You will write a 500-750 word essay in which you will:
1. Select a topic relevant to the COVID pandemic (access to health care, economic inequality, the global context of the pandemic, racial and ethnic disparities in contraction rate or access to the vaccine, political decision-making and leadership, etc).
2. Provide at least three scholarly or otherwise trustworthy sources on your topic, and justify your use. How do they help you understand the problem or issue? Why are they good sources? (Remember Evaluating Information Sources)
3. Assess your problem or issue from an interdisciplinary perspective and explain/analyze/interpret how an interdisciplinary approach might help provide new insights or perspectives in solving or helping the problem or issue. recommend using some of the following concepts to demonstrate your understanding:
Assumptions:
Things that are accepted as true or certain. [5]
Common ground:
That which is created between conflicting disciplinary insights, assumptions, concepts, or theories and makes integration possible. [6]
Complexity:
Having multiple parts that are connected and interact in sometimes unexpected (e.g., nonlinear) ways with each other. [6]
Critical interdisciplinarity: Questions disciplinary assumptions and ideological underpinnings. In some cases, it aims to replace the existing structure of knowledge (i.e., the disciplines) and the system of education based upon it. [3]
Critical pluralism: Belief that knowledge can be objective, but not certain and absolute as dualism assumes. [7]
Critical reflection: The process of analyzing, questioning, and reconsidering the activity (cognitive or physical) that you are engaged in. [3]
Critical thinking: The capacity to analyze, critique, and assess. [4]
Insights: Scholarly contributions to the clear understanding of a complex problem, object, or text. Insights may be found in published books or articles or in papers delivered at scholarly conferences. [3]
Interdisciplinary perspective taking: The intellectual capacity to view a complex problem, phenomenon, or behavior from multiple perspectives, including disciplinary ones, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of it. [5]
More comprehensive understanding: A cognitive advancement that results from integrating insights that produces a new whole that would not be possible using single disciplinary means. [9]
Perspective taking (interdisciplinary): The intellectual capacity to view a complex problem, phenomenon, or behavior from multiple perspectives, including disciplinary ones, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of it. [4, 6]