Week 31 Crossing Boundaries

Week 31 - Crossing Boundaries

Interdisciplinary Connections

Andrews (1990) defines interdisciplinary collaboration as occurring "when different professionals, possessing unique knowledge, skills, organizational perspectives, and personal attributes, engage in co-ordinated problem solving for a common purpose" (cited in Berg-Weger &. Schneider, 1998).

Who I have a new interdisciplinary connection with?

A relatively new interdisciplinary connection I have is being part of a CoL.  The CoL is newly formed and is in an area where we have traditionally only met together for sports days/competitions. Teachers have had limited contact with each other in regards to teaching and learning and each school has guarded its resources, data, and ways of working. 

As a group of staff we met recently to share what attributes we thought a student leaving school at 18 from our CoL would  need.  This was the first time many of the staff from the surrounding schools had met each other and the opportunity to discuss and share ideas was met with many positive comments. There is the potential to work in collaboration with a range of people to support and assist the  our students to enable them to become 'independent, confident individual who 'learn how to learn and develop lifelong learning skills' (Duerr, 2008, p 177, cited in Jones 2009). 

Benefits of a being in a Community of Learning (Kahui Ako):

• opportunities for collaboration and finding solutions to accelerating the learning of students alongside developing the key competencies.
• supporting students with the transitions from early childhood/primary/intermediate/secondary school an area which our data shows causes students to experience difficulty.
• opportunities to grow teacher practice in a collaborative manner
• groups of teachers meeting together from different schools to share practice, successes, frustrations such as our Year 0/new entrant teachers.
• the development of common understandings about learning and teaching

Challenges of being in a Community of Learning (Kahui Ako):

• fear of schools losing their 'identity' and what makes their school who they are.
• fixed mindsets from teachers, parents.
• fear of sharing 'hard' data.
• losing 'good' teachers from the classroom in cross school roles is causing anxiety from parents.
• assumptions of more meetings, time, lack of interest from some.

Thinking about the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary practice in relation to my identified connections?

The benefits of interdisciplinary practice will enhance the way we are able interconnect with one another.  Opportunities are created opening up to new learning of pedagogy, to inform our practice in enabling our students to view the world holistically through various lenses and from different perspectives (ThomasMcDonaghGroup, 2011). 
According to Youngblood, (2008 cited in Jones, 2009) interdisciplinary techniques will lead to a future of discovery and innovation.   However, with the interdisciplinary approach there is an awareness that it may become too time consuming causing both a lack of interest among members of the group and causing inconsistencies. Therefore, the need to be reverent towards, the idea of using interdisciplinary techniques will enable students to develop “advanced thinking skills, leading to discovery and real-world problem solving” (Staples, 2005, p.16 cited in Jones, 2009).

References:

Berg-Weger, M., &. Schneider, F. D. (1998). Interdisciplinary collaboration in social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 34, 97-107.

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

Lacoe Edu (2014, Oct 24) Interdisciplinary Learning [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA564RIlhME

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:

ThomasMcDonaghGroup. (2011, May 13). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA