Modularity and interdisciplinarity: Confucian insight for STEM-related disciplines

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Date
2019
Authors
Power, Kevin J.
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University College Cork
National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
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Abstract
The modularity of the education system is generally geared toward a career-specific path for individual students. While varied subject choices and extracurricular activities can provide students with a rich range of experience, increased specialisation can create a sense of separateness between disciplines which may result in the neglect of engagement between fields which are otherwise mutually informative and insightful. A greater openness to interdisciplinarity would have the benefit of exposing specialists to fresh ways of viewing familiar subjects with a further potential to inform and inspire new and mutually beneficial pathways of education and learning. I illustrate the potential of an interdisciplinary approach in the context of the climate crisis. STEM-related disciplines can draw practical insight from compatible and well-founded philosophical principles e.g. Confucian leadership principles which warn against overconsumption, encouraging the kind of environmental awareness which could avert or mitigate the environmental and societal impact of climate change.
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Keywords
Education system , Modularity , Interdisciplinarity , STEM , Climate change
Citation
Power, K. J. (2019) ‘Modularity and interdisciplinarity: Confucian insight for STEM-related disciplines’, Learning Connections 2019: Spaces, People, Practice, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, 5-6 December, pp. 196-201. doi: 10.33178/LC.2019.41