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Interdisciplinary Insights Needed

1) The document is a reflection paper from a student at Ateneo de Davao University discussing a fable called "The Fable of the Elephant House." 2) In the fable, a committee of experts from different fields comes together to design a house for elephants but fails because each expert only considers their own discipline without integrating insights from other disciplines. 3) The student argues that the committee's approach was multidisciplinary by placing insights side by side without integration, rather than taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines disciplines to find the best solution. Had the experts taken an interdisciplinary approach and consulted the elephants, the elephants may not have left the house after six months.

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50 views1 page

Interdisciplinary Insights Needed

1) The document is a reflection paper from a student at Ateneo de Davao University discussing a fable called "The Fable of the Elephant House." 2) In the fable, a committee of experts from different fields comes together to design a house for elephants but fails because each expert only considers their own discipline without integrating insights from other disciplines. 3) The student argues that the committee's approach was multidisciplinary by placing insights side by side without integration, rather than taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines disciplines to find the best solution. Had the experts taken an interdisciplinary approach and consulted the elephants, the elephants may not have left the house after six months.

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echo fate
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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ATENEO DE DAVAO UNIVERSITY

Interdisciplinary Studies
Summer, AY 2020-2021

Reflection Paper

Name (Surname, First Name) : Baluyot, Jericho


Course and Year : BSA – 1st year
IDS Code and Schedule : 16-050, Weekdays 5:15-7:05
Professor : OCDENARIA, JOSE MARIE
Reflection (One page only)
(Technicalities: 500-600 words; Single space, Book Antiqua-13)

As I have read the Fable of the Elephant House, I thought it was just a simple fable,
but it turns out that this fable illustrates a problem that is very rampant today. The
committee was created to build a house for the elephant. They are composed of
educated people that have expertise in different fields. Several issues arose as they
were discussing how the house must be built. Some of the issues they addressed were
the appropriate materials to be used, the number of elephants to live in the house, and
other modifications to fit the elephant’s hobbies. The experts are disciplinary experts,
which means that they only focus on their desired fields. Upon planning, they used
the “divide and conquer” strategy of disciplinary reductionism as the experts focus on
their specialties to make it easy for them building the house of the elephant. Their
mistake was they applied disciplinary reductionism since they divided the task of
building the elephant’s house into parts and simply combined their separate learnings
to come up with a solution to the problem. It was also stated in the article that the
Fable of the Elephant House illustrates a multidisciplinary approach which means
placing side by side of insights from two or more disciplines without attempting to
integrate them. It is not wrong that a multidisciplinary approach was illustrated in the
fable but because they failed to see the project as a whole and never asked themselves
to view it not from their narrow understanding but from a perspective that focuses on
the whole. For example, the Architect, being the Head of the operation could be the
one who would question their methods but instead allowed all the suggestions of
other experts in the final design without proper consultation as to the effectiveness of
the building as a whole. It was evident that interdisciplinarity is not present in the
fable since it does not only place side by side of insights but it also integrates different
disciplines to come up with the absolute solution to the problem. If only they had
questioned each expert’s concepts and created one and integrated design, then there’s
a higher possibility that the Elephants may not have moved out after six months.
Transdisciplinary approach suggests that those who are considered as subjects should
be considered as participants this time around. They would have known the
preferences and lifestyle of the elephant to assess where to focus in improving their
plan on building the elephant’s house. In conclusion, the dissatisfaction of the
elephant is caused by the shortcomings of the experts by relying too much on
multidisciplinary and not including the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
approach in the making of the Elephant’s House.

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