Barriers to interdisciplinarity: disciplinary discourses and student learning

Interdisciplinary study is hard to achieve and to sustain. Students are faced with major challenges in working in and across several disciplines. These difficulties reflect both contrasting disciplinary cognitive structures and the distinctive cultures that have emerged in different disciplines. This paper draws on the work of Kolb and others to clarify some of these problems and to suggest ways of helping students to become more self-aware as learners and more capable of effecting these moves between disciplines.