Unlike some other trends in teaching, interdisciplinary education has captured and held the interest of teachers. What accounts for the lasting appeal of interdisciplinary teaching?
One reason is that it allows teachers to organize the curriculum around themes, problems, or essential questions that students find more engaging than discipline-bound instruction.
"It's the natural way that human beings learn," says Suzanne Krogh of Western Washington University, author of The Integrated Early Childhood Curriculum. Daily life constantly calls on us to cross disciplines, she notes. When buying a car, for example, a consumer must read about different cars (English), analyze numerical data (math), negotiate with sellers (social skills), and so on. Schools shouldn't always break life experiences into fragmented subject areas, Krogh believes—and many educators today agree with her.
But interdisciplinary teaching represents a major departure from past practice. How can educators ensure that efforts to blend the subject areas are successful?
When planning interdisciplinary curriculum, teachers should be sure to "make it meaningful to the kids," advises Joan Grady, a senior program associate with the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL) in Aurora, Colo. Teachers should tap into local issues, Grady suggests. If students can see the relevance to their own lives, they will put more effort into their schoolwork.
- At a high school in North Dakota, teachers of physics, algebra, and English used the school building itself as the focus of a problem-solving project for 11th and 12th grade students. The school had been designed during the early '70s as an "open space"; interior walls had been added later. As a result, some classrooms were numbingly cold while others were too hot.Teachers asked students to examine the school's heating and ventilating system to discover the cause of the problems, then research and propose a solution. After students had presented their solutions to their classmates, the class chose the best one—which was then proposed to the principal and school board. "Obviously, the kids had a lot of buy-in," Grady says.
- At a rural school in Colorado, teachers asked students to advise the town government as to which of two local industries—ranching or mining—should be encouraged, based on the effects each had on the environment and the economy. One group of students who promoted ranching produced a videotape making the case for raising buffalo instead of cattle.
- At a Texas school in a town having trouble with its drinking water quality, teachers asked students to investigate the cause of the problem and to suggest ways to solve it without hurting the local economy.
Grady emphasizes that teachers need administrative support if efforts such as these are to succeed. "Administrators don't understand that it takes a lot more planning time" to create interdisciplinary curriculum, she says. Too often, such lessons get designed "between two and four a.m."
Scheduling is also critical to the success of efforts to fuse subject areas, says education consultant Heidi Hayes Jacobs, editor of ASCD's Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation. Schools must find ways to schedule opportunities for teachers to work together, and to provide longer blocks of time for students to pursue interdisciplinary projects, she believes. The flexibility or rigidity of the schedule can be the determining factor, Jacobs says: "Schedule is destiny."
Efforts to integrate subject areas are more likely to succeed if teachers learn about group process and develop the skills, such as negotiation, that will help them collaborate, says Pat Wasley, a senior researcher with the Coalition of Essential Schools at Brown University. Particularly at the high school level, teachers can influence others positively and "sail along," or they can alienate others and draw battle zones, Wasley says. Curriculum integration disrupts the department structure of the high school, she notes, and "that's a big deal."
Teachers need to be sensitive to interpersonal issues, Grady agrees. Interdisciplinary teaching may require them to serve on a team with someone they don't know—or don't respect, she points out. And interdisciplinary teams must have a leader to provide direction.
Krogh offers a caveat based on her own experience. Teachers who have created integrated units need to realize that this year's children might have different interests from last year's, she says. Krogh herself taught a class of four-and five-year-olds who constantly asked her, "When are we gonna do dinosaurs?" To capitalize on their interest, Krogh spent hours developing lesson plans on brontosaurs and stegosaurs. The children loved the unit, she says.
The next year, however, her students were apathetic to dinosaurs; the subject left them cold. "I was extremely frustrated," Krogh says. "I had all these wonderful materials." Yet, the following year, the class was again very responsive to the topic.
Krogh believes teachers need to honor students' own interests. "Listen to the children: they'll tell you," she advises. And she recommends that teachers not create units that last the entire year.
Start Small
When teachers decide to blend disciplines, they should "start with something fairly small and manageable," such as a short thematic unit, says Kathleen Roth, an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University. "A [whole] curriculum organized around themes can be overwhelming to a teacher," she says.
Roth emphasizes the need for teachers to be reflective about the changes they make. Too often, she has seen teachers "buying into" the idea of interdisciplinary education without asking when and why it makes sense. When creating new lessons, teachers should ask themselves, "Would students be interested in this?" and, more important, "What would they be learning from this?" Developing curriculum that promotes critical thinking and deep understanding is not something many teachers have learned to do, Roth says.
In merging disciplines, teachers should avoid a level of intensity they can't sustain, says Robin Fogarty of IRI/Skylight Publishing, author of The Mindful School: How to Integrate the Curricula. Trying always to work in a team of five or more teachers, she cautions, will demand too much time and energy; it will also be difficult to schedule meetings everyone can attend. Therefore, teachers should consider doing "an intense model" only once a semester or so.
"Moving to more integrated, holistic learning won't happen overnight," Fogarty says. Instead, teachers should try "easing into it." A good way to start, she recommends, is to inventory what's already being done at the school—writing across the curriculum, for example—and build on those efforts.
Teachers should avoid making integrated activities too elaborate, agrees Bena Kallick, an education consultant from Westport, Conn. "Be careful not to make a three-ring circus out of it," she says, because if the effort is exhausting, teachers may never do it twice. Kallick also cautions teachers against "force fitting" their instruction around a theme, which she says can lead to superficial teaching.
Public support is another necessary ingredient to the success of interdisciplinary teaching.
"I don't believe the public has embraced interdisciplinary education as something they think is important," says David Ackerman, superintendent of the Catalina Foothills School District in Tucson, Ariz. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're opposed to it, he adds.
One way to garner public support, Ackerman says, is to demonstrate that academic rigor is not being sacrificed on the altar of curriculum integration. The Humanities course at his district's high school, which combines history and English, has clearly defined performance expectations in both subjects, he says.
Allowing students to choose whether they take interdisciplinary classes can also help win community acceptance, Ackerman says, because "reform goes down better when people have choices." Efforts to combine disciplines in his district have succeeded, in part, because "students and families can select a pattern of courses that best matches their needs." Ackerman himself believes that a portion of each student's school experience should be interdisciplinary. "To never have a course that tries to break down discipline boundaries is to miss a valuable experience," he says.
Experts are cautiously optimistic that interdisciplinary teaching will become more popular in the future. Enough teachers are dissatisfied with the status quo in schools, Grady believes, that they are willing to be risk takers; and these teachers are likely to be attracted to interdisciplinary education. "We need to start teaching students how to think, in much broader ranges than before"—including across disciplines, Grady says. "This is the way we need to go."
Kallick believes the degree to which interdisciplinary education will take hold depends on "how willing people are to really restructure." Will schools really let teachers work in teams, give them more planning time, and find new ways of assessing the quality of student work?
Kallick admits to being somewhat fearful about the recent popularity of teaching across disciplines. If interdisciplinary education becomes faddish and is practiced in superficial ways, it could lose credibility with teachers and the public. But "it will never go away," Kallick says. "It just plain makes sense. We live in an integrated world."
