This item reports part of a exploration initiated in 2004 when pressures to achieve effective interdisciplinary thinking and action within Australian universities were on the rise. Industry and government depend routinely on clever, integrated analysis, and the world’s big problems increasingly demand multi-lateral thinkers and doers. Yet, even as university leaders were promising interdisciplinarity, signals at academic level were quite different. With reference to international and Australian debate, this paper: (a) distinguishes cross-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary (b) applies a new qualitative technique, the DRI Investigation (Direction, Response, Issues) (c) and for selected universities, locates policy responses to The Interdisciplinary Direction (d) then evaluates apparent actions in their Law courses/teaching and discusses alignment. Australian universities say they are building interdisciplinarity but this ‘action’ tends to be characterised by grouping discipline specialists on projects, each to think on and handle a part. While this may work to generate research and reports, because discipline experts hold-back from questioning another’s territory, new teaching and learning paradigms will not readily arise. Associated research and papers on SSRN - - Welsman, To Boldly go! Can Bright Students realise their Learning Potential at Universities? Proceedings RMIT Partnerships for World Graduates conference 11.2007. - Welsman, Double or nothing! Clever thinking, double-degree frustration and returns to Science. National Uniserve Symposium University of Sydney, 9.2007. - Welsman, A Science : Law stand-off. International dimensions, local implications.2004-2009. - Welsman, Fit For Purpose? A Consumer Look Into Qualitative Research Models. 2006
