IDU Assessment

Interdisciplinary Assessment 

In order to better understand the MYP interdisciplinary assessment criteria and process, I created this infographic to help myself visualize all the elements and processes. This is my interpretation only. 

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Criterion A: Discipline Grounding 

Different from transdisciplinary learning, interdisciplinary learning is deeply grounded in the disciplines. Interdisciplinary instruction does not replace disciplinary teaching. Clear disciplinary goals and objectives should be strategically selected and integrated to help students build disciplinary understanding to develop quality interdisciplinary understanding. Teachers should identify factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and procedure knowledge framed in subject group objectives and then design meaningful and purposeful learning experiences to help students achieve discipline depth before integrating views. I felt that metacognitive knowledge should also be developed within the participating disciplines as students should reflect on the role of disciplines and weigh the disciplinary limitations and strengths in their interdisciplinary learning process.  

When organizing and planning disciplinary understandings, we can consider Anderson and Krathwohk’s (2001) cognitive and knowledge dimensions as suggested in Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding, Secondary: Designing Lessons and Assessments for Deep Learning. I included possible verbs for different cognitive domains respectively, as it is helpful for me to develop the learning outcomes and plan the learning experiences and teaching strategies accordingly. 

Note: The following requirements are explicitly stated in the guide, Fostering Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in the MYP (updated September 2017): 

“Teachers must use subject-specific criteria to support their judgment of student achievement in disciplinary grounding. These judgments can be based on specific summative assessments within the context of the interdisciplinary unit itself, or they may be determined by related disciplinary assessment tasks.  

Levels awarded for this criteria should represent the joint assessment of collaborating teachers from all subjects participating in the interdisciplinary inquiry. When student achievement varies in applying knowledge from different disciplines, teachers should use “best-fit” professional judgment to determine an appropriate level that represents each student’s overall disciplinary grounding.”  

Criterion B: Synthesizing 

To synthesize means to combine different ideas in order to create new understanding (MYP: From Principles into Practice). Ultimately, in this criterion, learners are expected to integrate cross areas of expertise and transfer their learning in a new situation to solve a problem or finding an alternative solution. In order to support students to synthesize effectively, teachers can create opportunities to extend their thinking and inviting them to discuss how these concepts might be applied to solve real-life issues or problems. It is stated in the guide, Fostering Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in the MYP, students’ demonstration of synthesizing should vary from familiar (year 1) to familiar and unfamiliar (year 3), to a range of increasing complex unfamiliar situations (year 5) as they progress in the programme. It might be beneficial to consider “low-road transfer and high-road transfer”. “Essentially, when tasks remain similar to one another, this is known as low-road transfer. When students are asked to transfer knowledge to dissimilar tasks, which requires them to increasingly generalize concepts, they are performing high-road transfer.” (Stern et al., 2017, p.17). 

Possible strategies to promote synthesizing could be: 

  • I used to think…Now I think…My thinking has shifted because…
  • Af first I was thinking…Then I was thinking…Now my opinion is…
  • Fact-Question-Response (FQR)
  • Think, Pair & Share and then ask students to synthesize what they have heard
  • Summarizing and note-taking 
  • Discussion web 
  • Save the last word for me
  • Encourage students to produce or respond to ‘scenarios’ and ask ‘what if’ questions 
  • Roundtable debate 
  • Analogy making 
  • Diagramming
  • Ah Ha! Moments 

Simple questions to promote synthesizing could be: 

  • What would you predict/infer from…?
  • What solutions would you suggest for…?
  • What ideas can you add to…?
  • What might happen if you combined…?
  • How would you create/design a new…?
  • Can you develop a new model for a given situation?
  • What an alternative solution can you develop? 
  • Can you formulate a theory for…?
  • What changes would you make to solve…? 
  • Supposed you could…what would you do…?

More sentence stems can be found on Bloom’s Taxonomy: Teacher Planning Kit 

Criterion C: Communicating 

In this criterion, students use appropriate strategies to communicate interdisciplinary understanding and they need to follow academic honesty by documenting sources using recognized conventions. It states in the Fostering Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in the MYP that communication in year 1 should take place with support, in year 3 with minimal guidance and in year 5 independently. Throughout the disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning process, it is important that students have opportunities to interact and distinguish different communication modes (the way communication is expressed) and formats. Different communication modes and formats have their own advantages and disadvantages. Students need to explore how using different modes and formats can help them achieve different goals and communicate their message more effectively.   

Criterion D: Reflecting 

For this criterion, students should reflect on the contribution of disciplines throughout the interdisciplinary learning process. It shouldn’t be one-off assessment. Instead, it’s an ongoing process. Reflections should take place before, during and after learning the unit. Students will reflect on the development of their interdisciplinary understanding and evaluate the benefits and limitations of the disciplines in the specific interdisciplinary application. In year 5, students should evaluate their ways of knowing in particular situations.

Strategies that teachers can help students develop metacognitive skills to monitor, reflect and evaluate their interdisciplinary learning process could be:

  • Asking questions about the relationships between concepts; 
  • Using an anticipation guide to help students activate their prior knowledge and identify misconceptions; 
  • Providing strategies to foster self-reflection; 
  • Encouraging students to ask good questions; 
  • Providing a checklist to help students with self-monitoring;  
  • Providing sentence stems to help students elaborate their ideas and reflect critically on their learning; 
  • Introducing visible thinking routines to engage students in critical and creative thinking; 
  • Self-explanation in writing or speaking;  
  • Comparing surface and deep understanding; 
  • Discussing transfer and its limitations. 

Many of the strategies are explained with details in the book, Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding, Secondary: Designing Lessons and Assessments for Deep Learning. I highly recommend this book as it provides many strategies and concrete examples to help students develop conceptual understanding and transfer their learning in a new situation.  

Reference