7) Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Where I’m at

The concept map above shows that last year at our school we were working in our own silos with minimal connection between learning areas. This year, as we progress towards an ILE for our junior school, we are trying to connect learning for Year 9 students across their core subjects. We are only at the early stages of this connectedness, still grappling with team teaching and organizing 60 students together. A school goal is to connect learning this year and progress to more integrated learning in the future.

My Goal

My goal for this year is to make meaningful connections across all the core curriculum learning areas. In order to do this our community of practice (CoP - the 5 teachers in our ‘hub’) have weekly meetings and frequent 1-on-1 discussions. It is a challenge collaborating with four other teachers but so far it seems to be working pretty well. I believe we have most of the qualifiers (workplace conditions, qualities/attitudes and common goals – see Kugan’s blog¹) to make this interdisciplinary approach work, it is mainly experience we lack, as we are all new to working in this way. We are timetabled to teach in pairs and so far, rather than real team teaching, we are taking turns to lead the learning. As a result we are often not even connecting the learning very well. We have a lot to learn.

Benefits and Challenges

Mathison & Freeman (1997)² explore the reasoning behind using an interdisciplinary approach in the school curriculum. Their synthesis shows that there are sound arguments for such an approach, although more research is required to prove that these methods actually work. Jones³ also concludes that skills of critical thinking, communication, creativity, pedagogy and content knowledge will be advanced through an interdisciplinary approach. This comes with a price: it is time-consuming and demands good collaboration amongst teachers.

Our CoP understand the rationale behind the interdisciplinary approach and can see potential benefits (see my Word Cloud). We are putting in a lot of time to collaborate and plan effectively so that we better prepare our students for their future.

Hitting the NCEA wall

The way I see it, integration at the junior high school level is, given time to learn ourselves, quite doable. However we are very limited by the NCEA structure. Once students hit Year 11 they have very subject-specific content they need to know to meet the NCEA Achievement Standards.

I can see limited ways to integrate in the senior school. An example from our school is an AgScience course. This is an interdisciplinary senior course between science (biology & chemistry), agriculture and horticulture. It seems a sensible step that will better meet the needs of a number of students and also fits into the NCEA system as standards are selected from both learning areas. I would be really interested to hear how other schools are taking on the challenge of integrating learning at the senior level while still working within the constraints of NCEA.

Rethink the curriculum?

I was very interested to learn about the Ross Learning system⁴. It provides a highly structured, detailed K-12 curriculum that truly integrates and connects learning areas. Learning is progressively built around integrated narratives which are developed through threads, connected studies, and which serve to grow core values, multiple intelligences, creative & critical thinking skills.

One of the strengths of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) that it is not prescriptive and allows for a multitude of learning pathways. The Ross Learning Spiral⁵ on the other hand, is a far more structured and rigorous curriculum. While being quite prescriptive it appears to have many opportunities for individual and group exploration. Examples of detailed resources shows how integration can actually work. I love it! A Ross student says in a video⁶ “[My school] has prepared me to think in an interdisciplinary way not just study in that way”.

Surely this is what we are aiming for!

References:

¹The Scholarly Teacher. (2015). Establishing & Maintaining Transdisciplinary Courses. Retrieved from http://scholarlyteacher.com/2015/10/22/establishing-maintaining-transdisciplinary-courses/

²Mathison, 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

³Jones, C. (2009). Interdisciplinary approach - Advantages, disadvantages, and the future benefits of interdisciplinary studies. ESSAI7 (26), 76-81. Retrieved from http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=essai

⁴Ross Institute. (2015). Ross Learning System overview. Retrieved from http://rossinstitute.org/mobile/ross-learning-system/overview/

⁵Ross Institute. (2015). Ross Learning Spiral. Retrieved from http://spiral.rosslearningsystem.org/spiral/#/

⁶Ross Institute. (2015, July 5). Ross Spiral Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Science. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHZhkB0FJik