Navigating Challenges in Designing Interdisciplinary Learning Experiences

Introduction

My previous review of interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the MYP programme was a while ago. COVID had prevented schools from implementing interdisciplinary units (IDUs) for a couple years. There are many teachers who have not had a chance to check out the updated MYP interdisciplinary subject guide (published February 2021). We have started to plan IDUs to be implemented this academic year. I have been reviewing Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in the MYP Guide (updated April 2023) to support teachers in designing interdisciplinary learning experiences for students. This blog post explores how we may design effective interdisciplinary learning experiences based on the ideas of project-based learning.

Linking With Project-Based Learning

I am a big fan of project-based learning (PBL) and have long followed the work of Professor John Spencer. My friend, Kyle Wagner, has been an inspiration to me, and his suggestions for implementing PBL with students have helped me better understand the concept. I have been looking for ways to incorporate project-based learning with students, and Kyle has been an invaluable resource.

Project-based learning provides helpful guidelines for developing interdisciplinary learning experiences. In project-based learning, students are given the opportunity to investigate real-world problems and issues. These challenges usually call for an interdisciplinary approach, integrating knowledge from different disciplines. For example, to create a persuasive health campaign, students may need to learn about nutrition and the health of body systems in sciences, discuss motivation and goal setting in physical and mental health, and study persuasive language techniques in language and literature. This approach not only increases their understanding of the issue but also helps them discover the link between different disciplines.

The Role of the Teacher

I recently read an insightful blog post by A.J. Juliani, “How to Make School Less Like IKEA, and More Like a Learning LAB”. The author effectively compared IKEA’s simple, step-by-step procedure to educational teaching approaches in the classroom. IKEA demonstrates simplicity and convenience, matching how teachers typically carefully arrange learning materials and instructions to guide students towards project completion. 

In the author’s view, a learning lab does not just refer to a physical space, but also to a way of teaching. Drawing upon the original concept of a lab or laboratory—a place for scientific experiments, research, creation, or teaching. The author indicates that a learning lab is a space for hard work. It’s where students can actively engage in the process of thinking, researching, creating, and learning.

As I reflected on Juliani’s perspective, it became clear that maintaining a balance between teacher guidance and student autonomy is a crucial aspect of the Learning Lab approach. This balance is not only vital in traditional teaching contexts but also plays a significant role in interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

The question arises: how can we, as educators, maintain this balance? How can we provide our students with the necessary support and guidance while also promoting a sense of autonomy that motivates them to take charge of their learning?

Here’s what I am thinking. We may use a provocation at the start of the unit to spark students’ interest. It could include interesting news, thought-provoking quotes, a current event, a demonstration, an advertisement, a set of data, or a short video clip that fits directly into the unit’s topic. This not only piques their curiosity but also links to their existing knowledge, offering a purposeful and meaningful context.

Using the provocation, we can gauge students’ prior knowledge and invite them to think about how they might apply what they’ve learned in different disciplines to solve the problem. What other inquires might they have? We could also use this provocation to encourage students to discuss and explore different solutions.

Following the provocation, the teacher can introduce the problem that students are expected to solve. Having a driving unit question is helpful. It helps the students focus on the task and gives them a sense of purpose. It also helps the teacher assess the students’ thinking progress. In the MYP context, we can turn the unit’s statement of inquiry into a driving question. However, I often find it overly wordy and need to rephrase or simplify it.

Driving questions act as a framework within which students craft more
questions and conduct investigations.

(Krauss and Boss)

Going back to the learning lab notion, it’s a place where students will need to engage in different types of thinking in order to identify patterns, investigate systems, analyze processes, explore connections, and solve problems. They require a set of tools to think critically and creatively. The interdisciplinary learning assessment objectives include command terms like analyze, evaluate, justify, etc. Teachers can then provide students with strategies and tools that help them achieve these objectives. It’s where teachers can explicitly teach approaches to learning skills. For instance, students learn how to critically analyze and evaluate information from multiple sources.

Considering Thinking Levels

Various command terms are specified in the MYP interdisciplinary teaching and learning guide. However, we often fail to communicate to students the sort of cognitive thinking they will need to do and the complexity included within. By knowing different types of thinking and their levels, teachers are better prepared to differentiate teaching and offer relevant learning resources and strategies accordingly. It will also allow teachers to provide more effective feedback. Furthermore, students will also be able to identify where they are and get a sense of the complexity of the tasks they’ll be doing.

