The demand for interdisciplinary teaching and research suggests the need to understand how universities are undertaking and fostering interdisciplinarity. Through an examination of strategic and master plans at 21 research universities, this article explores how institutions plan and foster interdisciplinary engagement through the use of space on…

A novel experiment for the extraction of lycopene from tomato paste without the use of an organic solvent is described. The experiment employs polymer, green, and analytical chemistry. This environmentally friendly extraction is more efficient and requires less time than the traditional approach using an organic solvent. The extraction is…

This article argues that certain philosophically devised quality control parameters should guide approaches to interdisciplinary education. We sketch the kind of reflections we think are necessary in order to produce epistemologically responsible curricula. We suggest that the two overarching epistemic dimensions of levels of analysis and basic…

This article talks about disciplinary fudging. The author points out that one fudges for complex and comprehensible reasons. However, she wonders at what point one becomes enough of an insider in a discipline to know how to gloss over the nuances of a complicated, inconvenient, or controversial topic.

This article presents the conceptual foundations of the Education for Peace (EFP) integrative curriculum, reviews its contents, and briefly describes its impact on students, teachers, staff and parents/guardians in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The curriculum was developed in 2000, first employed in six pilot schools and then implemented in 112 primary…

This article shows how a matrix can be used to represent a food chain and how the square of this matrix represents the indirect food sources for each animal in the chain. By exploring, through mathematics, the implications when the bottom of the food chain is destroyed, students will see an important connection between mathematics and science.…

The International Research Training Group "Brain-Behavior Relationship of Normal and Disturbed Emotions in Schizophrenia and Autism" (IRTG 1328), funded by the German Research Council (DFG), is a German-American cooperation. Its major aims are interdisciplinary and international scientific cooperation and the support of young scientists…

Understanding scientific phenomena in terms of complex systems principles is both scientifically and pedagogically important. Situations from different disciplines of science are often governed by the same principle, and so promoting knowledge transfer across disciplines makes valuable cross-fertilization and scientific unification possible.…

Autism is a low-incidence disability that is complex to assess and for which rates continue to increase. Assessment options for autism are reviewed and presented in the context of recent research and a comprehensive, multidisciplinary assessment model. The model involves three levels that yield data progressing from more subjective and general to…

Changes in research production precipitated by the globalization have generally been theorized as applying across nations and disciplinary projects. This article examines the relation of discipline to research production from the situational vantage point of the developing world, specifically the Southern African country of Malawi, and from the…

The Mozambican government has introduced reforms of basic education, notably the introduction of interdisciplinarity, learner-centredness and new teaching pedagogies. This is a case study of how these curriculum reforms have been implemented at Marrere Teachers' Training College. We conducted interviews with lecturers, observed their teaching…

This article explores the history and development of interdisciplinarity within the Australian context. Conditions and circumstances for the emergence of interdisciplinary approaches are explored with discussion identifying how these approaches impact and shape national curriculum, teachers' practice and pedagogy. Policies, proposals, and debate…

Capstone design courses are an increasingly common component of engineering curricula nationwide, but how much do we really know about the current practices? How do capstone courses differ across departments and institutions? How have capstone courses changed in the past 10 years? This paper highlights data from a survey of engineering capstone…

Trying to develop new perspectives of teaching is never easy, but trying to cultivate ownership and initiative among teacher education students is a still greater aspiration that is infrequently realized. This article addresses each of these highly valued goals for teacher educators as a case study reveals the impact of involving teacher…

While niche colleges and universities have upheld principles of environmental sustainability for several decades, mainstream institutions of higher learning only more recently have begun to embrace a "green ethos" on campus. The exact nature of these initiatives may vary but tends to fall into four categories: (a) a general infusion of…