Crossing the boundaries - interdisciplinary practice

My interdisciplinary connections map:

'Cross-curricular', 'interdisciplinary', 'collaboration', 'integration': say them with a flourish of your wand and you have a spell from Harry Potter! But are these 'academic buzzwords' really that magical? Certainly, when watching the video on the Ross Spiral Curriculum one could be forgiven for thinking that some kind of wizardry was afoot - it was an interesting watch. I was intrigued by the idea that Ross uses cultural history as the core, with all other learning areas spiralling off it; for an historian and Social Studies specialist this is curriculum gold. The spiral is quite complicated though, and one needs to be mindful that Ross is a specialist school, not the standard state school that most of us are working in.

I found the video on Interdisciplinary Learning a more realistic, attainable goal in terms of interdisciplinary collaboration. In this video we see a  thematic approach, wherein the core subjects all teach the same theme, but using their own subject-specific language and skill set. This approach allows students to see the connections between subjects clearly. It's an approach that has been discussed at my school, but never really implemented. I can see the potential to create an interdisciplinary programme with the English and Drama faculty; the example in the video of 'Power and the abuse of power in Nazi Germany' would fit in perfectly with our current Human Rights unit in Social Studies. The difficulty would be getting buy-in for this theme from the English faculty and collaborating effectively with the teachers and Head of that Faculty.

ACRLog conceptual model for success of interdisciplinary teaching.

I know from experience that collaboration across faculties can be extremely difficult. Last year I was part of a new initiative at my school - a year 9 digital, project-based-learning class with an integrated curriculum. Four teachers - one from each of the four core learning areas of Social Sciences, English, Maths and Science - were told to 'go forth and collaborate'. It was a challenging experience. There were issues around lack of time for planning, misunderstanding of each other's learning areas, different concepts of the purpose of the initiative, reluctance to give up control of our individual subjects, and personality clashes and lack of trust amongst the team. If one looks at  the ACRLog conceptual model for success of interdisciplinary teaching, then almost everything was missing for us last year. However, after a year of experimentation and missteps, the programme may be looking more positive this year, without me though; I opted out.

Which is not to indicate that I'm a non-believer; as a Social Studies teacher, I already teach in a cross-curricular fashion, with units of learning that include a bit of science, maths, economics, literacy and drama. I can see how powerful a co-ordinated approach to interdisciplinary teaching and learning could be for our students. If anything, I have some doubts as to the efficacy of a fully integrated curriculum, particularly within our current school system. As Mathison and Freeman (1997) point out "little evidence is provided that illustrates that these [positive] outcomes occur".

Still, I have already approached the head of the English Faculty about the possibility of a cross-curricular programme and maybe, if we get it right, it could be a stepping stone to greater integration across the curriculum.


References:

A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Learning. (2015). Retrieved from http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration./

Interdisciplinary Learning [video file]. (2014, Oct 24). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA564RIlhME.

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: