Deck 9: Thinking Critically About Integration and Its Results

Question 1

Problem centering

A) involves embedding the object of study in the fabric of time, culture, and personal experience.
B) uses issues of public debate, product development, or policy intervention as focal points for making connections between disciplines and integrating their insights
C) involves making meaning from different concepts that, on the surface, have no apparent connection or commonality.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

What is interdisciplinary integration?

A) The cognitive process of critically evaluating disciplinary insights.
B) The creation of common ground among them to construct a more comprehensive understanding.
C) Both "a" and "b" are correct.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Read the following: An assumption is something taken for granted, a supposition. These assumptions are accepted as the truths upon which the discipline is based. Stated another way, a discipline's defining elements-its theories, concepts, and methods-are simply the practical manifestations of its assumptions. Grasping the underlying assumptions of a discipline as a whole provides important clues to the assumptions underlying the writings of its experts on a particular problem […] . (Repko, 2008, p. 89).
We might deduce from this that

A) Assumptions shape the discipline's theories, concepts, and methods.
B) Assumptions might prove helpful in creating common ground because disciplines may share the same assumptions.
C) None of the statements above is correct.
D) Both of the statements "a" and "b" are correct.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

When a new product is sought, a new policy intervention, a new medical treatment or a new response to an environmental concern, a good approach would be:

A) Problem Centering
B) Contextualization
C) Integration

Question 5

The concept "efficiency" has quite different meanings for economists (money out/money in), biologists (energy out/energy in), and political scientists
(influence exerted/political capital expended) (Newell, 2001, p. 19).
From this statement, we should deduce

A) That as interdisciplinarians we must often bring out common meanings, making them applicable to different texts and contexts.
B) It is impossible to integrate insights from economics, biology, and political science because the vocabulary cannot be integrated.
C) Economists, Biologists, and Political Scientists cannot define words accurately.

Question 6

Contextualization involves

A) embedding the object of study in the fabric of time, culture, and personal experience.
B) making meaning from different concepts that, on the surface, have no apparent connection or commonality.
C) uses issues of public debate, product development, or policy intervention as focal points for making connections between disciplines and integrating their insights.

Question 7

What are the four commonly used approaches to achieve integration?

A) Contextualization, Illustration, Problem Centering, and The Broad Model.
B) Contextualization, Conceptualization, Problem Centering, and The Broad Model.
C) Contextualization, Conceptualization, Problem Solving, and Diversification.

Question 8

One way that humanist and fine and performing arts interdisciplinarians approach integration is to

A) pose philosophical or broad metaphysical questions
B) use quantitative analysis.
C) humanities and fine and performing arts interdisciplinarians do not use integration in their work.

Question 9

What does it meant to have a "more comprehensive understanding"?

A) By leveraging close reading and developing skills from the humanities, you will not need to incorporate insights from the natural or social sciences.
B) By leveraging the insights from multiple disciplinary perspectives, you will gain a more complete understanding of the complex problem that would have been gleaned from studying the problem from one disciplinary perspective.
C) This might be understood by considering the term "gestalt" - where the whole (understanding) exceeds the sum of its component parts (disciplinary insights).
C) Both "a" and "c" are correct.
D) Both "b" and "c" are correct.

Question 10

A limitation of the contextualization approach is that

A) it limits the depth of disciplinary connections to disciplines and their insights that are epistemologically close.
B) it obscures the process by which integration occurs
C) it focuses on the sciences.

Question 11

Interdisciplinary integration is

A) An aspect of multidisciplinarity
B) The culmination of all interdisciplinary research
C) The cognitive process of analyzing common ground
D) The cognitive process of critically evaluating disciplinary insights and creating common ground among them to construct a more comprehensive understanding

Question 12

The Broad Model

A) subsumes the approaches of contextualization, conceptualization, and problem centering.
B) subsumes the approaches of conceptualization and contextualization but not problem centering.
C) is superior to the approaches of conceptualization and contextualization but not problem centering.

Question 13

Van der Lecq (2012) was able to achieve an integrated understanding of the evolution of human language capability by reconciling different usages of the word "evolution" by different authors. In some cases it may be necessary to identify different meanings of a term (Bergmann et al., 2012). This is an example of

A) The redefinition strategy for integration.
B) The organization strategy for integration.
C) The extension strategy for integration.

Question 14

The problem centering approach to integration would be highly appropriate for

A) human cloning, stem cell research, and organ transplantation
B) analyzing a work of art
C) both "a" and "b" are correct.

Question 15

Read the following: [Scientists in the twenty-first century] do not lack technical expertise; they lack wisdom. We live in a world where biology enables our ability to manipulate the human genome . . . [which] is far ahead of our legal or philosophical ability to regulate how to use this knowledge in fruitful ways. . . . How do we help scientists think in an ethical context? How do we help scientists decide whether or not certain questions should be pursued? (Nikitina, 2006, p. 260)
Nikitina is advocating:

A) That scientists should not be able to manipulate the human genome.
B) That scientists should integrate other disciplines from the humanities into their own disciplinary expertise to help incorporate ethics (philosophical insights) into their practices.
C) That scientists should have good lawyers.

Question 16

There are 4 key strategies for integration or creating common ground. Name 3 of them.
1.
2.
3.

Question 17

Answering the question "Why did the American Civil War break out in 1861?" involves integrating insights from science and technology (to explain the significance of the invention of the cotton gin), economics (to explain the slave-owning South's dependence on cotton production and the plantation system), religion (to explain the splits within the major Christian denominations over the issue of slavery that provided theological underpinnings for abolitionist and pro-slavery stances), literature (to explain the profound impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin on the North), psychology (to explain the emotional impacts of increasing incidents of violence such as John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry), and politics (to explain the rise of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln). This is an example of

A) History as integrative context.
B) Conceptualization.
C) Problem Centering.

Question 18

There are 4 core premises underlying the term "more comprehensive understanding". Name 3 of them.
1.
2.
3.

Question 19

The problem facing the researchers was how to help farmers in the highly eroded and steep hill country of Victoria, Australia, change their
Farming practices in the face of deteriorating climate conditions would best benefit from a

A) Problem centering approach to integration
B) Conceptualizing approach to integration
C) Contextualizing approach to integraion

Question 20

There are several limitations to the problem centering approach, name 3 of them:
1.
2.
3.