Week 31

Professional Context- Crossing Boundaries

Create a blog post where you first draw a map which demonstrates your current and potential interdisciplinary professional connections Identify one of the potential interdisciplinary connections from your map as your near future goal. Then, critically discuss the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary practice in relation to the identified connection.

When I stop and think about how my teaching has changed in the last few years I am actually quite amazed.  It is fair to say that the biggest shift in both my teaching and my mindset has happened in the last couple of years since I have started working at St Francis of Assisi and with the introduction of Project Based Learning (PBL). I didn’t realise how “connected” I have become.

As Mathison and Freeman point out, the introducing of two or more disciplines, pedagogical approaches, skills and people is not a new concept.  This concept goes as far back as the 1920’s.  In order to discuss Interdisciplinary connections, we first need to know what interdisciplinary means.  Interdisciplinary “involves the bringing together of two or more things under one roof” (Mathison &Freeman, 1997)

I see many benefits of the interdisciplinary approach.  Jones (2009) states “the interdisciplinary approach provides many benefits that develop into much needed lifelong learning skills that are essential to a student’s future learning.”  Jones (2009) goes on to say that “ Interdisciplinary techniques are not only important for a student to learn any one single discipline or solve problem in a synthesized manner, but it also enriches a student’s lifelong learning habits, academic skills, and personal growth.”

The Ross spiral curriculum encourages an interdisciplinary cohesive integrated programme.   Students acquire the skills native to each discipline and examine the world as a hierarchy of interconnected systems.  This could be related to PBL because it has a focus on the ‘process’ as well as the ‘knowledge’.  The children need to show they can apply that knowledge to their everyday lives.  Project based learning lends itself well to interdisciplinary learning because it is follows a theme and a process and has a final authentic “product” as its destination so it helps students gain a deeper understanding of a particular topic through engaging and, of course, authentic tasks.

If I am to delve into my own practice, I feel that I cannot help but be an interdisciplinary teacher to some extent because I am part of a team where we work and plan collaboratively.  Dr Deana McDonagh (2011) explains that we should be encouraging our students to see life through a variety of lenses and perspectives.  I believe that working collaboratively is a step in the right direction to ensuring this happens. In today’s education system we need to be constantly aware of the individual learning needs and therefore, we often find ourselves bringing in a number of outside agencies to help us with our planning and help us to create programmes which will provide best practice for the individual learners.  If you study the mind map below you will notice there is a wide range of internal and external connections. Each and every connection is important and provides a different perspective to a situation and often fresh ideas.  This reminds me of the saying that “it takes a whole village to raise a child.”  I have identified this as an area for future focus.  If I am to be teaching PBL and using authentic topics and problems for my children, then I need to look more closely at my external connections so that I can draw upon the expertise and knowledge of other professionals and community members to help enhance our PBL. I take a great deal of comfort from knowing that I don’t always have to know everything and that there are other people who are know more about certain topics and who can be of support with particular subjects that I can call on.

REFERENCES:

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

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