Education, Spring 1997 v117 n3 p452(16)
Interdisciplinarity and integrative learning: an imperative for adult education. Ian Dinmore.

Author's Abstract: COPYRIGHT 1997 Project Innovation
While adult learners may have forgotten many of the skills they acquired in the classrooms of their youth, they bring to the classroom a wealth of experience that younger learners rarely possess. Successful teaching of older learners celebrates experiential learning, often acquired in a variety of informational settings, and exploits it through the application of formal, conceptual learning. Interdisciplinary studies (IDS) has proven successful in the pre-adult, conventional classroom. The inherently integrative nature of IDS makes it eminently suitable for the integrative learning style of returning adult students.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 Project Innovation
"Education is not merely an appeal to the abstract intelligence. Purposeful activity, intellectual activity and the immediate sense of worthwhile achievement should be conjoined in a unity of experience. ... My own experience, ... has convinced me that the sharp distinction between institutions devoted to abstract knowledge and those devoted to application and to handicrafts is a mistake." Alfred North Whitehead (1948-, p. 121).
Introduction
Experiential learning is integrative, and non disciplinary: it is a basis for interdisciplinary studies.
In the Fall of 1992, a young Scottish business man committed suicide. In addition to his grieving widow, Alison, he left a five-year-old daughter and a baby girl, aged just 14 months. Alison's emotions ran the gamut of disbelief, grief, anger and eventually resignation. As she went through her own emotional turmoil, her elder daughter fretted inconsolably for her daddy. Alison was unable to explain either to her daughter, or herself, why James had "gone away." After the funeral was over and the inevitable inquest had taken place, Alison addressed the task of both a changed present, and a future vastly different from the one for which she and her husband had planned. Gone was the financial stability that James's job provided: the insurance policies that would normally have met Alison's immediate financial needs were rendered invalid by his suicide. Shortly after, she decided to move from their current home to another one that would permit her to open a bed and breakfast - as a means to support herself and her two children. She began the task of raising her children as a single parent.
The true story just described is characteristic of the way in which much adult learning takes place. There is no institution, no classroom, no teacher, and no curriculum, but it is valid learning, nonetheless. In a traditional, discipline-based, formal learning environment, Alison would find herself enrolling in a whole string of courses in order to address the content matter of her experience. If she were embarking upon those studies in order to help her come to terms with the complexities of the situation in which she now found herself, she would have to sift and filter much of the information in order to glean the nuggets that would be helpful to her. How would that string of courses meet Alison's immediate needs? How much more valuable to her is an interdisciplinary course called "Death and Bereavement" that touches on aspects of sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, household finance, law, and much else besides. It is hard to conceive of this course material being covered in a traditional, disciplinary curriculum, or that a pre-adult student would attain the same learning outcomes as the adult learner who is a able to integrate classroom learning with insights gained from personal experience. While adults and pre-adults engage in learning activities for different reasons (Maslow, 1970; Knowleds, 1990) interdisciplinary studies (IDS) can be invaluable to both constituencies.
Discipline-based education emerged in the nineteenth century (Klein, 1990; Kockelmans, 1979). As time passed, discipline-based course provided a more convenient and cost-effective method of educating in the ever-changing and increasingly complex world of scientific and technological activity. In the latter part of the twentieth century, however, communications nd information technologies, as well as new areas of research, have made it both easy and imperative for people talk to, and understand, those who work in other fields. Most educators have learned in a formal disciplinary way, and value those kinds of learning that require working in isolation.The working world demands that people be able to work on their own, but the ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams is increasingly valued, as is the ability (Plomer, in Peter, 1977, p. 123) to "perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms that may seem utterly different, and to be able to combine them into some new forms." The time has come for academe to refocus on the needs of learners in an increasingly complex world. While education remains a worthwhile endeavor, the task of adult educators is also to ground education in meeting the needs of the learners themselves, and help them to achieve the skills necessary to become self-actualized members of society (Maslow, 1970). Interdisciplinary education may be one of the most effective tools to achieve those goals.
