Week 31: : My interdisciplinary connection map

My current and potential interdisciplinary connections.

As a secondary teacher of Geography and Social Sciences and passionate about both my subject areas. Teaching both these subjects have allowed for interdisciplinary collaborations with teachers and experts outside in the field. Social studies has allowed, I believe, for the greatest collaboration and innovation opportunities. As NCEA constraints in our senior subjects still force many teachers to stick to their silo subject areas for fear of disruption and failing to meet many expectations of communities. The junior discipline of social studies I feel I have more flexibility as it is topic or thematic based and often I can pose a problem, inquiry and hands on activities for students to achievement or excel, incorporate all key competencies and the 21^st Century skills. Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997) describe this as a typical interdisciplinary model.

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Savage Earth Year 9 Social Studies Unit.

This Unit could certainly go school wide for incorporating the technologies investigating and preparing recipes and meals from the 1930’s. Modelled on the idea from the art deco weekend depression dinner. Dressing up as deco at school, so looking at 1930’s fashion. Technology could be also looking at the transport and telecommunications that were around at that time and in particular the use of Morse code that was used to by the HMS Veronica to signal for help from other vessels during the Earthquake. I’m sure physical education could look into the games and sports played in the 1930’s. All of this could be put into a 1930’s art deco day, where students participate hands on, perhaps it could also be a fundraising exercise where money goes towards a local Hawke’s Bay Charity.

How might the joint planning, decision-making, and goal-setting take place?

The start of the planning process could be done digitally, collaborative online spaces, like trello, Facebook groups, google docs etc., but eventually a face to face meeting needs to happen as people do express their ideas in different ways. But ultimately the decision for a major project would have to come from the top down.

The benefits of this revamped Unit will allow our Year 9 students to build on prior knowledge, but also create new knowledge and problem solving. They are used to having a home room teacher and working interdisciplinary at intermediate and primary school, I believe if we started the year with this approach we may see greater rapport built with our students, as conversations would extend from ‘today in science we learnt about subduction zones’ (I’ve already had this conversation with my Year 9 Students) or in English ‘we have been writing about how it would have been if we were at school during the 1931 Earthquake’ these are the types of conversations that could enter all our classrooms. This allows for greater understanding of concepts and skills and reinforcement of knowledge learnt in other curriculum areas.

I think this is the toughest challenge getting buy in from people from the silos. As mostly it is a time issue and for schools to allow this to happen then there must be time available to plan a time when all staff involved in a project are mostly available. The second challenge would be changing the mind-set of the community, teachers, parents and students, that in this particular unit we are trying to teach the key competencies and 21^st Century skills, rather than strictly assessing to the Achievement Objectives outlined in all subject areas. I think that the way we assess our seniors will have to change to allow for the interdisciplinary teaching to become naturally occurring and support our 21^st century learners.

References:

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: