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Abstract

We investigated the hypothesis that interdisciplinarity is being explicitly taught behind
the fac¸ade of traditional disciplines. We interviewed 14 academics (seven geographers and seven
agricultural scientists) about their teaching in the inherently interdisciplinary field of natural
resource management. Our teachers were generally well informed about interdisciplinarity,
believed it is important in a natural resource management degree, and participants viewed the
traditional discipline-based structure as a major obstacle to collaboration, mostly because of
competition between disciplines for student income. Other barriers included the strong rewards of
disciplinary specialization, the difficulty of sustaining teaching teams, and other university
structures, such as inflexible timetables. We suggest that if institutions with traditional disciplinebased
structures want to provide students with interdisciplinary opportunities, teachers need to be
adequately supported in terms of workload, career rewards and pedagogy.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Pharo, EJ and Bridle, K
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Geography in Higher Education
ISSN:	0309-8265
DOI / ID Number:	10.1080/03098265.2011.575127
Additional Information:	The definitive published version is available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
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