Finding Common Ground : Comparing Engineering and Design Graduate Students' Conceptualizations of Interdisciplinary Education Across Two Institutions

For decades, scientific and academic organizations have called for engineering graduate students who are capable of addressing complex and seemingly intractable problems in an interdisciplinary manner [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. Several educational researchers across the globe [6], [7], [8] have sought to distinguish terms such as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and recently, their convergence. However, in practice, distinctions between these terms are often fuzzy. Across academic disciplines, institutions, and geographies, terms like interdisciplinary are often understood and used interchangeably. Even though interdisciplinary education is increasingly practiced across different academic levels and extensive research has examined its benefits, little is known about how students perceive such efforts, and this gap is especially salient in the context of graduate education, even as this context is a primary focus. Additionally, while definitions of interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary education depend on disciplinary cultures and academic institutions [9], [10], we know little about how graduate students' perceptions of these terms might differ across institutions globally. This lack of coherent conceptual definitions can hinder educators' abilities to design relevant strategies for cultivating a global interdisciplinary workforce capable of addressing complex challenges worldwide. Thus, this study explored engineering graduate students' conceptualizations of interdisciplinary education at two international study sites - one located in Finland and one located in the United States- since previous comparative research has primarily focused on disciplinary and institutional comparisons rather than global ones. These two countries were also selected because of known cultural and pedagogical differences between their approaches to interdisciplinary engineering education. Our dataset included 21 semi-structured interviews with graduate students, focusing on their conceptualizations and expectations of interdisciplinary education. Interviews were conducted separately at these two institutions. There were seven engineering and design graduate students from Finland and fourteen engineering graduate students from the U.S. Analysis was conducted through a comparative thematic analysis [11], focusing on the perspectives of Finnish versus U.S. graduate interdisciplinary engineering and design students. The findings of this study shed light on similarities and differences among engineering and design graduate students' conceptualizations of interdisciplinary education. By gaining these insights into these conceptualizations, we inform international engineering educators seeking to provide support for interdisciplinary graduate students across global contexts. Furthermore, our broadened understanding of students' perspectives supports the need for a conceptual and terminological alignment in the interdisciplinary education research field.