Interdisciplinary curriculum in higher education: Its quiddity and modality

In recent years, interdisciplinary areas or Interdisciplinarity is of crucial importance as one of the most significant areas of research in education in general and higher education in particular. In majority of higher education systems in the world, investment in integrated courses in three levels of BS, MS and PhD has become a routine practice. A vivid example of such case is handfuls of ongoing research projects in complex areas of science at prestigious academic institutions in countries such as USA and Canada. These institutions are often seeking for training academic experts in MS and PhD levels in one hand and on the other hand, higher education experts are experiencing some serious questions that have arisen from some basic facts from investigation in the area of interdisciplinary curricula. These questions are to be answered: How should we define and train interdisciplinary educational materials for a group of people with different educational backgrounds, abilities and experiences? What are concerned Issues in interdisciplinary approaches? How is it possible to design an interdisciplinary area for different levels of academic education i.e. BS, MS and PhD? In this article, we tried to review literature in interdisciplinary fields of higher education to appropriately response to these questions and lots of others; we tried to refer to the results and outcomes of such newly-born fields of study as well. In another part of this article, we studied the theoretical principles of interdisciplinary approach. We also probed into what is called “complex sciences” with the aim of finding its impacts on interdisciplinary curriculum in higher education.