Interdisciplinary Connections

As a teacher within a Year 7 to 13 school, there are numerous opportunities and networks that allow for interdisciplinary connections to be formed. From the connections enabled through outside providers, to those that can be enabled from within and across different subject areas, the opportunities are vast and varied.

When mapping or noting these connections and how they can be utilised within our recent move to a Middle School (Years 7 to 9) concept, one that stands out for me is a recently formed connection developed through the provision of funding through the Curious Minds programme. Curious Minds is a government project that aims to “encourage and enable better engagement with Science and Technology across all sectors of New Zealand” NZ Govt (2016). As a result of this project, the College has been given funding to work with local providers such as the Ōtaki Clean Tech Centre. While this initially commenced within the Senior Science area and has become embedded, it has now filtered down to include Years 7 to 9 students and teachers. One aim is to develop a curriculum based on cross-curricular links, with a focus on the environment and sustainability. While the programme in Year 10 and beyond focuses on the global perspective, in Years 7 to 9, we want to focus on local and national issues.

One benefit of such a connection with outside providers, is that it helps develop closer links and ties to our local community and what it has to offer. This connection would involve local facilitators as well as staff from within our school, in particular our Science subject specialist teachers, our Year 7 & 8 Homeroom teachers and our Year 9 Integrated Studies (English and Social Studies) and Science teachers. There is also the potential for other subject area involvement such as the Technology department.

There are numerous ways in which the joint planning, decision making and goal setting can take place. In fact, this process has already commenced with all of the key stakeholders mentioned above, as well as members of the Senior Leadership Team. This ensures that the initiative is supported from the top down, whilst being led by those most closely involved. From the intial meeting, off site planning sessions have been set in order for deeper drilling down and planning in the key focus areas of how to incorporate Science and Technology in a deeper manner in to our middle school programmes. These plans will then be taken back to the curriculum areas involved for further development. From these planning meetings, the curriculum plans will be put in to action in Term 1, 2017. As noted by Kuban and Mcloud Mulligan (2015) in their post on ACRLog, workplace conditions such as organised meetings and administrative support, common goals and shared positive attitudes towards collaboration are vital in order for interdisciplinary collaboration to be successful. I believe that within our project, all three of these factors are in place and as a result, it is far more likely to succeed. Of particular importance, I believe the shared attitudes and qualities hold the most value as it allows for a safe environment in which people are comfortable in sharing their ideas.

Whilst there are many benefits to this and other connections, there are also some challenges. One is ensuring that all those involved have an understanding of the way in which a school operates and that things are not always as flexible as we would like. Constraints around time and the constant balancing games that occur are also obstacles that will need to be overcome. For myself, I have seen this happening as I have trialled some aspects of what we wish to do in Term 3 of this year. I have had an outside specialist coming in to my classroom on a weekly basis and while this has been incredibly supportive and well received by students and myself, it has also presented issues around time, and how to fit everything in to the programme. In this case, I think the ‘do less, but do it better’ fits well. Ensuring all involved are open and willing to the sharing of ideas and expertise is also important, as is recognising the importance of individual subject domains within the collaboration. I am looking forward to developing this project further in the coming months, with a focus on increasing student engagement in Science and Technology.

References

Kuban,A J.,  Mcloud Mulligan, L (2015). A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration. Retrieved from http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration.

New Zealand Government (2016) Curious Minds. Retrieved from http://www.curiousminds.nz/

Mindmap developed in conjunction with Marion Lumley in order to be able to use this as part of our upcoming Change Team discussions