Alison's case is sad, true, dramatic and possibly extreme. But the case of many adults entering professional degree programs reflects the intrinsic realities of Alison's situation. Working adults are motivated, experienced, practical people (Lindeman, 1926; Jacks, 1929) with many responsibilities and a shared concern - the necessity to work and engage in all the other activities that being an adult entails, puts constraint upon the amount of time available for study. An exclusively discipline-based curriculum is a luxury that few can afford. Adults need to acquire an education built on a curriculum of interdisciplinary courses(1) and one that focuses on the ability of the student population to synthesize newly-acquired theoretical knowledge with the practical skills they have brought to the classroom. Such a synthesis has the dual outcome of validating students' experiences and confirming, in the learners' eyes, the validity of theory because they can reconcile it with their own experience. While the learning process itself remains an ongoing and primary goal, as Alfred North Whitehead indicated, the combination of interdisciplinary courses, theory and practice, can also a address constraints of time and money that often concern adult learners, while capitalizing upon the experiential learning that they bring with them into the classroom.
One way to achieve that goal is to embrace the kind of experientially derived learning forced upon Alison. Although a fair amount has been written about the subject in the disciplinary context, what may be less clear from a review of the literature is how to embrace experientially derived learning in the context of interdisciplinary studies. Yet as the experience of CAEL (the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning), conferences (George Mason Conferences on Non-traditional Interdisciplinary Programs), and the literature (e.g. Mandell and Michelson, 1992; Whitaker, 1989) demonstrate, assessment of prior learning (PLA) is an integral part of many courses as they are discipline-based ones on the basis of their experience. But whereas a traditional interdisciplinary college course on death and bereavement might use a text book, library resources and film material in order to provide the building blocks for the acquisition of conceptual learning, adult learners such as Alison can refer to their own experiences. A number of theoreticians have developed theoretical models that can be valuable in assisting learners to achieve college level learning. Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956), for example, is helpful in moving students from lower to higher levels of knowledge. A learning model such David Kolb's (176, 1984) indicates that experiences a basis for learning in a cycle that includes concrete experience, reflective observation, conceptualization, and active experimentation. Thus, Alison's informal, experientially-derived education and her reflections about it, when combined with theoretical, conceptual knowledge will be a formidable framework for interdisciplinary adult education.
Working with students to understand and implement the stages outlined by Kolb in experiential learning essays produces a number of important outcomes. Adults learners who return to a college environment are often dismissive of the importance of their experience, possibly because they view the diploma itself as the reason for returning to school, rather than the learning that goes into its acquisition. Or possibly they have convinced themselves that informal learning is less valuable than formal education. In a recent article in the Financial Times (1996) Bradshaw described how British employers are increasingly demanding that new employees produce degrees, diploma's and certificates to demonstrate higher levels of competency. This is in a country where there has traditionally been much less of an emphasis on degrees than in the United States. Many colleges and universities have recognized that "portfolio" courses are a good way to "kill two birds with one stone." At the University of Redlands, Whitehead College, for example, a portfolio course has served as the introduction both to upper division work, and to the University itself, for adult students returning to complete degrees in management and business, and information systems. While students are oriented to a new level of academic work, they also gain the confidence they need to finish their studies. At the same time, they may gain additional units of credit that will help them complete their degree programs. Returning adult students are often sufficiently pragmatic (c.f. Dewey, 1938) to want the added value derived from the combination of experiential and conceptual learning. Showing them ways to extrapolate from their experience and to combine their insights with theory derived from disciplinary and interdisciplinary literature validates their experience, and permits them to gain the confidence necessary for the completion of a rigorous, degree completion program. It should be understood that prior, informal learning, or experiential learning, is not intrinsically more or less important than formal learning. Both are integral parts of the learning process that can augment and complement the effects of the other. Adult education is the process through which learners become aware of significant experience. Recognition of that significance can lead to evaluation, and ascription of meaning (Lindeman, 1926, p. 169).
It is generally recognized that learning takes place in all settings, in the workplace, in the home, and in the classroom, and in both informal and formal ways. Experiential learning is fundamentally non-disciplinary: when applied in a formal environment, it serves as the foundation for, and complements, interdisciplinary education. Adult education, often ignored in the literature of interdisciplinarity and integrative studies, is a highly appropriate point of application for experiential learning. The combination of experiential learning and interdisciplinarity is a powerful tool for adult learners(2).
