Interdisciplinary Learning

  

Interdisciplinary Learning

Interdisciplinary teaching and learning happen when students combine learning from multiple disciplines to come up with new ways to solve problems (MacLeod, 2018). While teaching math to middle school, whenever I got stuck on the ‘how do I teach this concept’, I would reach out to my colleagues from different subjects. I always found that not only would they be able to give a way forward, but it would also be in a way that their subject would get connected. For example, a music teacher who played table showed how the beats of table are connected with fractions and gave a demo to the kids. The kids followed up with a research and presentation on ‘music and maths’. In a school with various subjects, it is easy to incorporate interdisciplinary teaching to foster learning by collaborating with other teachers (Edutopia, 2015).

This is especially useful iin math for that math is everywhere. The square table you use, the cylindrical water bottle you are holding, the conical ice cream, the prism as your classroom, the bank statement is simple addition and subtraction and the price of any item needs cost and revenue equations. Hence, in the interest of presenting a realistic picture to the kids, we could try to create and execute interdisciplinary lesson plans.

Implications

“Some learners perceive their world as a whole, where all things are interconnected and dependent upon each other. These integrated students face major challenges in coping with our dominant educational, social, and economic systems, which tend to present information in a linear fashion without the necessity of integration into meaningful context (Edwards, 2002)”. These are the kids who benefit most from interdisciplinary lessons. The benefit to teachers who come together is an improvement in sharpness of thinking and pedagogical skills across the board. Administration would focus on professional development of the teachers and hence the climate becomes like a family where a common vision is practiced. The community benefits for the kids grow up with a wholistic learning and confidence in multiple career paths. However, before plunging into it fully, one needs to evaluate the strengths and limitations thereby taking an informed decision.

Advantages of Interdisciplinary Learning(IBO, 2014, p.6)

There are three categories of benefits on can explore as a result of interdisciplinary learning, (a) Benefits to the student, (b) benefits to the teacher, and (c) benefits to the school.

Benefits to the student

·         Students use knowledge domains creatively to obtain new understanding.

·         Engagement with others develops mental flexibility.

·         The tasks become complex and that improves mental rigour.

·         The life skill of collaboration is instilled.

·         Transfer of learning from one domain from the other is fostered.

Benefits to the teachers

·         They can come out of the comfort zones of subject expertise and develop a holisttic understanding of concepts.

·         Increased collaboration across subject groups improves collegiality.

·         Working together helps manage time effectively.

·         It is a professional development opportunity with colleagues from other disciplines.

·         Collaboration among teachers helps create a standard way to teach all students of same grades.

Benefits to the school

·         Improvement in results as differentiated learning is possible.

·         Improvement in school climate due to teachers' & students’ collaboration.

·         Improvement in thinking and life skills in students which in turn benefits the school.

·         Students become interdisciplinary thinkers to analyze and create new ideas (Int_blogadmin, 2021). This prepares them for college and professional growth.

Disadvantages of Interdisciplinary Learning

It might be hard to build an entire curriculum around interdisciplinary learning and hence it could be relegated to fewer topics in the curriculum. Concentration in main disciplines may reduce for it is seen that “professors who focus on interdisciplinary studies isolate themselves from the core of their field” (Jones, 2009).

At times domain specificity does not allow interdisciplinary work (MacLeod, 2018) for the subject needs a disciplined focus. For example, when learning how to solve a quadratic equation using mid-term splitting, I may wish to focus on the method and not the connection with other disciplines. I do not need an interactive expertise; hence interdisciplinary collaboration is unachievable.

There were times when my kids would get confused about the variety of ideas introduced during interdisciplinary teaching. It led to cognitive overload, especially for the special needs' groups. Too much variety may hinder learning for students who need for a certain topic repetition and familiarity (Cassady, n.d). Some students do better in a structured environments with repetition and familiarity. The exposure to an open creative space is not viable for them.

Conclusion.

While an integrated approach to learning will help future leaders for the 21 century and give to the school a harmonious environment for work, care needs to be taken that the activities are authentic and not force fits. One can start small and iterate on the way to greater depth and width.