Mateja Grmek
Sandra Grmek
School Centre Srečko Kosovel Sežana (Slovenia)
INTRODUCTION
The subject matter of each school subject is often perceived as something separate and sometimes even incompatible by students. Yet the world we live in is not divided into individual school subjects, it is unified, connected into a coherent whole. Knowledge is not merely a separate pile of data for each individual subject. Knowledge has to be connected, only thus it can be lasting, high quality and useful. As a result interdisciplinary is emerging and gaining ground in schools, blurring the boundaries between subjects, requiring students to integrate knowledge into a whole, which leads to lifelong learning.
THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY
The purpose of interdisciplinarity is to increase the active role of students in the learning process and their preparation for lifelong learning. Mostly students are not educated for a specific professional field of work later in life, but for everyday life needs and work. They will face a variety of life and work-related problems, which, unlike isolated scientific issues, are multidisciplinary. There is a discrepancy between the student's life experience and partial treatment in disciplinary school subjects, as students may know a lot about a particular subject, but this knowledge is difficult to use in problem solving. (Žakelj, 2010)
Interdisciplinarity is thus a cross-curricular (multi-subject curricular) connection, which relates otherwise separate independent subjects with an agreed connecting element or elements, in order to achieve a common, already integrated learning goal. Interdisciplinarity requires intensive cooperation between teachers in all phases of networking: from planning to implementation and evaluation. (Pavlič Škerjanc, Rutar Ilc, 2019).
Many of today’s global problems are just too complex to be solved by one specialized discipline (think global warming or overpopulation). These multifaceted problems require trans-disciplinary solutions. While throughout the 20th century, ever-greater specialization was encouraged, the next century will see transdisciplinary approaches take center stage. We are already seeing this in the emergence of new areas of study, such as nanotechnology, which blends molecular biology, biochemistry, protein chemistry, and other specialties.( Davies, A., Fidler, D., Gorbis, M., 2011)
The term transdisciplinarity has also been widely used in the literature recently, sometimes as a synonym for interdisciplinarity, with special emphasis on a common, integrated learning goal.
For most authors, transdisciplinarity means combining traditional disciplines or. subjects in new disciplines or subjects so that the boundaries between them are blurred. The goals, contents, activities, processes, etc. of traditional subjects or disciplines are indivisibly merged into new entities. Such are some new optional subjects (electives), e.g. in the grammar school in Slovenia, such an optional subject is Environmental education.
Team teaching in these cases is an emergency exit, the key requirement is additional professional training of teachers whose basic professional qualification is in one or more core disciplines. (Pavlič Škerjanc, Rutar Ilc, 2019)
WHAT IS TEAM TEACHING?
Team teaching means that teachers together set goals for a course, design a syllabus, prepare individual lesson plans, teach students, and evaluate the results.
Type A team teaching, ie. interactive team teaching, means that two teachers (optimal number) teach the same group of pupils or students at the same time, in the same room.
Type B team teaching means that two or more teachers work closely together in planning, implementing and evaluating the learning process and identifying students' achievements. But they do not all teach the same or the whole group of students, or they do not teach the same group of students at the same time, or they do not carry out all the phases of the learning process together. (Pavlič Škerjanc, Rutar Ilc, 2019)
A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE OF TEAMWORK: THE EUROPEAN UNION
We pay a lot of attention to interdisciplinarity and co-teaching at School Centre Srečko Kosovel Sežana. We are aware that with this way of learning we connect knowledge with real life circumstances. The knowledge thus acquired therefore lasts longer and is more useful in new situations. We usually decide to choose this approach when we estimate that we will not be able to achieve the desired learning goals within a single subject.
Geography, English and IT teachers have been collaborating for several years on the topic of the European Union. In the beginning, we set ourselves a very simple goal: students had to make a poster about their chosen country of the European Union. During geography classes they chose the country and used the literature available in the school library and on the Internet to find texts and selected statistics. During English classes they designed and translated the texts from English into Slovene, and in the IT class they made a poster. We identified several shortcomings in the first year, so we chose a different approach the next year.
