Although all my professors had talked
about interdisciplinarity during these two years of degree, none of them dealt
with the topic in depth.
Interdisciplinarity is the approach in
which subjects are combined during the learning process. As a result, the
contents are not isolated but connected with all the areas. For instance, a
child can learn some content of maths during physical education by measuring
the length of his long jump and transforming it into meters.
As I see it, interdisciplinarity is
very advantageous since the child can associate all the things he learns and
put them all together in his mind. This is very useful for the pupils’
foreseeable future as problems in life are not only about one kind of
knowledge, but people have to combine different ideas in order to solve them.
Therefore, the sooner they get use to analyze things from different
perspectives, the better will be facing and finding a solution to their
problems.
In addition, this approach can help to
avoid the stereotypes that surround some subjects: history means reading the
textbook and learn it by heart, maths is boring… Interdisciplinarity provides
the motivation and also does not make students get tired with a whole hour of the
same subject.
Nonetheless, interdisciplinarity can be
applied to a greater or lesser extent, that is why experts make a distinction
between three interdisciplinarity teaching models: connected, shared and
partnership. From my point of view, connected model is the easiest one owing to the fact that
it is only designed by one teacher. Although it is a good idea and it can be
enriching, I still think that the best ideas come from team work.
If a teacher can find some difficulties
while preparing an interdisciplinary lesson, this is even more complicated when
all the ideas have to be shared and agreed with another teacher. As I mentioned
before, there are better ideas because there is no doubt that two heads are
better than one. However, it requires more commitment, for instance, sharing a
planification of the subjects.
In the case of the shared model, it
allows students to learn the same concept through different ways of approaching
it (music, movement…). Moreover, it is also helpful because pupils build the
knowledge of the concept in one time. If the planification of the subjects is
carried out individually, students would probably were taught the concepts in a
disorganized way (first in maths, then in science…) and this also leads to mix-up
and misunderstanding. In my view, the fact that all the learning process is
related to one topic is really appealing and can provide the motivation both for
teachers and for pupils.
The shared model is the one that I like
the most, notwithstanding, this is the toughest. This model implies an underlying
methodology and a way of understanding education that unfortunately few teachers have. But why teachers do not use this approach if it seems that it is
the best way to teach? It seems that as boundaries between disciplines
disappear, so do the security and privacy of teachers. Most of them feel
evaluated and under pressure just because they are not able to do what they
want and when they want. Instead sharing and developing team work, they cling
to this selfish idea, therefore, interdisicplinarity models cannot work. This
is the case of the great majority of schools where either teachers do not want
to cooperate or they try to avoid hard work. If there is not commitment among
teachers, interdisiciplinarity cannot be put into practice and it is a real pitty.
I think that nowadays
interdisciplinarity in Spain is regarded as an ideal theory of education, but
not one that can be put into practice. However, this is not because of shortage
of resources but because of the teachers themselves. This makes me wonder, if education should be focused on the benefits of the child and
interdisciplinarity seems to be the best approach currently… Why do not try to
be less selfish and start working altogether just to be better educators?
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