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The pandemic of 2020 has renewed interest in technology as an integrative agent in higher education. However, advancements in technology continue to outpace the scholarship of integration in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), even though American educator Ernest Boyer valued it as an area of continuous interdisciplinary inquiry. This thought piece calls for a reconsideration of Boyer's appreciation of integration as convergence or "intertextuality." Intertextuality and its digital correlate or "hypertextuality" operationalize online education. Yet, they are often ignored as modes of convergence that challenge disciplinarity. This paradox signals a need for a scholarly discourse and framework that can help educators to (re)conceptualize the inherently integrative nature of knowledge and online education. To address this deficit in the SoTL, this meta-synthesis evidences Peircean architectonics as the paradigm that reframes our understanding of convergence and illuminates its actualization in Canadian educator Terry Anderson's prototype for online education theory. Architectonic logic enriches this model and provides online educators with a common discourse and interdisciplinary framework that will advance the scholarship of integration in online education.

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.

In interdisciplinary education, metaphors often provide the epistemological clarity that is lacking in our definitions and theories of interdisciplinarity. The problem is that ineffective and unsubstantiated metaphors proliferate. We lack a root metaphor or shared world view of interdisciplinarity. Is it time that we move away from thinking in terms of metaphors? Some instrumentalists in interdisciplinary studies argue yes and propose a pragmatic constructionist approach for interdisciplinary education. This theoretical study determines that this proposal is incomplete. It reveals that an intertextual view of interdisciplinarity is not only more appropriate, but it integrates the competing theoretical and pedagogical approaches in the field. This article also identifies "the matrix" as the metaphor best positioned to sustain this integration and to bridge the widening gap between disciplines.

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.

Jeremy Dennis is a photographer and visual artist living and working in Southampton, New York. He is a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation; a federally recognised tribe of historically Algonquian-speaking Native Americans based at the eastern end of Long Island, New York. He received his MFA from Pennsylvania State University in 2016, and in the same year, was one of only two artists in the USA awarded the Harpo Native American Residency Fellowship. In his work, Jeremy channels his experiences as an indigenous artist to explore and expand upon issues relating to identity, assimilation and post-colonialism. Through a combination of digitally manipulated photography, site-specific installation, performance and documentation, Dennis attempts to create multi-dimensional conversations around local and broader contemporary Native American issues, whilst also referencing its rich and complex history. jeremynative.com

As connectivism is increasingly accepted as a theory of learning for the digital age, scholars and practitioners in education often overlook the dilemma that this creates for its most ardent advocates. In the academic literature, we increasingly find scholarly works that present insouciant descriptions of connectivism. However, such practices often underplay or ignore critiques of connectivism, allowing many of our contentions about its epistemological character and pedagogical effectiveness to calcify. In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to rationalize why so many educators have endorsed connectivism as a new theory of learning when there continues to be a need for more empirical testing and greater philosophical substantiation. To illustrate this paradox, this paper examines Stephen Downes’s consideration of connectivism and his connectivist model of literacy. Using the dialogic philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin, it introduces an architectonic model of connectivism and multiliteracies as an alternative discourse and pedagogical paradigm. A key finding from this study suggests that the lack of attention to capitalist practices, power, and the intermediality of texts in networked learning help to conceal the ways in which connectivist practices rearticulate behaviorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crown rot caused by Fusarium pseudograminearumand/or F. culmorumaffects all winter-grown cereals in south-eastern Australia. Control of crown rot relies heavily on a break from cereals to decrease inoculum borne on plant residues in the soil. This study used quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction to measure the DNA of the crown rot pathogens in soil before and after cereal and non-cereal treatments in six field trials (four in Victoria, two in South Australia). Levels of F. pseudograminearumand F. culmorumDNA were highest after cereals (particularly durum and barley) and lowest after non-cereals (particularly field pea and fallow). F. pseudograminearumand F. culmorumgenerally responded to treatments in a similar manner. Some sites were more responsive to treatment than others, although the relative effects of the treatments were consistent at all sites. This study demonstrates that it is possible to decrease crown rot inoculum (and so decrease the risk of yield loss from this disease) by use of non-cereals in crop sequences. The potential for predicting the effect of a treatment on levels of Fusariumspp. DNA in soil is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]