Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Metacognitive Reflection: A Case Study of Faculty Teaching in Learning Communities

Abstract

This qualitative case study examines the nature of faculty collaboration within the context of academic learning communities using third generation activity theory as an organizing framework. First, this study investigates how faculty collaborate across disciplinary lines to create and implement curriculum for paired and team-taught interdisciplinary learning community courses. Furthermore, this study seeks to understand whether these collaborative practices provide opportunities for discipline-based metacognitive reflection. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and course documents, the study findings confirm that learning communities do, in fact, create opportunities for faculty to become more self-aware of their own disciplinary conventions and how they differ from other fields within higher education; however, these opportunities for reflection are also tied to faculty being given additional opportunities to reflect upon their collaborative learning community experiences in meaningful ways outside their classrooms. While this dissertation argues discipline-based metacognitive reflection is not a guaranteed by-product of faculty participation in learning communities, thoughtfully implemented and supported institutional structures can make this form of reflection possible and beneficial to faculty and students who participate in this curricular model.