Abstract

The paper is based on lessons from a multidisciplinary learning project in the Amazon, and discusses these within a larger context of multi-level constraints against effective multi- and interdisciplinary learning experiences. These levels are multifold and range from conventional academic compartmentalization, institutional structures in education, adapted compartmentalized learning patterns, competing and disconnected epistemic learning communities, underlying structures of knowledge domains and institutional categorization to dominant world views and paradigmatic assumptions that affect our formalized education with regards to conservation and development. The paper suggests and identifies several resistance levels that discourage, hinder, or even impede, interdisciplinary bridges in our learning and thinking about conservation and development as observed throughout the field school experience.