Abstract

CARVAJAL ESCOBAR, YESID. INTERDISCIPLINARITY: A CHALLENGE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH. Luna Azul [online]. 2010, n.31, pp.156-169. ISSN 1909-2474.

In recent years, global problems have increased in complexity and connectivity, especially those environmental (water crisis, climate change, energy demand, population growth, etc.) which forces to focus them as complex, inseparable, and feed backed. Thought sectioning and work and performance indicators (generally focused on economical indicators) are obstacles for the achievement of more comprehensive goals, intensifying in divided work, specialization, sectional focus and individualism over the systemic approach. From this premise it appears the need to implement a holistic, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary vision in order to solve current problems which can only be achieved through team work. In this article the different concepts to deal with knowledge are described and the need to make some changes in higher education and research processes to face these everyday more complex problems is considered. It is concluded that sustainable human development can be dealt with from different disciplines, but none by itself will answer its main problems being not much what interdisciplinary teams contribute if the experts in each discipline offer only a technical vision of their specialty without articulating knowledge with the others.

Keywords : Interdisciplinarity; multidisciplinarity; transdisciplinarity; complex thinking; systemic approach.

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