It might be useful to distinguish between tools and strategies in this context. In my understanding, tools are tangible or digital resources utilized to aid learning, such as web-based applications and graphic organizers. Strategies, on the other hand, are methods or techniques students use to enhance their learning, such as summarizing, questioning, or self-assessment. For example, a strategy for summarizing a text might be to break it down into main points and key ideas (e.g. 3-2-1 strategy), while a tool for summarizing a text might be the use of a graphic organizer. My previous blog post, “Graphic organizers as a strategy to promote cognition and metacognition,” explored how graphic organizers might be used to develop students’ cognition and metacognition.  There are templates provided to support teachers and students.

Students use these thinking skills to demonstrate the depth, thoughtfulness, and accuracy of their thinking. I made an attempt to sort the command verbs following Bloom’s Taxonomy framework. It’s also worth noticing that “regonize” and “reflect” have not been mentioned in other MYP subject guides, except for IDU. Although reflection might have been taught explicitly or implicitly in other subjects, students can benefit from learning how to reflect critically through interdisciplinary learning.

“Synthesizing” will be challenging for students as this skill may have not been explicitly taught in other subjects, except in individuals and societies. Although synthesizing is defined in the language and literature and language acquisition subject guides, it is not included in the assessment objectives. Students will benefit from using thinking prompts or sentence starters to communicate their synthesis. You can find some ideas on how to engage students in synthesizing on the Interdisciplinary IDU Assessment page. Please note the information on this page was based on the old interdisciplinary teaching and learning guide.

In order to guide interdisciplinary learning, it is helpful to identify and utilize command terms. It is also helpful to examine how these thinking verbs are included in their respective subject guides. Understanding and implementing these command terms can allow teachers to effectively implement the IDUs. They give a framework that fits with the cognitive development of Bloom’s Taxonomy, starting from basic recall (remember) to higher-order thinking like analysis (analyze) and creation (synthesize and create). For example, consider an interdisciplinary unit that integrates English and Sciences. In such a scenario, students are encouraged to transfer and apply their skills of describing and explaining, acquired from both disciplines, to analyze the disciplinary knowledge.

The process of transferring skills is not only about duplicating what they have learned in each discipline. Instead, it’s about actively connecting and adapting the taught skills to a new, interdisciplinary situation. However, it’s important to remember that this process of transfer doesn’t occur naturally or spontaneously. It demands deliberate instruction. Teachers should remind students of the approaches they have learnt to describe or explain in both English and Science, and guide them on how to apply these skills in an interdisciplinary setting.

Multimedia Products for Interdisciplinary Learning

One of the most exciting aspects of project-based interdisciplinary learning is the potential for students to create a wide variety of multimedia products. These can range from infographics and brochures to Vlogs, illustrated storybooks, and even digital games. Other possibilities include music or drama performances, advertisements, proposals, pitches, 3D models, screenplays, campaigns, workshops, panel discussions, animations, and debates. This wide array of potential products allows students to explore their creativity and apply interdisciplinary learning in authentic, meaningful ways.

Looking at the “synthesizing” objective, students are expected to:

• create a product that communicates a purposeful interdisciplinary understanding
• justify how their product communities interdisciplinary understanding.

This reminds me of the old MYP Personal Project requirement (published 2015) that students needed to identify what they learned in MYP subject groups before the project started, and how this was helpful. Upon completion of their personal project, students reflected on how completing the project had extended their knowledge and understanding of the topic and the global context.

I feel interdisciplinary projects can be viewed as mini-personal projects within constraints for students. Students show agency in deciding what product they would like to create to demonstrate their interdisciplinary understanding and solve the problem. This approach not only responds to students’ individual interests and strengths but also fosters their engagement and motivation.

Alternatively, teachers can also provide a common medium or format, and students can choose their own topics using the same medium. For example, students might be tasked with creating a pitch presentation in which they can choose the subject of the pitch.

In essence, these projects are mini personal projects that enable students to investigate, develop, and express their ideas in their own unique ways, while still following to the assessment objectives of the interdisciplinary learning.

---

Conclusion

Designing a meaningful interdisciplinary learning experience is certainly not a small task, but the benefits are invaluable. Schools must provide sufficient time for teachers across different disciplines to collaborate. The collaboration encourages a shared approach to providing meaningful interdisciplinary learning experiences to students.

By combining the hands-on aspect of project-based learning with an intentional focus on building different thinking abilities, we can create a learning environment that is intellectually stimulating. We aim to develop the critical thinking, creativity, communication skills, and agency of students. The creation of multimedia products provides another layer of engagement, allowing students to communicate their learning in creative ways.

Furthermore, I encourage teachers to conduct an interdisciplinary project. By engaging in the process personally, teachers can gain a greater insight into the student experience. This empathy can shape our teaching approach and allow us to better support students as they navigate their interdisciplinary learning journey.

Reference

• Krauss, Jane, and Suzie Boss. Thinking through Project-Based Learning: Guiding Deeper Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, Calif., Corwin, 2013.