If learning is a lifelong (Whitehead, 1938) and lifewide process (Lengrand, 1989), there are many ways in which students can pursue their quest for knowledge. These avenues can divided broadly into the formal and the informal. Klein (1991), has drawn a divided line between those factors which are endogenous and exogenous to institutions of higher learning. This split is potentially problematic, for while it is empirically correct and both are complementary, there is a risk of an evaluative (pejorative and ameliorative) dimension. Often, as Whitehead observed (1948, p. 121), formal education education is identified as being superior to informal, experiential education, and that impression is consolidated by education professionals who themselves have been trained in the formal environment. The problematic split between formal and informal education has been underscored, inter alia, by Freire (1970) and Shor (1991), who noted that education can be used as a social and political tool, and that in repressive regimes formal education may be withheld from some sectors of society.
The twentieth century has witnessed increased scholarly interest in the two important fields of interdisciplinarity and adult education. The origins of these fields date back to antiquity, but both of them saw a revival of interest in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Mezirow has observed (1991, p. 1) that, up until now, little effort has been devoted to investigating the relationship among various theories of interdisciplinarity originating in different fields. The same may be sad of the relationship between interdisciplinarity studies (IDS) and adult education. This omission is all the more surprising because practitioners in the field of adult education often incorporate integrative methodologies and practices into their teaching practices, as scholarly research, conference proceedings and the broader literature reveal. Empirical data and theoretical models reveal that adults are not concerned with disciplinary boundaries, because they do not view the world as a series of discrete subjects. Rustum Roy has noted that the real problems of society (Roy, 1979) do not happen in discipline-shaped blocks. One reason for the increasing popularity of the case study approach, particularly in management and business programs, may be that students are asked to solve complex problems that resemble real life, workplace problems. In strict etymological sense, the term "interdisciplinary" (roughly, "between, or among disciplines") may even be inappropriate for learning derived in such informal, non-disciplinary settings. Adults are concerned, however, with integrated their experiences in order o make sense of them (Halliburton, 1979). Kolb (1984) has noted that a learning style prevalent among managers and business people prefers integration of experience.
Definitions
Adult Learners: There are a number of ways to compare and contrast adult and pre-adult learners. One fundamental difference centers on the experience that these two groups bring to their studies, and the manner in which this experience has been derived. The chronological seniority of adult learners brings with it both more experience and, generally, different social roles. Experience can be derived in a formal setting: on-the-job training, and boot camp in the military are two examples. Equally, experience can be derived in an informal fashion, through living life rather than by reading about it - Alison's experiences ar an example. As a general rule, it is this latter learning environment to which older learners have had a great deal more exposure than their younger counterparts. One practical ramification of this difference may be found in the ability of older learners to make connections more readily between theoretical factors and their applications in daily life. While time for reflection is beneficial in any course of study, older students are able to learn at a more accelerated pace when their experience and their course work are linked. A comparison of adults and pre-adults as learners may be found in the table following this paper.
There is much debate about when one becomes an adult, or what an adult is, but Ogrizovic's (1966) definition, derived from analysis of the relationship between pedagogy and andragogy, is particularly appropriate. According to Ogrizovic, the primary role of pre-adults (children and adolescents) is to be a full-time leaner, and for them "education is the primary or social role. Adult students have completed or interrupted their initial education, or order to take part in other major activities, or take on other social roles (Krajnc, 1989, p. 21). What is distinctive about adult roles is that they are focused upon living life, while pre-adults study about it.
Formal and informal education: Formal education can be defined as "The structured, chronologically ordered education provided in primary and secondary schools, in universities and specialized courses in full-time technical and higher education." (Titmus, 1989, p. 547). Although there is nothing in nature of disciplines that requires it(3), formal, discipline-based education of pre-adult learners has tended to use traditional instructional methods. Students and teachers use textbooks and the media in the classroom setting. The younger the student body, the more likely the relationship between students and instructor is to be hierarchical. Outside the classroom, students occasionally work in small groups, but generally they work individually to complete their assignments. For the most part, study habits are created that produce people well-suited to working in isolation - for example, academics pursuing solitary research goals - but which are unsuited to much of the reality of the workplace and to teamwork. Adults who become involved in discipline-based formal education upon their return to the classroom can be at a disadvantage because the co-operative skills they have learned in the workplace are de-emphasized. Such skills are often utilized and valued in interdisciplinary and adult education classrooms, however. One might draw the conclusion that disciplinary faculty who resist synthesizing their material or bridging disciplinary boundaries to apply what they are teaching might also resist innovative teaching technologies.
