JRP Submission ID#127
Submitted on Dec 23, 2007

TITLE: Higher Education in the Third Millennium: Interdisciplinarity
and Transdisciplinarity in Research

ABSTRACT: The overall aim of this paper is to try to understand if the
new characteristics taken on by higher education in Brazil and in all
developing countries is an epistemological issue which, in actual
fact, goes beyond the scope of emerging countries and is a general
matter about the essence and, therefore, the ethos of the university.
The scope of our study lies within the new knowledge society
paradigms, post-disciplinarity (inter and transdisciplinarity) . More
specifically, among the new paradigms proposed for Education, we try
to show that: Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity have been
consolidating their positions as new concepts to rescue knowledge as a
whole. We have conducted qualitative research based on semi-structured
interviews with researchers from two universities, a public and a
private one. We have employed a Discourse Analysis technique to the
spoken responses of those professors aiming at identifying the
possibilities of and resistance to inter and transdisciplinary
research. We believe that a teacher is only able to teach permanent
transformation to his students if he his himself a permanent scholar,
a researcher. The production of knowledge and technology is the
essential function of the university at the threshold of this third
millennium.

KEYWORDS: university; paradigms; interdisciplinarity;
transdisciplinarity; qualitative research

EXCERPTS:

Brazilian university stands exactly at a moment of paradigmatic
transition for besides an urgent need to significantly expand the
number of college students in our country, it must be able to produce
scientific and technological knowledge to allow the nation to find a
path for its development. In particular, it is still necessary for
the university to be able to produce knowledge about teaching and
learning . . .

The university "crisis" should be understood as an extremely relevant
moment, characterized by transforming university into an institution
more organically linked to society and not parallel to it anymore.
"Crisis" comes from the Latin crisis, and means growing. . . .

In this way, taking into account its tradition as a generator of
knowledge, and as a space for criticism and freedom of thought,
university will be able to become the radiating pole for the
transformation necessary to the whole society.

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Reviewers familiar with the topic may kindly respond.

DP