The practice of interdisciplinary and integrative learning is becoming much more common in today’s classrooms, as well as in academic research. Integrative learning approaches borrow concepts from a wide variety of academic disciplines in order to untangle a specific problem. One example of the effective use of an interdisciplinary approach would be the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in West Africa and Haiti. Dr. Farmer is both a trained physician and an anthropologist, and he uses his expertise from both fields to help solve the numerous health justice issues within the underdeveloped world. As the world is continuously shifting, and technological advances are tearing old ways of thinking asunder, borrowing techniques from multiple disciplines is often the most optimal approach to solving problems.
While interdisciplinary approaches to research are often frowned upon by the traditional academy, they can often create the most compelling approaches. For instance, in the realm of psychiatry, the use of knowledge from both psychology and neurology is creating effective new treatments for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. With regards to many of the world’s current problems, an interdisciplinary approach makes the most sense. The world is presenting many new challenges for which the old, traditional explanations do not provide a sufficient answer. Thus, it is necessary for academics and scholars to select different modes of thinking from different disciplines in order to arrive at an effective solution. In time, the world might witness the creation of entirely new academic fields that are targeted toward answering the new questions that this world presents. In the meantime, the use of interdisciplinary approaches is a pragmatic necessity.
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"Interdisciplinary and Integrative Learning".
While interdisciplinary research is largely the domain of the highest ranks of academia, the distillation of these approaches into the undergraduate classroom is known as integrative learning. Integrative learning techniques attempt to incorporate, at an easily understood level, the use of concepts from different academic disciplines to arrive at a novel answer to a contemporary problem (DeZure 1). The field of health justice studies is one example of an integrative learning approach in the classroom. Not only does this interdisciplinary approach use methodologies rooted in medical science and healthcare administration, but it also borrows from “social sciences” disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. It is impossible to understand the current disparities in health care access without also understanding the structural problems in a society that disallow impoverished people from receiving the most adequate health care treatment.
The work of medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer is an outstanding example of the use of interdisciplinary approaches to solve contemporary problems. As mentioned previously, Farmer is best known for his work to try to equalize health care access in Haiti and in sub-Saharan Africa (Anonymous n/a). The lack of equal access to basic health care services in these and other underdeveloped regions is a complex problem that lies outside of the reach of medical science to adequately explain or solve. Thus, as Farmer has shown, an equally complex answer must be developed which requires an interdisciplinary approach combining medical science, anthropology, and sociology.
In conclusion, the confluence of globalization, technological innovation, and rapid social change in the world has created problems that the old, traditional academic disciplines are no longer sufficient to handle. Thus, it is necessary to create hybrid systems of knowledge through the use of interdisciplinary studies and integrative learning approaches. Perhaps, in time, new disciplines will emerge out of these presently blended approaches, but for emergent issues such as unequal access to health care, interdisciplinary approaches such as those used by Dr. Paul Farmer will have to suffice. Times are changing, and the academic disciplines will have to change, as well.
