All opinions expressed in Paul's blogs are solely his own. They do not represent the opinions of his employers and/or associates.

Strange New Worlds

/

Bridges Over Perceived Disciplinary Demarcations

This is an adaptation of my M.A. Defense. The video of the original defense presentation is provided at the end of this post.

When I was in seventh grade, I set out to write a science fiction novel. I was convinced that a good science fiction novel needed technology based on plausible science, so I began learning about physics in my free time. Among other results, writing this novel led me to try and understand Einsteinian physics when I was failing a class that asked, at most, for a basic understanding of Newtonian physics. I was grasping at science beyond my grade level (and comprehension), but it was all because of my love of the language arts.

I eventually scrapped that novel, but my love of science fiction still motivated me to learn in my free time. In high school, I continued being a mediocre student; I often worked on my own projects instead of my course work. Starting in 10th grade, I got particularly interested in an esoteric Japanese science fiction cartoon: an anime called Neon Genesis Evangelion. This series has dense (and nearly inaccessible) symbolism, which borrows from a variety of religious and psychological traditions. I ultimately wrote a 26,000 word paper unpacking all the layers of symbolism, and doing so sparked my passion for academic writing.

Wanting to write a novel began my love of learning for its own sake. Analyzing a science fiction anime gave me a passion for literary criticism and academic writing. My lasting goal of writing a science fiction novel persuaded me to enroll in college. Writing my sci-fi novel led me to learn about science and writing the analytical paper led me to learn about psychology and theology.

And yet, all of these connections and passions went all but unused in my undergraduate program. No one – not me, not my peers, and not my instructors – benefited from the exclusion and stagnation of my passions. Most of my undergraduate education in English had to happen in isolation from other disciplines and in isolation from my untraditional passions.

But I don’t really believe that my instructors felt their courses or content exists in isolation from other disciplines. And if you, dear reader, are a teacher, I don’t think you believe your content exists in isolation. In an unusual turn for my blogs, I would like to momentarily make this an interactive discussion. Through a brief activity, I think I can illustrate my point, and its problematic nature.

If you could take out a piece of paper, I’d like you to take just a couple minutes and build a web. In the center of the web, I’d like you to write down your main content area and/or specialization. From there, please take a couple minutes to construct a web of the other disciplines you feel your content area connects to.

It’s okay. I’ll wait.

I’ll bet you thought of quite a few connections. Now I have a follow-up question. You don’t need to draw this new web, but I’d like you to consider: if I asked your students to construct a web like this about your content area, what do you think it would look like? I bet theirs would be more limited, maybe much more limited. Do you agree?

This is not meant to criticize you or your methods. I suspect the problem runs much deeper than that. Research conducted by Linda Bergmann and Janet Zepernick at the University of Missouri of Science and Technology in 2007 suggested that students have great difficulty transferring their literacy and writing skills from one content area to another. In many cases, this seems to be due to an unwillingness to transfer those skills, or maybe more specifically, an inability to see them as transferrable. English courses were seen as particularly isolated, and students felt the writing skills they employed in English were arbitrary and irrelevant to other content areas.

It is troubling to think that students don’t see their skills as transferable from one class to another, but how often do we give students reason to believe otherwise? Our education system long ago drew borders between the disciplines. These borders tell us that science is something separate from English, that social studies are separate from psychology, and so on. By the time students reach college, they have generally dealt with these disciplinary demarcations for at least six years, if not closer to twelve. Students cross a literal, physical threshold as they move between classes. That threshold tells them that when they enter their math class, it is now time for math, and it is no longer time for English. It makes sense, then, that they would dump their English literacy skills at the door.

This even happens within a single content area. I never had the opportunity to take the science fiction course at CSU, but it was offered the same semester I took my advanced creative writing course. That class forbade us from writing science fiction or other “genre” fiction. That means that if I had taken the science fiction course, I would have been expected to leave the content from the science fiction class at the door when I crossed the threshold into my creative writing classroom. My ability to transfer what I learned would have been constrained even within the same department at the same university.

But as I predict your webs illustrate, that’s not how we, as teachers, think about our content areas. The borders between disciplines, like the borders between nations, are only as real as we, collectively, allow them to be. The borders only exist when we believe in and defend them. However, what makes this issue so insidious is that most people probably don’t realize they are defending the disciplinary separation and therefore are unintentionally fighting against transferability. The purpose of my project was to expand transferability and present the different disciplines as an interconnected and overlapping network, rather than divided continents.

In pursuing that goal, I decided to conduct research to explore how sound my reasoning was. The research questions that guided by study were:

  1. From the perspective of 107 students and 3 of their language arts teachers at a STEM middle school, what texts (books, movies, TV shows, and video games) qualify as science fiction? How do these students and teachers define science fiction? How might this shape their perception of science fiction?
  2. To what extent is there a positive correlation between students’ enjoyment of science fiction and their interests in STEM classes and careers?
  3. How popular is science fiction among students? Is science fiction often privileged in the language arts classroom? If not, why not?
  4. In what ways could science fiction serve as a hook for engaging students in interdisciplinary studies?

Looking at my data, students appear to have broad definitions of science fiction, and it’s usually synonymous with fantasy. More than half read science fiction “for fun,” but they report that teachers rarely or never assign science fiction in class. There is a particularly strong correlation between students’ interest in science and math, and their interests in science fiction movies. This suggests there may be an interdisciplinary connection between science fiction and STEM. These students may already be drawing interdisciplinary connections, as I did at their age. This was only am exploratory study, so it calls for further research. More importantly for this discussion, my project should not end with just revising my research tools, and it should not end with just science fiction.

From the beginning, I envisioned my project as part of a greater whole. When I first pitched it to my advisor, my project was going to involve building a course that employed both science fiction and fantasy to build much broader interdisciplinary connections. That turned out to be unrealistic in scope for both this project and any practical course design. However, that is an idea I would like to return to. All fiction offers valuable opportunities for connecting to other disciplines, and “genre” fiction can form some of the most valuable bridges. So I want my research and my course to be a beginning, not an end. I would like to design more courses in the future that involve using other genres for other kinds of interdisciplinary connections. Or, I would like to inspire others to do similar work.

I believe this kind of interdisciplinary work can better enable and support our students’ passions and better represent what we believe our disciplines to be. We can help transform your students’ hypothetical web into the web you drew. Working to make this shift will enrich both our students’ learning and our own teaching.

This won’t be a quick fix, and it will be particularly challenging in a hierarchical system dominated by state standards and mandates. But I don’t really think I’m asking teachers to embrace any new or alien ideas. Again, I do not think teachers truly believe their disciplines exist in isolation. My goal is to encourage them to take advantage of more avenues for helping students see their skills as transferable. I hope to remind teachers that they are not alone in their missions. And so, I can’t let this project end with me, nor can I let it be dominated by only my voice. While you, dear reader, and I do not represent every discipline, I hope that our conversation today can be one of many beginnings as our respective missions continue.

Note: This is an adapted version of my M.A. Defense, which is provided below.

A video of my defense. I apologize for the poor quality; my recording options were limited.