Becoming an Interdisciplinarian: Recognising the Role of Sociocultural Identities in Lifelong Learning

Incorporating interdisciplinarity has been said to foster the lifelong competencies needed for the increasingly complex workforce. However, its implementation into higher education is marred with difficulties since it fundamentally clashes with the disciplinary values that organise university settings. Through examples of local interdisciplinary initiatives, this chapter conceptually explores how current endeavours are unable to address the dilemmas students and teachers face in pursuing interdisciplinarity from a Singaporean context and thus argues for a need to recognise the role of identity in learning interdisciplinarity. Key to this approach is the acknowledgement and reconceptualisation of interdisciplinarity as a social practice, specifically as the process of learning how to identify, manage, and apply appropriate ways of knowledge accordingly to one’s sociocultural context. This otherwise contrasts existing perspectives which are mainly concerned with the breadth and depth of disciplinary knowledge attained. To better support interdisciplinary efforts, it is recommended that identity is utilised as both a theoretical lens and methodological tool. Altogether, this chapter believes that attempts to bridge professional practice with higher education should not be conflated with the design of specific teaching approaches or curriculum but focus on removing the barriers students and teachers face in attaining their personal interdisciplinary agendas.