Informal education can be defined as "The lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience, educative influences and resources in his/her environment - from family and neighbors, from work and play, from the market place, the library and mass media." (Titmus, 1989. p. 547). As such, it has the potential to be substantially different from education derived in a formal setting.
There are many possible reasons why informal education has traditionally been less valued than formal education. Csight suggest that since academics and educationalists did not have control over it, and thus to some extent it undermines their authority, they question whether the learning outcomes can be the same as those demonstrated by students who have sat through a formal course of instruction. That may be partially true, but the value placed on a formal education may have a more pragmatic explanation. In a world where there is an increasing supply of people whose educational achievement has been objectively measured, presentation of a diploma eliminates much of the hit-and-miss element from the hiring process. But industry and commerce have realized that a narrow, discipline-based education is not providing the kinds of employees who can demonstrate desired decision-making skills in the face of the complexity of the modern workplace. In order to achieve the most flexible workforce, employers are turning to that constituency that best demonstrates the necessary skills. As Roger B. Smith (the former CEO of General Motors) has noted, industry and commerce seek liberal arts graduates for top management positions (Smith, 1985), because their academic training has taught them to cross disciplinary lines and to be at home with complexity.
A further reason is that, as the definition implies, informal education is often obtained in a group context, through the work place or the family. Of concern to many in institutions of higher learning is the fact that his kind of learning rarely achieves the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy, or progresses beyond the stage of reflective observation identified in the learning cycle developed by Kolb. The formal educational environment excels in this "value-added" aspect: accretion of theory, concepts and critical thinking skills upon a broad, experiential base bring wide-ranging benefits and learning outcomes to the adult learner.
Focus on both the formal and the informal learning environment (e.g. job and family) in adult learners' formal education may prove valuable. While it is not unnatural for educators of pre-adults to downplay the importance of experiential learning in their classrooms, adults are quick to extrapolate from their own experience to what they are taught in the classroom. Indeed, many adults value learning that has an immediate application in their daily lives. In some degree programs for returning adults students such as management and business, or information systems, colleges and universities employ practitioners as instructors. Adult learners respond well to such instructors. There is little written about he subject, but their is anecdotal and empirical evidence to suggest hat adult learners are suspicious of instructors they consider excessively theoretical, especially when the theory does not match the learners' experiences. The potential for integration on the basis of life's experiences and students' social roles seems great. Assessment of prior learning, a fundamental tenet of many adult learning institutions, is based upon this principle.
Social role: Defining learners in terms of their roles places them in a social context. Examination of that context can yield important insights about what and how they learn, and why it may be misleading to assume that there is no curricular difference between various age groups of learners. The relationship of job and studies may be a matter of self definition (one is reminded of the cliche of aspiring actors who take employment as waiters, but continue to assert their role as thespians), but the fact is that part-time employment may serve as a transition into the world of adults - increasingly, young North American adults have part-time jobs. In the same way that pre-adults can augment or at least modify their role as learners through the jobs they hold, adults can be, and often are, more than mere employees. Tough (1971) has noted that some 70% of adults are involved in some form of learning project at any given time (and some 90% of these activities are self-directed). Such activities can be take place at any and all stages in a person's life, and are therus, or lifelong (Whitehead, 1938; Lengr90). In addition, such activities are also synchronous, or lifewide (Lengrand, 1989, p. 10), covering the breadth of individual humans' experience. Although these secondary roles may subtly alter people's self-perceptions, they may be viewed as a function of the process of change. In the case of pre-adult, work experience is a foretaste of adulthood and the world of work. For the adult, formal learning may be viewed as the key to a better job, or a better life. Whatever the individual's reasons, for the pre-adult, work is generally an elective, and for adults, study is generally elective.
