Towards a Conceptual Framework for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Dialogues in Higher Education

This paper explores the development and early validation of a conceptual framework for learning-centred teaching by six Teaching Advancement at Universities (TAU) Fellows and their mentor, each representing a different higher education institution and a different discipline. A grounded theory approach was used to construct the framework and its potential utility value was explored though the use of six teaching innovation projects conducted in undergraduate South African university programmes in law, medicine, education, and the arts. The project revealed that interdisciplinary dialogic spaces can be initiated and nurtured through opportunities offered by communities of practice such as the TAU Fellowship when academics suspend their exclusive disciplinary preoccupations to open up possibilities for a generative, emancipatory scholarship. We argue that the conceptual framework is useful to facilitate and promote dialogues across and between the multiple discipline specific ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies offered in higher education