To understand and be understood: facilitating interdisciplinary learning through the promotion of communicative competence

Whilst interdisciplinarity has become a central concern of research and learning in geography, few from the discipline have considered the practical facilitation of interdisciplinarity in the classroom. Module convenors, I argue, must pay greater attention to how learners engage and negotiate with peers and perspectives from other disciplines. In this paper, I focus on my own efforts in designing and teaching a second year undergraduate course on health, biomedicine, and society, to illuminate the opportunities and challenges facing teaching staff who seek to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning in the classroom. Drawing upon theories of communication, I demonstrate the significance of developing “communicative competence” as a pathway to successful interdisciplinary learning. Unless learners from one discipline can understand, and be understood by, peers from other disciplines, the accomplishment of interdisciplinary learning is undermined. Interdisciplinary modules should include learning outcomes that facilitate student development in this area. Approaching interdisciplinary learning through the lens of communicative competence casts critical attention upon the central abilities and cultural sensitivities that are the hallmarks of interdisciplinary collaboration – from negotiating meaning to critical disciplinary awareness – and highlights the lessons that interdisciplinarity poses for disciplines, such as geography, tasked with preparing students for interdisciplinary learning.     

‘Oh motherland I pledge to thee …’: a study into nationalism,gender and the representation of an imagined family within national anthems

In this paper, we argue that beyond understanding nations as imagined communities, the metaphor of an ‘imagined family’ or ‘filial community’ is a more useful concept towards understanding links between gender and nationhood as family relations in four ways: (1) providing a clear, hierarchical structure; (2) prescribing social roles and responsibilities; (3) being linked to positive affective connotations; and (4) reifying social phenomena as biologically determined. In order to empirically substantiate our claim, we will explore the prevalence and use of family metaphors in a key symbol of nationhood discourses. Through a qualitative analysis of national anthems as ‘mnemonics of national identity’, we demonstrate the widespread presence of family metaphors, discussing how they reproduce ideas of family and gender. Finally, we discuss how the ‘imagined family’ as present in anthems and other forms of national representation could inform future studies of nationalism and national politics.