Interdisiplinary teaching

As a primary school teacher I teach all disciplines during my work day. Traditionally primary education looks at a ‘theme’ during ‘topic or inquiry’. For example we may teach about life cycles during our afternoon slot, read about life cycles in reading, write about life cycles in writing and carry out statistical investigations around life cycles. This model shows children how knowledge can be used in a variety of ways. ThomasMcDonaghGroup (2011) state interdisciplinary leads to innovation and new ideas. I have seen this first hand in the classroom where suddenly all the learning about a topic clicks and students start questioning and wondering how and why things are as they are. This model of teaching and learning is fantastic for children learning about their world however I feel strongly that it could produce fantastic results in a secondary school environment where young adults have more sophisticated thinking skills. I found the Ross Institute video (Ross Institute, 2015) a really interesting look at how this model could work in a secondary setting. Mathison and Freeman (1997) state interdisciplinarity seeks to combine two or more disciplines to enhance learning while still keeping each area distinct. I think this would work well in our currently ‘siloed’ secondary system as each subject is still taught as a subject while following the systems thinking model of the Ross Learning System (2015).

After reading the Mathison and Freeman (1997) article I began reflecting on my own practice. Their definitions of different forms of interdisciplinary teaching were really interesting.

We have been referring to our practice as integrated however based on their definitions I think we might need to reword this to interdisciplinary as our practice still differentiates between subject areas, we do have some ‘cross over’ however I’m not sure we're quite there yet. I would like to move towards integrated over time once our students are used to the expectations and routines of our classroom. We have some thinking to do around how this could look for 3 teachers and 76 children. At the moment group based teaching is the best way to manage these numbers which limits opportunities for complete integration. I would be interested to hear other people’s ideas on this!

ThomasMcDonaghGroup. ( 2011, May 13). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA

Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/mathisonlogic12004.pdf:

Ross Institute. (2015, July 5). Ross Spiral Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Science. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHZhkB0FJik