What makes interdisciplinary research original? Integrative scholarship reconsidered

Abstract

This paper focuses on the scholarship of integration in the field of education and argues that although it has gradually been moving into the mainstream of educational research, it is all too often judged on the basis of criteria more applicable to assess the scholarship of discovery. First, I examine the questions: what constitutes original research in education and what makes the scholarship of integration ‘original’. I assert that the reluctance on the part of many educators to consider integrative scholarship as original research is in part a result of the prevailing conception of originality that is too limiting and often not relevant to evaluate this form of scholarship. Such a conception is incompatible with the valuable lessons that constructivism has taught us about knowledge and learning. Finally, I propose a number of criteria to evaluate integrative research studies, ones which are different from those that apply to other forms of scholarship.