Week 31 Activity 7: My interdisciplinary
connection map
1. Identifying your current
and potential interdisciplinary connections.
2: Select one of the potential interdisciplinary
connections from your map as your near future goal
One potential interdisciplinary connection that I
would like to explore more involves English/ICT/Mathematics.
Our Junior students explore designing nets for 3D
objects. It is cool to use stop-motion technology to show the flat card folding
together into a 3D object as if by magic. Students would be challenged to
develop a storyline and in collaborative groups create a short stop-motion
video which uses one or more of the 3D folded objects.
For the planning all 3 teachers
(English/ICT/Mathematics) would have to get together and decide the space and
materials needed, the project criteria and time frame.
Benefits of interdisciplinary practice:
-Team work, portfolios and inquiry
learning gives students more of a sense of personal growth
-Students are more involved in their
learning. There are more innovation opportunities.
-Students see life through many
perspectives. Real world knowledge is connected and multi-faceted.
-Any disciplinary field is enriched and
inspired by ideas and methods from other fields
-Learning can be hindered when it remains
in silos
-With cooperative real world problem
solving learners are developing as meaningful members of the community
-Students have greater opportunity to
make decisions, think critically and creatively, and synthesize knowledge
beyond the disciplines
-Learners gain a better overall grasp of global connections,
along with the development of multiple perspectives
Challenges of interdisciplinary practice
“The other potential problem is what Jacobs
(1989) calls the 'potpourri problem' where courses become a sampling of a
little bit of this and a little bit of that without an overall, coherent
structure or scope. The general consensus is that the choice of a theme or
activity should promote "progress towards significant educational goals,
not merely because it cuts across subject-matter lines” Mathison and
Freeman (1997)
- Teachers and students can be isolated from the
core of their field and be focussed on the fringes.
-As a teacher of Mathematics I find it a vast and
wonderful subject which doesn’t always need to be artificially incorporated
into a ‘real life’ problem or combined in an inter-disciplinary event.
Mathematics can be enjoyed for the power and elegance of doing Mathematics.
- With languages, grammar and spelling must be
drilled and likewise in Mathematics, time needs to be spent practicing basic
algebra and number skills without creating extra non-mathematical difficulties.
- There is a challenge to coordinate the classes, maintain
student engagement, coordinate groups when students are absent or involved with
co-curricular activities, be fair to students’ workload, cover the standards
sufficiently and have tasks that meet the criteria for Achieve to Excellence.
Overall lessons take more time and collaboration to
create but students and teachers advance in critical thinking, communication
and creativity. There needs to be a balance between deep and shallow tasks.
Students need to acquire basic skills as well as be able to dig deeper and
apply the knowledge in authentic interdisciplinary problem solving.
References
Jones,
C.(2009). Interdisciplinary approach - Advantages, disadvantages, and the
future benefits of interdisciplinary studies. ESSAI7 (26), 76-81.
Mathison,S.,& Freeman,
M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, Chicago, 1997.
No comments:
Post a Comment