Mathison and Freeman stated in the conclusion of their study that those involved in interdisciplinary studies found the experiences favourable with positive outcomes including: active inquiry rather than passive rote learning; a student centered curriculum rather than discipline centered one; teaching of cognitive skills associated with real life problem solving; collaboration and making connections; diminishing scheduling problems and motivated students. However, Mathison and Freeman did state that there was little evidence provided as to whether these positive outcomes to integrated learning actually occurred and that there was a need for on going research to find out what is really happening in interdisciplinary classrooms and what the impact on teaching is.
Two potential connections that I have become more aware of and are my near future goals are an interdisciplinary approach around authentic learning and student centered learning. This term my students started looking at how we can make a difference in our world. The students looked at our school environment and combined this with the information they got from our principal who had recently visited her son who is working as a doctor in Cape Town and they came up with the idea of wanting to sponsor a child in Africa. They contacted the World Vision education liaison officer and, through Skype, asked questions and gained a deeper understanding of the impact of sponsoring a child. They have been put in touch with another school in our community who is already sponsoring a child. The upshot of all this has been them planning and running a market day for the school and the community. They have developed themes and put themselves into groups.
In line with the observations Mathison and Freeman made in their study, whilst my room is humming, and there is heaps of collaboration and problem solving going on, we haven't done maths, writing and specific reading for what seems like weeks and I am not sure what the impact on the student's learning has been! The students have written persuasive emails to our principal and board, made up order forms and fliers, designed posters, come up with questions for world vision, calculated costs, counted money. How do I prove that real learning is happening? How do I assess it? What do I write on my reports? Are any students going under the radar? It looks chaotic, I am having to bribe the cleaner and there is a continuous pile of stuff everywhere. Is real learning happening? Is it student centered? As Mathison and Freeman imply, there are heaps of unanswered questions but my gut feeling is that it is definitely worth pursuing and it is a direction I want to head in for the second part of this year. However with this interdisciplinary curriculum approach in my classroom, there is certainly a need for more robust evidence and data to be collected and more checkpoints that need to be assigned along the way.
Jacobs, H., (1989b). Interdisciplinary curriculum. Design and implementation. Alexandria,VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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:
Amanda what an awesome classroom you describe! I love the whole idea of the children chasing the knowledge. You correctly identify the assessment challenges and this is where accountability can suffocate passion and motivation. It sounds like the children are having rich conversations, critical thinking and problem solving and using a range of tools and knowledge to show empathy and kindness in a world becoming unkind and cold. I think I would rather my child be part of your environment than many others. Well done and please keep up with the gut feeling.
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