So we set ourselves a new goal: students should be aware of the importance of connecting different knowledge and skills, because only in this way can they create a good final product.
In the process students:
- develop the ability to search, collect and process information, data and concepts online
- develop a critical attitude towards available information
- get acquainted with various online design tools.
As a framework for achieving these goals, we selected the topic of the European Union, where curriculum for geography in secondary vocational education lists the following goals:
- students evaluate the role of the Slovenian state territory in the economic, political and cultural flows of Europe and identify its market advantages, and
- students create short geographical outlines of neighbouring countries.
The recommended activities are:
- using the Internet to produce pictorial and verbal geographical outlines of neighbouring countries,
- producing geographical representations of the countries with which their school cooperates, and
- using statistical data to make an analysis of Slovenia's position within the European Union on the basis of economic and social criteria. (Katalog znanj. Geografija. SSI. 2008)
Working process
Lesson 1: What is the EU?
A geography and IT teacher work with the class
Students learn what the European Union is and how and why it was created. They get acquainted with the values and main institutions of the EU. The information is available at https://op.europa.eu/webpub/com/eu-and-me/en/
At the same time, they make a summary - a mind map with the Mindmup program. Both teachers guide and help them in this process.
Students submit their mind maps to the digital classroom.
Lesson 2: Collecting data and images for the poster about the selected EU country
A Geography teacher and an English teacher work together with the class
Students choose one of the countries of the European Union. During the lesson, they look for the required statistical data and images, as well as descriptions of the attractions or special features of the selected country. Students are reminded to be careful when choosing sources. We take a look at some good and bad sources. As students will be using English websites, we warn them of the difficulties of using online translations.
Lesson3: Creating/Making a poster
A geography teacher and an IT teacher work together with the class
We talk to the students about what a good poster should look like or what kind of poster would attract their attention. Students then design a poster in Publisher. They use the materials they have collected in the previous lesson.
Lesson 4: Creating a quiz about the EU
A geography, English and IT teacher work with the class
Students prepare a quiz about the attractions of the countries of the European Union. First we discuss what a good question is. Each student contributes one question. They also translate the questions into English and then enter it into the Google Forms quiz.
The students finally solve the quiz.
CONCLUSIONS
Both students and teachers found these team lessons as a lively and challenging disruption of the routine and monotony . We found that students show a greater interest, motivation and commitment to learning in lessons based on interdisciplinarity. Because they are actively involved in the learning process and finding solutions, they work more with the teacher and with each other. The students helped each other a lot, as they have different skills in using ICT or are more fluent in English. However, because each student had a different task, he could not just copy the result, yet he came to his result with the help of a more skilled classmate.
They had to complete the work during class, as they had to submit the assignments to the digital classroom. Since there were always at least two teachers in the class, the students got feedback faster and more easily.
Most problems occurred with students who did not listen to the instructions well or read the instructions superficially.
REFERENCES:
Davies, A., Fidler, D., Gorbis, M., 2011. Future Work Skills. Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute. Retrieved 24th January 2021 from https://www.iftf.org/uploads/media/SR-1382A_UPRI_future_work_skills_sm.pdf
Katalog znanj. Geografija. Srednje strokovno izobraževanje.2008. Retrieved 24th January 2021 from http://eportal.mss.edus.si/msswww/programi2017/programi/Ssi/KZ-IK/katalog.htm
Pavlič Škerjanc, Katja, Rutar Ilc, Zora, 2019. Medpredmetne in kurikularne povezave. Retrieved 12th January 2021 from https://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-WERN47BP
Žakelj, A.,2014. Posodobitev kurikularnega procesa na osnovnih šolah in gimnazijah. Retrieved 12th January 2021 from https://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-XPYBDC0G