Contrary to disciplinary logic: Revisiting undergraduate education through the action research experience from an interdisciplinary perspective

Abstract

This paper synthesizes the doctoral thesis that had the interdisciplinarity of learning in undergraduate programs as its object of study. The investigation was developed in a Brazilian university, and contemplated the development process of a new academic unit and the pedagogical projects of the undergraduate programs connected to it. Four deans of institutes, eight coordinators of undergraduate programs, the pedagogical coordinator and a group of selected professors participated in the study. A qualitative action research was carried out, with the general objective to analyze to what extent the collective development of the Political-Pedagogical Project of the Education and Humanities School managed to break the disciplinary logic, taking interdisciplinarity as a principle of the undergraduate degrees’ Pedagogical Project. Amongst the findings of the study, it is highlighted the adequacy of the action research method which provided the exercise of interdisciplinarity by the participants, through the combination of three elements in the programs’ curricular organization, supporting the rupture of disciplinary logic - themes, competencies and projects - as well as the fundamental role of the collective construction of the school’s Pedagogical Project and the undergraduate programs, so that the professors could build their identities surrounding the formative project to which they belong and for which they are co-responsible.