There is a strong and increasing push for interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary learning in higher education. It has gained impetus from the urgent need to equip future generations with competencies that will empower them to contribute to sustainable development. One pedagogy to support such learning is project-based learning (PjBL), which is increasingly becoming a mandatory part of curricula in higher education (Elken et al., 2020). Project-based learning is a form of student-centric, collaborative learning whereby students work on projects with real-world problems, often together with or for external stakeholders (Guo et al., 2020; Krajcik & Blumenfeld, 2006). As a pedagogical approach, it is associated with interdisciplinarity (Braßler & Dettmers, 2017), and one of the main expected learning outcomes is that students learn to work in and as a team. 

However, despite its increased popularity, empirical studies on interdisciplinary PjBL are scarce and we know little about the complex ecosystems that surrounds and support interdisciplinary learning in higher education (Johnsen et al., forthcoming). One challenge seems to be to achieve “broad” interdisciplinarity with courses across several disciplines and professions. Studies are largely contained within specific educational disciplines (such as engineering, medicine or teacher education), involving only students within those disciplines. Furthermore, literature on PjBL, and student collaboration more generally, is dominated by “course description studies” (studies that describe a particular course design together with “the lessons learned” from a teacher perspective) and individually oriented, ‘effect-oriented’ research. The latter focuses on the benefits of pedagogical approaches on a range of individual student variables, such as academic achievement, student satisfaction or skill development. However, what these studies miss is a holistic, ecological view that reveals what enables and constrains students’ learning both within a course and in the wider university, industry, and community ecosystems that support learning in the course. 

This paper is the first part of a research program that takes an analytic and ecological approach to exploring what enables and constrains students’ interdisciplinary collaboration and learning. The research program uses the case of a university wide interdisciplinary PjBL course including 3200 students from across all faculties at a large Norwegian university. The course has been developed, crafted, and scaled up over 20 years, and studies on the course have shown positive effects on students’ learning (Johnsen et al., forthcoming) and also emphasized the importance of a course design that supports student teams’ reflection on their collaboration as it happens (Sjølie et al., 2022; Sjølie et al., 2021; Veine et al., 2020). The aim of this paper is to reveal some of the key conditions that enable and constrain the practices that compose the course (practices of students, teachers, and others) within the institution and beyond. We deploy the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis, 2022; Kemmis et al., 2014; Mahon et al., 2017) to identify and describe a range of the key conditions that shape the course and the practices of students, teachers, and others as they work in/on the course. We also use Bernstein’s theory of pedagogical discourse (especially instructional discourse and regulative discourse) to show the kinds of pedagogical rules that enable and constrain student’s interdisciplinary work and learning.

The paper explores the conditions that enable and constrain interdisciplinary work and learning in a particular course, asking: what are the sayings, doings and relatings that constitute students’ practices of interdisciplinary teamwork and what practice architectures (arrangements, conditions) make these practices possible? It demonstrates a way of understanding the complex ecosystems of support that sustained interdisciplinary learning in this case, and by doing so demonstrates an approach to analysing and interpreting university courses and practices more generally.

The course that is used as the case in this paper is mandatory for almost all graduate students at the university. Each year, approximately 3,200 students from all eight faculties are divided into 110 classes of 20-30, comprising teams of 5–7 students. The teams work on real-world problems and define their own projects within a broad topic that is different for each class. The teaching staff for each class comprises one faculty member and two learning assistants who have been trained in team facilitation. The students are assessed as a group based on two exam reports, each accounting for 50% of the final grade: one team process report with reflections on situations from their collaboration and one team product report outlining and discussing the project results. One of the main characteristics of the course is its explicit focus on collaboration skills as a learning outcome in its own right. The learning assistants’ primary role is to stimulate reflection on situations that occur within the teams throughout the project life cycle. Since it operates across the whole university, the course is ‘owned’ by the Rector but it is organizationally located within the different departments. On behalf of the Rector, one academic unit coordinates the course. This unit coordinates the distributed practices of managing, administering, and teaching the course, as well as the student assessment. The unit is also responsible for training the staff and facilitating collaboration between teachers and learning assistants (as one teaching team) and between teaching staff across the 110 classes. The study investigates the conditions that enable and constrain interdisciplinary work and learning in the course, based on course documentation, interviews with students and teachers, and ethnographic observation of one class of student teams. In the analysis, we deploy the theory of practice architectures to identify the sayings, doings and relatings that constitute students’ practices of interdisciplinary teamwork and what practice architectures that make these practices possible. We also use Bernstein’s (1996) theory of instructional and regulative discourse to investigate the explanatory power of these discourses among the practice architectures that shape the unfolding of students’ work in the course.

In the presentation, we provide: (1) a more detailed description of the course, (2) an account of key conditions that support the practices that compose the course, and (3) an analysis of aspects of the ecosystem conditions that enable and constrain the practices of students, teachers, and others. On the basis of these findings we suggest an approach to understanding and interpreting practices of teaching, learning, and course development in higher education more generally. Our preliminary analysis shows that the theory of practice architectures helps to reveal the composition of practices of interdisciplinary teamwork and the kinds of arrangements that make those practices possible. It shows that instructional and regulative discourses are among the powerful practice architectures that shape the practices of students and others in this particular course. The analysis has also allowed us to identify interdependencies among practices that form ecologies of practices that shape students’ practices. The study has several implications. For policy makers and academic staff in a time of increasing pressure on implementing interdisciplinary courses, the study demonstrates a way of understanding the complex ecosystems of support that sustains such courses. Theoretically, the study contributes to a growing body of literature in higher education using the theory of practice architectures to analyse and interpret university courses and practices more generally. Finally, the study has practical implications for faculty and students. First, it exemplifies some key conditions to be considered in course design beyond the case of this particular courses. Second, it shows that the theory of practice architectures is a promising tool in course design, as a tool to help students and teachers become more aware of the sayings, doings and relatings that compose their practices while, at the same time, extending their grasp and control of the conditions that make those practices possible.

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