This special issue is devoted to exploring the concept of interdisciplinary educational work in a range of local, national and international contexts.
Guest co-editors
A/Prof. Ange Fitzgerald, School of Education, University of Southern Queensland – angela.fitzgerald@usq.edu.au
A/Prof. Graham Parr, Faculty of Education, Monash University –
graham.parr@monash.edu
Dr. Judy Williams, Faculty of Education, Monash University – judy.williams@monash.edu
Overview of special issue
The unique appeal of this special issue is to challenge and extend thinking about what constitutes interdisciplinary educational work. Drawing on significant studies in this area (Kraus & Sultana, 2008; Newman et al., 2014; Seddon, 2016), we propose the following definition of interdisciplinary educational work: ‘the activity of a heterogeneous group of academics and professionals, with expertise in different disciplines, collaborating on a project that enables learning’. In the current higher education context, performative metrics encourage us to categorise our work as either teaching or research or service. Bureaucratic structures can discourage us from straying beyond our familiar disciplinary areas. Meanwhile, we know that contemporary problems in an increasingly globalised world do not fit neatly within traditional disciplinary or institutional boundaries. While many consider the work of educators to be restricted to teaching in the classroom, the work of contemporary educators is incredibly varied and takes up all sorts of
grey/border/interdisciplinary spaces. This special issue provides an opportunity to showcase and celebrate teaching and research recognising this interdisciplinarity and variety.
This special issue is devoted to exploring the concept of interdisciplinary educational work in a range of local, national and international contexts. In so doing, this call for papers invites contributions that consider the following questions:
- What is interdisciplinary educational work and how is it enacted in your particular context?
- What is it about educational work under current conditions that make interdisciplinary work a particularly important arena at present?
- What is it about educational work under current conditions that make interdisciplinary work a particularly important arena at present?
- What are the particular policy conditions that contribute to this as an area worthy of increased attention?
- What challenges and opportunities do you encounter in interdisciplinary educational work?
- Why and how might individuals and groups in higher education collaborate across disciplinary borders to ‘enable learning’?
- Who benefits from interdisciplinary educational work and how?
- What policy discourses (at local, national or international levels) encourage and/or inhibit interdisciplinary educational work?
The topics that could be connected to the proposed theme of interdisciplinary educational work include:
- Collaborative work (e.g. across different disciplinary knowledges, methodological approaches, scholarly traditions, etc.);
- Collaborative work (e.g. across different disciplinary knowledges, methodological approaches, scholarly traditions, etc.);
- Cross-faculty work (e.g. collaborations between different schools and departments, etc.);
- Boundary work (e.g. between various spaces: academic and professional, school and university, public and private, etc.);
- Educational workers coming from diverse contexts (e.g. informal learning settings –museums, zoos, etc.; outside classroom contexts – home schooling, hospital-based, etc.);
- Challenges and opportunities posed by different spaces (e.g. international collaborations, school-university partnerships, industry links, etc.); and
- Globalised experiences (e.g. study tours, work integrated learning, service learning, professional experiences, etc.).
Timeline
The proposed time schedule including submission deadline and completion of the editorial process is as follows:
- April-June 2020: Call for contributions
- August-September 2020: Discussions with interested contributors regarding possible contributions, provide guidance, consider fit, etc.
- March 2021: Draft paper to be submitted for feedback and guidance
- June 2021: Final papers to be submitted - 6 months for review process (including drafting and feedback process)
- February 2022: Into production
- March 2022: Publication (first issue of year for AER)
Next steps
To start this process, a 250-word abstract serving as an ‘expression of interest’ from which full papers will be invited is requested by June 30, 2020. The co-editors of this special issue welcome discussion about your proposed contribution prior to submission of an EOI and can be contacted via the email addresses above.