Travelling Concepts
Travelling Concepts facilitates interdisciplinary conversations by exploring how a single concept is understood and transformed across different fields. This method helps participants recognize underlying patterns in knowledge and build common ground by sharing diverse perspectives.
Use this method when you need to foster interdisciplinary understanding, encourage collaborative problem-solving across different fields, or help participants recognize their own disciplinary assumptions.
Solves: Siloed thinking, lack of cross-disciplinary communication, difficulty understanding different perspectives.
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Step 1: Preparation (90 min): Distribute the 'Travelling Concepts for Teachers' handout and ask participants to listen to two episodes of the 'Travelling Concepts on Air' podcast, taking notes on how the concept is interpreted in each discipline, how the meaning shifts, and any tensions or overlaps.
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Step 2: Disciplinary Self-Reflection (30 min): Have each participant identify their primary discipline and complete the 'Disciplinary Self-Reflection' exercise, describing its phenomena, assumptions, concepts, theories, and methods. Facilitate a plenary discussion to share reflections.
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Step 3: Listen & Discuss (30-45 min): Form interdisciplinary pairs and instruct them to discuss their disciplines, identifying shared themes, differing approaches, and potential common ground. Have each pair select a 'concept' for further exploration.
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Step 4: Reflection & Travelling (30 min): Facilitate a plenary discussion where pairs reflect on their dialogues, examining how disciplinary perspectives shape the concept's interpretation and use. Approve or give feedback on the selected concepts.
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Step 5: Shared Expression (60 min): Instruct pairs to create a tangible product (podcast, essay, visual piece) that captures the core of their interdisciplinary conversation and communicates how their disciplines engage with the concept.
- Encourage students to embrace the challenge of disciplinary self-reflection, as struggling with it can reveal tacit knowledge and blind spots.
- Remind students to focus on both differences and potential common ground when discussing their disciplines.
- Instead of pairs, form small interdisciplinary groups.
- Assign specific concepts to each group instead of allowing them to choose.
- Extend the 'Shared Expression' phase to allow for more in-depth creative projects.