The Autonomous Major Selection System and Interdisciplinary General Education: Educational Approaches to Building Disciplinary Grounding

The Autonomous Major Selection System provides students the opportunity to explore diverse academic disciplines before declaring a major, with the aim of cultivating interdisciplinary understanding of traversing disciplinary boundaries. The expansion of this system reflects a growing demand for innovation in higher education, underscoring the significance of interdisciplinary general education in the first-year curriculum. The first year of university is a formative period in which students begin to develop disciplinary understanding; without a sufficient disciplinary grounding, participation in interdisciplinary education may hinder the intellectual engagement and interaction essential for meaningful integration. Thus, identifying effective pedagogical approaches to fostering disciplinary grounding is crucial for the successful implementation of interdisciplinary general education. This study examines the significance of disciplinary grounding within interdisciplinary general education and explores educational approaches along three key dimensions: (1) fostering a adequacy of interdisciplinary breath by enabling students to grasp core concepts and methods specific to each disciplinary; (2) providing tailored support that reflects differences in the level and nature of disciplinary grounding required across fields; and (3) extending beyond content-based grounding to foster meta-disciplinary understanding and disciplinary humility, thereby equipping students to critically reflect on and reconcile differences across disciplines. By articulating these dimensions, this study seeks to advance scholarly discussion on disciplinary grounding as a foundation for first-year students’ academic growth and interdisciplinary understanding. It also aims to offer a theoretical and practical insights for reconfiguring the curricular roadmap of higher education to better support the cultivation of interdisciplinary talent.