If the normal dally environment of the pre-adult is school, that of the adult is the workplace (a tabular comparison of the pre-adult and adult learning environment is to be found in the schematic at the end of this paper). The two environments have much in common, but there are obvious differences in social roles, the supervisory, or power structures, and tasks and rewards. In their primary social role, pre-adults have peer group relationships based on like interests and proximity in age but, in general, they occupy "Subordinate" positions both at home and at school. For all of the rhetoric of equality, the freedoms of pre-adults living in the home are usually prescribed by their parents. In schools, teachers and administration are in loco parent's. In colleges and universities catering the needs of post-high school learners, a transitional place between the worlds of school and adults, roles are still marked by the power differential conferred by the system of grading and evaluation. Academic institutions are mindful of their responsibilities to those who are minors even if they may be uncomfortable with the role of policeman and disciplinarian. While age is a major factor in a school environment, it is less so in a college or university, and considerably less so in the workplace. Adults may interact as peers with people many years their junior or senior. It is also entirely possible that a young adults may be the supervisors of person many years her senior.
The ambiguity of the preceding situation is revealing. Schools, and elementary education, are organized along disciplinary lines for the sake of simplicity, and because young learners do not have a frame of reference derived from experience. A by-product of this structure is the promotion and perpetuation of a kind of reductionist thinking, fostered by traditional, discipline-based education, that graduates young learners who instinctively view education as a series of discrete, compartmentalized subjects. This training may explain why some returning adult students who have not had the benefit of interdisciplinary education as an adult may initially find difficulty in embracing the ambiguity intrinsic in a interdisciplinary classroom. The new experience does not fit with how they remembered education to be. This dichotomy must be overcome. Knowles (1990, p. 58) has noted that when adults hear the words "training" or "education," they may revert to an uncharacteristic, dependency, suspending their skills and abilities for self-direction and independence.
While the worlds of work and home are considerably less compartmentalized than that of school, both areas can be so. Bureaucratic organizations may be organized into departments that jealously guard their territory. Gender roles in the home may prevent some adults from experiencing the multi-faceted perspectives of family. Power, or relative autonomy, may also be a contributing factor. For those with little autonomy, whether it be in school, the workplace, or at home, a discipline-based approach may be adequate. As one achieves more power, an interdisciplinary approach is more likely to lead to a better understanding of complex situation.
Programming Adult Education
When decisions about programs and methodologies are made by academics unfamiliar or unconcerned with the realities of adults' needs, or the ways in which they learn, the results can be inappropriate. In one instance in the mid-1980s, a California-based corporation asked a group of colleges to produce a degree program for its employees.While the program was well-designed, interesting, and appropriately rigorous, many students eventually dropped from the program because they were expected to attend class three-to-five nights per week, after a full day's work. Class locations were such that students had to travel from the work site to the college, and from there to their homes. Not only were students expected to spend an unrealistic amount of time away from their families, they were also involved in such additional costs as cash outlays for baby sitting services and travel. Interdisciplinary methodologies frequently involve realigning the locus of power away from the traditional hierarchy to ne that values and validates students, their experiences, and their frequently non-university/college-derived learning (Lindeman, 1926; Davis, 1995; Shor, 1991). An institution sensitive to Alison's requirements might encourage her, for example, to challenge the course "Death and Bereavement" by means of an experiential learning essay on the basis of her informal learning, but could provide the template for conceptual learning missing from her experience.
Teaching Techniques
Team teaching techniques are often, not surprisingly, a phenomenon of the interdisciplinary classroom. Instruction delivered by team teaching, when implemented at anything beyond the most rudimentary levels, requires careful planning, integration of content, collaboration in classroom reaching, and collaboration in the evaluation of student work and teacher performance (Davis, 1994). Skills utilized by interdisciplinary teams in the classroom often closely mirror the world of work in which adults students operate on a daily basis. Modeling of shared power, and discussion of competing theories from different disciplines brings added value to the learners' classroom experience and can easily be extrapolated to situations outside the classroom.
A nonauthoritarian atmosphere, parallel to that in matrix organizations, has the advantage not only being similar to the workplace, but also putting the learner back in the driver's seat (Shot, 1991). As Watson suggests (1960-1961), an "open" learning environment is conducive to learner initiative and creativity, independence (rekindling the desire to self-direct) and hard work.
Adult Learner Motivation
A primary difference between adult and pre-adult learners resides in their motivation. For pre-adult learners, education is externally imposed. Until their mid-to-late teens, children have little choice about their participation in the educational process, and substantial numbers of teenagers embark upon college-level studies less from a burning sense of motivation than because it is expected, or because it will delay their inevitable entry into a world of adult responsibilities. As the earlier definition indicates, learning is the main social role of the pre-adult learner. For adult learners, however, learning is not usually an externally imposed, secondary role, but one that they freely choose.
