Outside of the Box The Value of Interdisciplinary Study Dr. Brandon Kraft Associate Head of School for Academics and Interim Middle School Director
Climate change, ethical engagement with technology, cancer, and building equitable workspaces are only four major problems whose solutions do not fit squarely within the knowledge base of any single discipline. For instance, engineers and environmental scientists have developed many ways to decrease our carbon footprint. However, some of these developments are unpopular socially and politically. Therefore, to truly build To truly build a more a more sustainable sustainable planet, we planet, we need to engage the disciplines need to engage the of psychology, history, disciplines of psychology, sociology, and political history, sociology, and science to develop political science to solutions. Moreover, a solution requires develop solutions. more than just these scholars being in one room. Rather, scholars argue that it requires a focus on discrete skills that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinarity has been a driving force within higher education for decades. Calling scholars to come together across disciplinary boundaries to tackle some of the world's most pressing problems. Scholarship highlights that interdisciplinarity works best when it is grounded in a theme or problem. Moreover, research highlights that interdisciplinarity requires its own way of thinking and its own skills. Most notably, these skills include relaxing perceived boundaries, perspective-taking, consensusbuilding, and systems modeling. Our current challenges and compelling scholarship call on us, as educators, to develop approaches that make students comfortable with interdisciplinary engagement. Therefore, they can be the leaders of the future. At EDS, we have already begun purposefully integrating opportunities to engage with interdisciplinary skill sets. Particularly, we are building an academic program that relaxes perceived boundaries, builds students' perspective-taking, promotes consensus, and develops systems-based visions.
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Two skills that EDS teachers integrate into almost every class are perspective-taking and consensus-building. To be good at these skills, students must build their meta-cognition: their ability to understand and communicate how they learn.
One example of how we have relaxed perceived boundaries in the lower school is the utilization of Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum. This curriculum integrates students’ skills in reading, scientific reasoning, and perspective-taking. For instance, units on “Jazz” and “Light and Sound” give students an opportunity to develop nonfiction reading and phonics skills while also learning about waves, disability pride, and historical figures in black music. Students do not necessarily know they are engaging in interdisciplinary skill development. However, CKLA follows best practices in building interdisciplinary skills by focusing on a theme to ground student engagement. Moreover, our approach highlights that skilled reading is necessary not only for engaging with fictional or poetic texts, but across disciplines. Students need to be skilled readers regardless of the text, and they need the mental plasticity to sound out words and use context to understand new words. Two skills that EDS teachers integrate into almost every class are perspective-taking and consensus-building. To be good at these skills, students must build their metacognition, i.e. their ability to understand and communicate how they learn. Our Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines are areas of strength in the practice of these skills. Our collaborative approach to STEM requires students to recognize that there is not just one way to solve a problem. For instance, our inquirybased math program presents students with relatively novel questions. They must then come together to develop approaches and share out. They learn there are multiple ways to solve the problem. Another example of problem based approach in STEM is our sixth
grade science project. Students were learning about thermodynamics, specifically heat transfer, in class. Then, in partnership with Chaplain Jolly, Mr. Do had students consider how to keep people who are experiencing homelessness warm. Students broke into small groups to develop prototypes. They then had to justify their prototypes and choose one. This required students to understand others’ perspectives and reach a consensus on which project to design. Although the skill of systems thinking is present in the previous two examples, it is clearly evident in our pre-K through eighth grade social studies curriculum. At each level of our social studies program, students implicitly or explicitly investigate historical phenomena through political, economic, religious, social, intellectual, artistic, and natural lenses. This approach, colloquially known as PERSIAN, calls students to understand historical and contemporary events as nodes (i.e. intersections) within large systems. The PERSIAN approach gives students discrete pathways to examine events, but also helps them understand that no single lens can explain an event. The skills of relaxing perceived boundaries, perspective taking, and systems thinking help our students apply our Episcopal values. This means we are called to tackle tough problems. To do so, we must engage in interdisciplinary ways of thinking. In the coming years, look for more structures that allow students to flex and develop their interdisciplinary skills.
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