Extended Essay 专题论文: Making Meaningful Connections

In interdisciplinary research, it is important to integrate ideas, findings, methods or tools from two subjects. Successful interdisciplinary learning experiences yield productive, integrative understandings.

Interdisciplinary research requires students to develop the capacity to make deep and productive connections across subjects. For students to make careful analyses and meaningful connections, they need to know:

• how exactly disciplines come together in this research question topic
• in what ways integrating disciplines contribute to a deeper, more nuanced and complex understanding of the research question/topic.

Successful integration of two or more subjects enables students to reach an understanding that they would not have achieved through single disciplinary means. (For this 4,000-word essay, it is recommended that no more than two subjects are utilized.)

Focusing on integration involves being able to identify how, exactly, the concepts, methods, tools and genres of the disciplines combine productively. It invites students to ask important questions about what they learn and the subjects they engage with.

• How are different disciplines related to one another in a study of the selected research area or specific research question?
• What insights are gained through the combination of perspectives that could not be achieved by considering each discipline in isolation?
• Why does bringing these particular disciplines together in a study of the topic make sense?

There are a huge variety of ways in which the disciplines can be brought together meaningfully to address a given question. These fall into four distinct categories:

• complex integration
• contextualization
• transdisciplinary exploration
• artistic synthesis.

As you read each description and associated example, consider the ways in which each particular form of integration may or may not apply to your students’ EEs.