Adults learn to achieve both intrinsic (Bruner, 1966) and extrinsic rewards. The literature of workplace motivation demonstrates clearly that money is generally not a primary motivator, but is often linked with motivators. In the case of education, the extrinsic reward, money, is often associated closely with other motivators and rewards. Employers may encourage their employees to improve their education by offering paid tuition benefits. In the case of some companies, full tuition reimbursement may be made on the basis of the "appropriateness" of the studies, or the extent to which they coincide with the employer's needs. The cost of tuition at the institutions catering to the needs of adult learners (accelerated programs offered in weekend or one-night-per-week formats, for example) can be sufficiently high that employer's offer of tuition reimbursement for specific degree programs is a powerful incentive.
Employers may require their employees to gain educational qualifications, but the recognition, status, and power associated with promotion are strong intrinsic rewards and motivators for many employees. Increasing numbers of organizations such as police or fire services insist upon a bachelor's degree in a recognized and relevant subject area for promotion to the rank of sergeant. promotion to the rank of lieutenant or captain may require acquisition of a masters degree. While some organizations do not specify what kind of degree (e.g. B.S. or B.A.) the employee attains, others do. Employers who pay the bill for their employees' education often expect that the degree program have some applicability in the workplace, and highly pragmatic, highly motivated adult learners welcome the ability to utilize the theoretical insights they have gained the night before in class, at work on the following morning. Radio advertisements for accelerated degree programs offered to returning adult students in Southern California in the late '80s and early '90s have capitalized upon the practical attractiveness of applying formal education and theory to daily experience. Such programs capitalize upon the students' experience (entry qualifications in some accelerated degree programs may require a certain number of years of work experience), and foster the learning of theory that is then applied to the experiential base. Kolb has suggested (1984), as does Bloom, that the ability t o apply to new situations insights gained from the integration of theory and experiential learning is a highly desirable part of the learning process.
Integrative Approaches
At this point it is appropriate to re-examine the terms interdisciplinarity and integrative studies. While traditional definitions of interdisciplinarity focus on, amongst other things, the relationships among disciplines, a new approach could turn attention to the process of interweaving and blending knowledge derived in formal and informal environments. Integration also encompasses the assimilation of experiential, essentially practical learning, with theoretical, conceptual (and essentially abstract) learning. Viewed from three perspectives, it is proposed that interdisciplinarity and integration are not necessarily interchangeable terms. Interdisciplinarity takes place in the broader macro arena between and among disciplines. Integrative education may do so also, but while interdisciplinarity remains, by etymology, primarily in the realm of formal education, integrative education is not so constrained. In the context of adult education, with its capacity to embrace informally derived experiential learning, it is helpful to recognize both integrative aspects as well as the interdisciplinary ones.
Student/Instructor Dynamics
The relationship between instructor and students, and among the students themselves, can be different in adult and pre-adult classrooms. While the pre-adult classroom is more clearly hierarchical - in part because of the difference in age between instructor and students, as well as differences in maturity and experience - the classroom of adult learners often demonstrates a flatter, matrix structure, where authority is shared (Lindeman, 1926).
These classroom dynamics approximate the social roles that each group occupies. Both students and instructor are working adults. Since adults frequently learn in informal environments such as the workplace, it makes sense that instructors strive to break down any barriers between themselves and their adult learners. In programs for adult learners, the median age of graduating students can be close to forty. Thus, learners and instructors more closely resemble each other in terms of age and maturity.
Since learning theory has demonstrated that adults learn well from their peers, the instructor can assume a role of facilitator of learning. In addition to removing the artificial hierarchical barrier, the adult educator can encourage small group activities to foster learning synergy among students. Learning becomes a shared activity celebrating and integrating the expertise and life experience of all participants, including the instructor, as opposed to the solitary, often competitive activity of pre-adult learners. Learning and authority is shared (Lindeman, 1926, p. 166). As Halliburton points out (1979), an unexpected benefit of adults teaching other adults, is that the instructors themselves may gain valuable insights from the experience of their students.
