Interdisciplinary connections

This has been an interesting exercise: how interdisciplinary are my current professional connections, and where am I heading next? The diagram above has solid lines showing my current connections, with broken lines showing the movement towards interdisciplinary teaching.

CURRENT CONNECTIONS:

I am fortunate to teach at a school for Years 7 - 13. My main role is to teach Intermediate students, so I teach across a range of traditional 'subjects'. Consequently, I liaise with my secondary colleagues on a regular basis.

I outline the Maths plan for Intermediate department with the Maths Faculty; I outline the Literacy plan for Intermediate department with the English Faculty; I outline the Social Studies topic for Intermediate department with the Social Sciences Faculty, and so on ....

On the plus side, it is great to have experts in each curriculum area to liaise with BUT there is a great deal of pressure to be talking to eight different Faculties about my ideas, and to find time to meet their own Faculty goals and aspirations (usually secondary-based), attend all their meetings and still develop the Intermediate department.

I have recently been 'co-opted' into a COP. As part of this, my school (me +2 others) have been assigned a mentor to help us reach set goals. I am looking forward to having a senior educational researcher to support me through changes in 21st century education.

MY FUTURE GOALS:

 I am excited about the future for the Intermediate department - it literally is the best of both worlds! My school is keen to begin a shift towards interdisciplinary working and I am in on the ground floor! I have been asked to share some of my 'Blue Skies' ideas with the Heads of Faculties and help to lay foundations for next year. The plan is to develop interdisciplinary working with the Intermediate department, and possibly Years 9 & 10 initially, and then consider the changes for the seniors.

Personally my goal is to have the timetable rewritten first to allow more fluid learning. The challenges are numerous - staffing, rooming and the ever-present assessment targets. Unlike a full primary school, our timetable is broken down into periods, and the students are sometimes with a secondary teacher (eg PE), whilst homeroom teachers are teaching Year 9 or 10. I have been interested to study the timetable for Year 9 at the brand-new Rolleston College. Not a 'subject' in sight! I will certainly be encouraging my Heads of Faculty to contact an ex-colleague who has moved there to see how their radical timetable is working out for them. I imagine it to be a real challenge for the staff. Jones (2009) outlines the potential problems of team-teaching, and highlights that teachers trained in just one discipline (unlike primary teachers) often find it too difficult to genuinely embrace interdisciplinary thinking. The Ross Institute have developed an impressive 'Spiral Curriculum', but the video file shows just how much time is involved in this. Is this realistic in our state schools? Probably not quite yet, but new schools are embracing the idea of project-based authentic, interdisciplinary teaching, and hopefully the rest of my COP will be catching them up soon.

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

Ross Institute. (2015, July 5). Ross Spiral Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Science. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHZhkB0FJik