Berger, Estelle
Interdisciplinary experience as a vector for critical decentering: The case of an inter-school innovation program
- 2023.
99
This article aims to understand 1) how an interdisciplinary experience can bring about a transformation in the participants, which persists after the experience has ended, and 2) the nature of this transformation. The research is based on an interdisciplinary innovation program involving students from three different schools (business, engineering, and design), and using a design-thinking approach. It analyzes the experience through in-depth interviews with the teams’ tutors, as well as students’ responses to the end-of-program questionnaires. This allows us to determine the enabling conditions for a successful interdisciplinary experience (program organization, participants’ initial outlook) and the characteristics that make this transformation possible, as well as to show that the transformation resembles a critical decentering.