Week 31 Activity 7: Crossing the Boundaries.
                         My current and potential interdisciplinary professional connections map

  Andrews (1990) defines interdisciplinary collaboration as occurring "when different professionals, possessing unique knowledge, skills, organizational perspectives, and personal attributes, engage in coordinated problem solving for a common purpose" (cited in Berg-Weger &. Schneider, 1998).

What is my Identified one potential interdisciplinary connections from my map as my near future goal? 
The one potential interdisciplinary connection as my future goal that stood out would be my School community connection and how it leads into HOD, mine being Visual art. 'Interdisciplinary Learning' is when students are connected to the real world through their experiences and interests, then the learning is more authentic and of greater value to students. Inquiry based learning fits into the same category.

Joint planning, decision-making, and goal-setting that has taken place so far?
Last year our senior syndicate came together and discussed ideas about inquiry based learning so this connection is already in the pipe line. Shared goals and vision of inquiry based learning lead us in this direction. Ongoing discussions in syndicate meetings on IBL and the value of introducing and working collaboratively to implement and plan a unit of work. We then agreed on a theme that we could deliver across the disciplines. This meant we collaborated with each other and identified ways on how we could connect our subjects with others. We brainstormed ideas and came up with an inquiry based learning overview. This drew a lot of discussion on how each curriculum could link into another subject or two. My subject area (Visual art) immediately tagged onto Technology and Maori and English. I’m really looking forward to implementing this project and working among highly skilled colleagues.

The benefits: 
The interdisciplinary approach continues to blend the characteristics and methods of several disciplines while developing lifelong learning skills. Students will develop collaboration, deeper understanding, develop critical thinking in authentic learning experiences and enable students to take ownership over their own learning. For me, it will be a great way to teach students who do not possess the ability to learn and understand a lesson right away, help students grasp the complexity of these topics, involve ongoing collaboration with other staff and draw on expertise from other staff involved.

The challenges:
 Students become confused about working across classes, teachers resistant to change (silo way of thinking), communication barrier among disciplines, it may not succeed if teachers remain stuck in their disciplines and in disciplinary attitudes. Interdisciplinary curricula is time consuming and takes collaborative team work to create, which can seem like a hard and exhausting disadvantage.

The characterisation of interdisciplinary integrates team-teaching as a technique in which teachers from multiple disciplines work with each other to design a curriculum, instruct the class, and grade teams of students for time periods.  Though it seems like a great idea, having more than one instructor can create problems in the sharing of responsibilities.  Donald Richards is quoted as arguing "team-taught courses that lay a claim to interdisciplinary often fail to achieve their objectives precisely because the individual members of the instructional team themselves never really begin to understand their common concerns in a fashion that may properly be called interdisciplinary" (2002, p. 16).  Richards concludes that “team teaching is a poor vehicle for interdisciplinary undergraduate education” (Haynes, 2002, p.16).

Inquiry interdisciplinary approach offers ways of different opportunities for students to develop the “big-picture” thinking across disciplines, develop independence and lifelong learning skills. It is also a technique that allows teachers from multiple disciplines to work collaboratively to design projects that develop a wider knowledge base.

Looking forward to seeing the benefits once we are up and running with our inquiry based learning which is similar to the interdisciplinary approach.

References:
Berg-Weger, M., &. Schneider, F. D. (1998). Interdisciplinary collaboration in social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 34, 97-107.
Haynes, Carolyn, 2002. Innovations in Interdisciplinary Teaching, West port, CT, American Council on Education ORYX Press.