Using Discourse Analysis to Study a Cross-Disciplinary Learning Community: Insights from an IGERT Training Program

Journal of Engineering Education, Apr 2007 by Anthony, Linda J, Palius, Marjory F, Maher, Carolyn A, Moghe, Prabhas V

ABSTRACT

A major challenge for fostering integrative cross-disciplinary collaborations at the graduate level arises from the divergent exposure and training of students from uni-disciplinary graduate programs. In this report, we present the design and preliminary analysis of an experimental forum to facilitate cross-disciplinary discourse within a NSF-sponsored Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program (IGERT) at Rutgers. This forum brings together IGERT Graduate Training Fellows and faculty from four diverse graduate programs in the engineering area and four related programs in life sciences and physical sciences for structured seminars and interchanges. Our report offers methodological and analytical tools grounded within a conceptual framework for promoting discourse that integrates content across diverse disciplines as well as across levels of inquiry. Both the theoretical framework and the research took may be valuable to others seeking to develop integrative training environments for coalescing learning communities between engineers and their collaborators.

Keywords: IGERT, cross-disciplinary learning communities

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Overview

Current thinking about education in science and technology for the twenty-first century emphasizes the increasingly cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of research [1-4] and the importance of learning communities that foster both peer-to-peer and peer-to-expert discourse [5]. The former is the impetus for major initiatives such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program1. The latter is the subject of a body of research about discourse-based approach to cognition that provides a theoretical framework for analyzing how facilitated discourse supports learning. In emerging interdisciplinary graduate learning communities, such as established under programs such as IGERT, the challenge is to design studies that measure how facilitated discourse might foster learning across disciplines.

Prior studies of discourse-based learning communities have focused primarily on uni-disciplinary contexts and pre-college education [6-9] as well as on professional degrees, such as the MD [10]. There are several ways in which these educational settings differ from graduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in general and from IGERT programs in particular. First, whereas both pre-college and postbaccalaureate professional programs are typically built around a well-defined curriculum delivered in defined sets of courses and group practicuums, doctoral graduate education in science and engineering is much more research/experientially based and also individualistic (i.e., fewer required courses, usually completed within first two or three semesters; remaining time devoted primarily to thesis research). second, in uni-disciplinary settings, the focus of the learning community is essentially homogeneous (i.e., the subject matter, terminology, methodology, norms, culture, and so forth, are held in common within the community). In contrast, in IGERT programs and other cross-disciplinary environments, graduate students are acquiring knowledge not only in the core-discipline of their home graduate program (similar to what occurs in uni-disciplinary contexts), but also in disciplines they are exploring as part of their cross-disciplinary research and in disciplines even farther from their own field of research.

Our research focuses on developing and studying discoursebased approaches to cognition that address these unique attributes of graduate doctoral education in STEM fields (e.g., research-centric and increasingly interdisciplinary). We have designed, developed, and deployed an experimental forum that brings together doctoral graduate students and faculty from four diverse graduate programs in the engineering area and four related programs in life sciences and physical sciences for structured seminars and interchanges to facilitate discourse and learning. This forum, which we call the IGERT Research Interchange Forum (IRIF), is an integral part of the NSF IGERT program on "Integratively Engineered Biointerfaces" at Rutgers University. The design and implementation of the IRIF, together with the research reported here, is done in collaboration with colleagues at the Robert B. Davis Institute of Learning of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, who have developed a body of longitudinal research in the field of middle school and high school mathematics education [11], as well as best practices in the education of mathematics doctoral students [12].

B. The Rutgers IGERT Program

The Rutgers IGERT program on Integratively Engineered Biointerfaces is one of approximately 125 IGERT programs supported by the NSF since the program's inception in 1997. Prior research supporting IGERTs mission to "catalyze cultural change in graduate education in STEM fields" includes reports of curriculum development [13,14] and formative and summative assessments of some of the first-funded IGERT programs [15,16].