What?
To start this week's study, I asked myself the most basic question, 'What is interdisciplinary teaching?' Wikipedia tells me it is, ' is a method, or set of methods, used to teach a unit across different curricular disciplines.' An example of this might be my current unit on Conflict. I am teaching social sciences and integrating both reading and writing into it, plus my students are using conflict as their theme in art and music.
As an International Baccalaureate school which uses the Primary Years Programme, we teach the curriculum through six themes over the course of the year. The expectation is that all programmes taught are to fit in with the current theme. I feel I do a reasonably good job of this, except with including maths, which I feel gets watered down by trying to fit it into the theme (for example, I am teaching mult/div at the moment, and I can't legitimately fit into conflict).
This means that when I read that the topic for this week was interdisciplinary teaching, I felt a little smug, right until I did my research. I was interested to read about Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Andrews (1990) defines interdisciplinary collaboration as occurring "when different professionals, possessing unique knowledge, skills, organizational perspectives, and personal attributes, engage in coordinated problem solving for a common purpose" (cited in Berg-Weger &. Schneider, 1998).
So What?
I had never stopped to reflect on my personal collaboration with other teachers, both within and outside my school. Then I asked myself why it just has to be teachers, what about experts, clubs, and community groups, not to mention all the expertise parents have?
I created this map of my current and possible interdisciplinary collaborations. The ones I am using are in green, and the ones I'm not, but could be using are in red:
As you can see on the map, there is an awful lot of red - opportunities that I am missing.
I feel that it is really clear that I'm not making the most of other teachers and schools as well as experts, both in my community as well as nationally and internationally. I asked myself why I'm not doing this. Time is a factor, but also my personality - I am very shy when it comes to meeting new people and as well as not wanting to burden people - I constantly ask myself why people would want to take the time to talk to my class or to answer my questions or even mentor me when they have important jobs and businesses or organisations to run.
Does it matter that I tend to silo my students within my classroom? What are the benefits of interdisciplinary teaching? Casey Jones (2009) summarises the benefits, "Students and their teachers will advance in critical thinking, communication, creativity, pedagogy, and essential academia with the use interdisciplinary techniques (p.80). Therefore, it is something I need to facilitate, for my students.
Now What?
My next step will be planned for when I'm working with my team right at the start of a theme when we decide what we want the students to achieve and how we're going to do it. This is the place when we could ask ourselves who the experts are and who we are going to approach for help. For example, I can email parents, tell them what is coming up and ask if they or anyone they know has something to contribute to the theme.
If I want my teaching to grow in the ways I envisage, I need to connect with classes, schools, and experts, no matter who they are or where they are. And that is going to require me to be brave and start asking for help and support as well as making connections.
References
Berg-Weger, M., &. Schneider, F. D. (1998). Interdisciplinary collaboration in social work. Journal of Social Work Education, 34, 97-107.
Jones, 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
Interdisciplinary Teaching (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved July 1, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdisciplinary_teaching
No comments:
Post a Comment