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In interdisciplinary studies, multiple definitions and practices proliferate. Interdisciplinarians such as William H. Newell claim that complex systems theory provides the rationale that we need to guide reform. However, complex systems theory alone cannot rationalize interdisciplinarity and inform what Ernest Boyer calls the scholarship of integration. Language and texts also play a key role. This claim is just as significant today as it was when Immanuel Kant noted the importance of texts in his controversial blueprint for higher education. Not only is Kant one of the fathers of modern philosophy and constructivism, but he is also a key architect of the disciplinary silos that instrumentalists such as Newell claim to oppose but indirectly reinforce through reductionist practices. A dialogic conceptual framework recalibrates these practices and their correlates, thus improving interdisciplinary education in the digital age. This article reveals that a study of Kantian architectonics and its dialogic reinterpretation by Mikhail Bakhtin has much to teach educators about interdisciplinarity as an agent for integrative learning and higher education reform.

As technological advancements and online education transform higher education, the achievement gap among students is widening rather than closing. Critics suggest that we need to reassess the promises of online education and the connectivism or network learning that is sometimes employed as its pedagogical underpinning. As scholars and practitioners struggle to define connectivism as a learning theory, many often exclude language as a feature in its conceptualization. This practice is at odds with architectonic thought, the philosophical tradition in which constructivist theories of learning are rooted. This article reveals the central role that language and texts play in architectonic thought and why they are inseparable from our understanding of knowledge and network learning. When we recognize language as a medium and model for reflection and criticality in the architectonic tradition, we are better positioned to use pedagogy and computer technology to transform online education and reorient our competing views of connectivism.

The coronavirus pandemic has heightened the sense of crisis in higher education, initiating a reconsideration of the conditions under which transformative change actually occurs. For some historians, the radical disruption of a social system occurs under four conditions: mass mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics. However, peace aids the return of inequality and its correlate, differentiation. Differentiation produces equality and inequality in education. Dismantling this simultaneity may be impossible without radical disruption. This study reveals how this conditionality challenges the egalitarian impulse in the rhetoric of reform and revolution espoused by change agents in academe. It marks the limits of these perspectives by surveying the academic models that treat differentiation as a feature rather than an anomaly in education.

Multicultural education is thought to consist of five dimensions: content integration, the knowledge-construction process, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture and social structure. Of the five, equity pedagogy is identified as an essential element by leading scholars in the field. Can equity pedagogy alone create the powerful learning experiences needed for multicultural education? This is an important question to consider as conservatism and dedifferentiation challenge multicultural education. If dedifferentiation is a recurring feature that impacts teachers and students, then we need a pedagogy that accounts for its significance. This article explores the ways a pedagogy of intertextuality responds to dedifferentiation and extends equity pedagogy for the development of future teachers and leaders.

Creating a more coherent and integrated curriculum in higher education is a perennial concern. Critics and philosophers such as Immanuel Kant--one of the fathers of our modern academic system--candidly describes the political, social, and economic influences that underwrite academic fragmentation and dysfunction. Despite its complex definitions and epistemological challenges, interdisciplinarity is often cited as an integral part of plans to reform curricula. This article explores some of those plans, and it challenges present conceptualizations of interdisciplinarity as a change agent. Based on a theoretical study of Kant and Mikhail Bakhtin, a dialogic approach is recommended for curriculum redesign, and failure is recognized as a permanent feature rather than an anomaly in the structure of higher education.