Interdisciplinary classes for pre-adult learners parallel the integrative classroom of adult learners. Team-taught classes model the adult world of work where representatives of many different groups and disciplines may have to work together on a project. In such an environment, participants may be called upon to assume more central, and more active, roles. For students, interdisciplinary courses demonstrate the relationships among disciplines, and create new opportunities for theoretical and applied theoretical and applied learning. As Lindeman suggest (1926, p. 166), "the students' experience counts for as much as the teacher's knowledge. Both are exchangeable at par." The classroom interactions of faculty model academic discourse and debate, and realtivise the absolutes of disciplinary discourse. Knowledge can be placed in a context that creates added meaning for the learner: for adults it is presented in a familiar way; for the pre-adult, it helps to create a transition to the world of adult learning patterns.
Barriers to Learning
For adults returning to a formal educational environment, a number of barriers can impede the learning process. Formal instruction in the workplace frequently involves training rather than education. While much has been written about the training versus the learning environment, it may be observed that the relationship between the two is akin to that between science and technology. The training environment assumes that there are work-related tasks to be accomplished, and the trainer provides instruction as to how the employer wishes them to be carried out. For those students accustomed to such goal-oriented learning, the academic educational environment can be challenging. Here there may be a variety of methodologies and options; students are asked to choose their won solution to problems, and to be prepared to validate their reasoning.
With increasing passage of time away from the formal learning environment, people lose many valuable skills. Particularly noticeable are declines in quantificational, writing, and critical thinking skills. As adults return to the formal learning environment, many feel vulnerable about perceived and real deficiencies in basic competencies. Data reveal (Voldman, 1996) that few, if any, adults can successfully complete even basic arithmetic tasks. Lave and Murtaugh (1984) have shown, however, that placing learning or testing into a familiar context can improve outcomes over testing that is carried out in an abstract way. Combining real world experience, whether formally or informally acquired, with theoretical concepts may not always be interdisciplinary, but it is unquestionably integrative, and validates both experience and theory.
A comparison of the characteristics of pre-adult and adult learners derived from the foregoing deliberations is contained in the table at the end of this paper.
Conclusions
Adults learn in a variety of ways. Regardless of whether their learning is derived in a formal or an informal setting, the way in which they learn is closely connected with the diverse experiences in their life. Theoreticians, from Lindeman on, as well as practitioners, have noted the tendency for adult learners to integrate those experiences in an attempt to assign meaning to them. Their tendency to integrate experiences makes adults more likely to benefit from interdisciplinary courses, and from the interactive and participatory methodologies that frequently employed in those classes. This is reinforced by the fact that, perhaps, adults' integrative mechanisms for coping with life make them less tolerant of the minutiae of disciplinary protocols, which to them appear to be out of touch with the world as they know it. An important factor in many adult students' evaluation of teaching effectiveness is whether their instructor has been able to make connections between course content, the rest of their study program, and their own experience (Dinmore and Rohrer, 1996).
When adults return to a formal learning environment, the proximity in age and experience of students and instructor can yield outcomes in classroom dynamics that are beneficial to all involved. While faculty gain insights from the experiences of their students, students learn from their instructor, each other, and by themselves. The role of the instructor becomes that of a facilitator of group and individual learning (Rogers, 1969), and a catalyst for students to integrate their experiential learning with new, theoretical and conceptual learning. Adults learners, perhaps paradoxically, can be important factors in bringing experiential applications to the more theoretically focused instructor, and can thus be instrumental in their development as faculty.
There is an important, continuing role for disciplinary studies, but an increasingly complex world demands that ways be found to match ways of learning to the needs and styles of the learning population. Disciplinary studies may be better suited to younger, traditionally-aged learners, or to those whose interests are framed in narrower, and deeper research. Interdisciplinary studies and integrative learning more appropriately match the needs of a learning population that must manage its resources carefully. While Alison did not have the luxury of enrolling in a series of courses, she could have certainly benefited from an interdisciplinary course integrating competing theories and her experience.
Suggestions for Further Research
As Halliburton (1979) notes, the time is long overdue for those involved in interdisciplinary studies to focus more attention on the needs of adult learners for whom the integration of both informally and formally derived knowledge characterizes the way they learn.
Although this paper has focused on interdisciplinarity and the integrative quality of adult learning, a number of subtexts may be discernible. The summary table following this paper suggests further arenas for research. The characteristics of adult and pre-adult learners noted in the table are empirical, but also derive from the work of Knowles (c.f. 1990, pp. 194195). It is suggested that further research be undertaken to verify these observations.
[TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED]
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