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PERSPECTIVE-TAKING TASK

A disciplinary perspective-taking task asks students to try to reconstruct the conceptual or operational structure of the field or discipline of a collaborator. As a result students gain insight into how their collaborators think and operate, and also into the limitations or biases of their own approaches.

This task is most suitable for:

Interactions
Mixed (interdisciplinary) groups

Degree of Integration
Interdisciplinary

Problem structure
Open-ended problems

Skill targets
Meta-cognitive, interdisciplinary problem-solving

Ability to generate
analogies/metaphors

Enhanched
critical thinking

Ability to communicate disciplinary content

Ability to interpret
other disciplines

Interactional
expertise

Humility, sensitivity
to bias and empowerment

Systems-thinking

Knowledge
integration

Methodological
integration

Assessing value/pay-off
of identification

Problem-framing

Identification
task allocation

Methodological 
choice

Evaluation

Identifying and
sharing competencies

Defining/assigning
roles

Defining shared
group values

Defining rules of operation
and group engagement

Facilitating
communication

Coordinating
roles/tasks

Facilitating
feedback

Consensus and
trust building

Facilitating personal
development

What are Perspective-Taking Tasks?

In this kind of perspective-taking task students could either provide a knowledge- or process-based concept map for the field of a fellow group member(s). Other alternatives might be possible in which students are asked to describe the structure and procedures of this field. For such a task students represent how they understand that field (in terms of its knowledge content or procedures and goals). Students can interview fellow group members, or perform this as more reflective task based on their experiences. They can also do their own background research.

Ready-made Resources

Perspective Taking
Lesson Pack

This includes lesson plan and lesson slides. 

Potential Uses

  • Scaffolding Interdisciplinary Planning

    In this case the emphasis is on students using this task to help build a project. The task helps build understanding between the groups on the affordances of each other’s approach, and their perspectives on problems.

  • Demonstrating Development of Interactional Expertise

    For this use students try to demonstrate enrichment in their understanding of another field through their engagement in an interdisciplinary process. This helps demonstrate students have acquired a level of interactional expertise (the capacity to work with another field outside their own). Students do the task at the beginning and end of a module, and illustrate/reflect on their development. Students show how a gain in perspective or the task itself, played a role in their engagement. Such a task provide incentives for students to pay attention (and keep track of) how their collaborators operate, what they value and so on.

Interesting Sources

Description of book by Repko et al.:
Repko, A. F., Szostak, R., & Buchberger, M. P. (2016). Introduction to interdisciplinary studies. Sage Publications.