Learning Partnerships

When completing the readings for this week's blog post this quote from Kuban and Mulligan (2015) reached out and grabbed my attention, “It seems that, as educators, we recognize the globalization of society and the overlapping nature of most occupations, and we want our students to have diverse, interdisciplinary experiences—thus it seems prudent to adopt a similar mindset for our own scholarly endeavors. We should set an example for our students, valuing efforts to “reach across the aisle” and emphasizing interdisciplinary opportunities”

While this quote was made in reference to a tertiary context it has significance no matter which sphere of education you apply it to. The divisions we place between subject areas at school are artificial and generally lack this concrete distinction in the real world. In order to best equip students for success in the future we need to provide them with authentic experiences across different content areas “Instruction should focus on integrated, interdisciplinary activities that revolve around a set of important ideas” (Barton & Smith, 2000).

In order to make learning more authentic and meaningful for students we not only need to integrate different learning areas but also facilitate the creation of ‘learning partnerships’(Fullan & Langworthy, 2011) or connections between students, teachers, parents and the wider community. Modern technology has meant that the term ‘community’ is now a global one, rather than being limited by geographical location.

When reflecting on my interdisciplinary connection map I was pleased that most of my connections or partnerships listed were highlighted blue (indicating a strong connection) or orange (indicating a developing connection). However, there was one area of weakness that stood out to me immediately; while I am working hard on developing connections with whanau/family and other community groups I have spent only a minimal amount of time forming connections with experts, e.g. scientists, sportspeople, doctors etc within the local and wider global community.

Developing this area is crucial for me because forming partnerships with experts not only provides me as a teacher with sources of knowledge and experience that I do not personally possess, but more importantly helps to make learning more authentic and meaningful for students.  

This term I hope to strengthen my connections in this area through engaging with relevant experts on our overarching topic of ‘Growing’. This key idea encompasses a wide range of curriculum areas and connections/partnerships could potentially be formed with scientists, conservationists, gardeners, farmers, doctors, nutritionists etc.

Plan for engagement:

Revisiting key ideas:

One of the most common challenges with interdisciplinary learning is ensuring that the key ideas are not lost so it is important that these are outlined within the initial unit plan (Jones, 2009) before it is shared with experts.

Sharing unit plan with experts:

In order to  form connections with these experts and enable them to make meaningful contributions to our learning I would share our unit outline with them, then attempt to formulate a plan for how they could offer support and engage with the students.

Setting up tools for communication:

After engaging with these experts during the initial stages of learning and helping the students to form connections with them it would be useful to set up a means of communication that the students could use to contact them to answer questions as the students follow their own learning paths. Time and scheduling may be an issue in this but with a myriad of different forms of communication available to us I feel that these barriers could be overcome with time and commitment.

Through facilitating connections between my students and these ‘outside’ experts I hope to engage my students more deeply in the subject matter through helping them to see real-life applications for their learning. As Leslie Kreimer states in Barton and Smith (2009) “If they’re doing an activity that’s meaningful, and they know why they are doing it, and they see the application, they’ll learn from it”.  Helping students to develop relationships with outside experts is not only important for their learning, but also for their character development. Through interacting with others outside their normal sphere students develop greater empathy and a deeper understanding of others “As an educator one of our main roles is to educate and enable our students to see the world through many lenses, from different perspectives” (Thomas McDonagh Group, 2011). The earlier we engage students with the ‘real world’ , the better we prepare them for life within it.  

References:

Barton, K. C., & Smith, L. A. (2000). Themes or motifs? Aiming for coherence through interdisciplinary outlines. The Reading Teacher. Retrieved from http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/203275592?accountid=14771\nhttp://bf4dv7zn3u.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/ProQ%3Aeducationalumni&rft_val_fmt=inf

Fullan, M., & Langworthy, M. (2011). A rich seam how new pedagogies find deep learning. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies (Vol. 15). http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbmt.2011.01.017

Jones, C. (2009). Interdisciplinary Approach - Advantages, Disadvantages, and the Future Benefits of Interdisciplinary Studies. Essai, 7(2009), 75–81.

Mulligan, Laura and Kuban, A. (2015). A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration. Retrieved October 17, 2016, from http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration./

Thomas McDonagh Group. (2011). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA