Interdisciplinary Approaches, The New Curriculum of "their" Future?

I found this week’s topic rather interesting. As a Primary School Teacher who is required to teach across the curriculum it can be challenging to teach in areas that may not be your area of expertise or interest. Our school is becoming more collaborative with teacher planning and I see the positive benefits of this in easing teacher workload but also in designing learning which has more of an interdisciplinary approach where teachers can bring their own areas of expertise.

In Mathison and Freeman’s (1997) literature review they identify many positive aspects from three different (but in many ways very similar) approaches. An interdisciplinary, integrated and integrative studies approach. Many positive outcomes have been identified in a multitude of studies. These include better outcomes for students, such as, developing an increased understanding retention, application of general concepts, better overall comprehension, better decision making, increased motivation, being more creative and so it goes on. 

This seems nothing new to Primary Trained teachers, however, I think sometimes we still get caught into teaching subjects in isolation due the assessment requirements and the complexity of assessment record keeping.

These three models also purport benefits for teachers, which include, better overall integration of new and rapidly changing information with increased time efficiency and better collegiality and support between teachers and wider comprehension of the connections between disciplines.

Potential problems are identified by Jacobs (1989) who calls “the 'potpourri problem' where courses become a sampling of a little bit of this and a little bit of that without an overall, coherent structure or scope. The general consensus is that the choice of a theme or activity should promote "progress towards significant educational goals, not merely because it cuts across subject-matter lines" (Brophy & Alleman 1991, p. 66). There is, however, little agreement on which activities are fruitful for the pursuit of which educational goals.”

This is what I fear, a bit of this, a bit of that…..and maybe not enough of “that”…….but I also wonder if curriculum coverage is that important. Knowledge is at our finger tips, is it really that important that a child has knowledge that could not is couldn’t? As we have Literacy Learning Progressions thrust upon us with everything broken down to the nth degree this seems to depart somewhat from what an interdisciplinary approach and the goal of reaching significant educational goals.

Ross' Spiral Curriculum on further investigation is particularly interesting and something I will pursue further. How many times have your read we are education children for their future not ours? I believe mapping of a curriculum in this way is very innovative and I can see a huge potential benefit for both students and teachers. 

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