of the course was to get students to see the value in all three perspectives.
At the same time, the faculty members were very conscious of bringing themselves not just as teachers, but also as researchers, into the classroom. They walked students through analyses to demonstrate knowledge construction, using examples from their own research and other primary research articles that were assigned in class. They also demonstrated how to use research to back up claims or arguments, a learning goal that was reinforced in laboratory work and through writing a research paper.
The pre-post course scenario designed to test student mastery of interdisciplinary problem-solving was inconclusive. The scenario presented dilemmas associated with a dual career couple with children deciding whether to move for one member of the couple to take a new job. It was hoped that the students would demonstrate more sophisticated reasoning based on new knowledge of economic, psychological and sociological ramifications of decisions. There were no statistically significant gains. The student researchers noted the responses were much more hurried and sketchy in the post-test. This may have been due to the fact that the pre-test was done as an assignment on the second day of class, when students are eager to please, and that the post-test was done at the end of the final exam, as an extra credit question.
Cauce and Brines will attempt a better measure of student learning in the second round of teaching this course in Winter 2001.
On the written evaluations, the students overwhelmingly agreed that that the course was intellectually stimulating, especially the thought provoking questions viewed from different disciplinary perspectives. Nearly all students commented that the three perspectives on family, and one-third of the students said that the lectures contributed most to their learning. Many students felt the course was confusing and instructors "jumped around" and went too fast.
The student researchers made these suggestions for improvements: Key concepts could be summarized for every week's topic; the professors or TA's could make connections among disciplines more explicitly, and faculty members could turn class exercises into take home assignments on which students spend more time to synthesize and apply interdisciplinary concepts.
Barriers to and Advantages of Interdisciplinary Teaching:
The faculty members were extremely satisfied with the family course. They all felt
that they had gained important insights on the explanatory strengths and limitations
of their disciplines. They remarked that their teaching and research in their
disciplines would be enhanced in the future based on the knowledge they gained about
the other disciplines. One of the greatest advantages to interdisciplinary teaching
for faculty members is the formation of intellectual community with scholars of
divergent points of view. Presenting current debates in the literature and among
research methods can be very intellectually stimulating for students, teaching them
how to weigh evidence and make judgments as to the best argument for and against a
point of view. However, faculty members kept debate to a minimum in this class,
designed for the 200-level. They assumed that students could not fully appreciate
interdisciplinarity before they are disciplinary.
As the student researchers noted, student responses on exams and in papers did not
meld perspectives so much as identify which ones were in play in arguments.
The teaching teams for both courses encountered several difficulties in planning the courses. Both teams had difficulty narrowing down the content they wished to teach. Planning becomes a series of negotiations about which topics to teach and how to teach them. The team for the family course assigned too much reading and tried to cover too many topics in the first round. They have reduced both the topics and the readings for the second round. As a result of meetings between the teams, the second team has reduced its syllabus significantly before the first offering. It is important to emphasize that the goal of the courses is not coverage of content but teaching students to think in specific ways about content.
Attracting appropriate students to the courses is difficult. Only one student in the family course mentioned taking the course for a general introduction to social science fields. This problem can be remedied with proper advertising of the courses and their goals to advisors and students. We plan an article in Arts & Sciences Perspectives in the spring. When the campus is better informed about the courses, it is likely that these courses may be used to fulfill requirements in other schools. A faculty member from Nursing who attended the seminar mentioned that the family course would be ideal as a requirement for their majors. The human rights course is being proposed for the new, tri-campus minor. Hence, some of these course topics may become permanent as well.
There are challenges from the administrative point of view. Departments raise concerns about not scheduling courses normally taught by the faculty member. These courses are listed under a new rubric, SOC SCI, and are not cross-listed with departments, since the departments will change as faculty members rotate in courses. In order to avoid issues with faculty load, all the student credit hours for the courses are being counted for each faculty member. These courses could not have been started with out the incentive of the Tools for Transformation project grant, which enabled senior faculty members to receive support for the planning and pilot teaching.
Tools for Transformation
Funded Proposals
