Are Three Heads Better Than One? Reflections on Doing Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research

Abstract

This paper, coauthored by an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a sociologist, presents reflections on conducting a collaborative and interdisciplinary in-house study of students who left other occupations for teaching. Data for this account include two jointly constructed interview protocols, memos to students and other faculty members, and field notes taken by all three investigators as participant observers in a variety of contexts at the field site. We describe and analyze four dimensions of our qualitative mode of inquiry: initiation of the internal interdisciplinary collaboration, external collaboration with faculty advisors, external collaboration with students, and internal collaboration in the construction of the research narrative. The paper concludes with observations and recommendations on what facilitates and constrains the successful conduct of collaborative interdisciplinary research.