Science and Engineering Education Advisory Group (SEEAG) and Deans of Science
Group
Subgroup Meeting on Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning
(held at the e-Science Centre, University of Edinburgh on Tuesday, 8 February 2011)
The subgroup meeting was convened by Professor Alyson Tobin for the Deans of Science at
the request of the SEEAG to discuss the ways and means of encouraging, promoting and
delivering interdisciplinary and cross-curricular science teaching and learning within the
Curriculum for Excellence and the new National Qualifications. The request from SEEAG
arose from its discussions around the position paper from the Deans of Science on Excellence
in Science Education.
Participants: Professor Simon Bates (University of Edinburgh), Dr Janet Brown (Chief Executive,
SQA), Professor David Coates (University of Dundee), Stuart Farmer (Association of Science
Education), Professor Colin Graham (Royal Society of Edinburgh), Dr Mary Hoey (HMIE), Professor
Phillip John (Heriot-Watt University), Bob Kibble (University of Edinburgh), John Sharkey (SQA),
Professor Alyson Tobin (University of St Andrews), Fred Young (Chief Executive, SSERC)
The discussions at the meeting were wide-ranging, focusing particularly on challenges of
encouraging teachers as subject specialists to teach beyond the confines of their specialist
knowledge in order to point out the connections between the science disciplines and to
highlight the real-world relevance of science. At the same time, it was stressed that
interdisciplinarity requires that all science subjects should continue to be founded on deep and
coherent pillars of knowledge and understanding.
Participants were invited to respond by submitting brief responses to the questions:
Why is interdisciplinary working important in the teaching of STEM subjects?
What should be done to promote and develop interdisciplinary working?
Responses are collated below to be incorporated into the SEEAG report on Excellence on
Science Education in its capacity as the Government’s Science Excellence Group. A report
of the meeting and the responses will be discussed by SEEAG at its next meeting. Practical
steps will be identified to support and develop interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
Action Points
A practical proposal that emerged from the meeting and responses was to communicate
examples of good interdisciplinary and cross-curricular teaching and learning in the
form of short summaries (a repository) in booklet form to be made widely available to
teachers, preferably in web-based form. If possible, practitioners should contribute and
help to drive its development. Ideas regarding content are proposed below under a
separate subheading.
The challenge of assessing interdisciplinary learning in the STEM subjects within the
new national qualifications was a major focus of concern and discussion. Some
proposals are set out in the responses below, under a separate sub-heading. These will
require careful analysis.
1
Why is interdisciplinary working important in the teaching of STEM subjects?
The nature and structure of science
Science is by nature ‘interdisciplinary’, with an overlapping core of knowledge and skills for each
science area. “Pure’ science, including mathematics, provides a foundation of knowledge and
understanding to the more applied science disciplines, but these also have their own core principles
and paradigms that should be articulated coherently. While there is great value in the different views
that emerge from the study of particular disciplines, a level of common understanding is an important
part of the team/systems/holistic approach to real-world problem solving.
Interdisciplinary science learning fosters an awareness of the relevance of science to the real world
and contemporary issues that is fundamental to the CfE capacity of responsible citizens.
The school world is an unreal representation of how knowledge is structured. There are more than just
three science subjects in the real world and they are not confined within well-defined walls. This
message should be understood by teachers so that they can confidently present learning material
(particularly science skills and principles) in contexts that extend beyond subject barriers.
Working across the disciplines
Major scientific advances and insights occur at interfaces between science disciplines, where progress
depends on making cross-disciplinary connections and gaining new interdisciplinary insights. They
depend upon teamwork and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Science education should reflect these
contemporary developments, engaging both pupils and teachers.
Interdisciplinary working offers opportunities for developing team work and problem solving skills,
essential features of the CfE. A powerful technique is to bring together a group of people from
different disciplines to work towards a common aim. This approach to problem solving is particularly
beneficial in industry and in higher education, and should be rehearsed in a school environment to
prepare young people for situations they will meet beyond school.
Science in the real world
The real world provides excellent contexts for teaching STEM subjects that arouse the curiosity of
young learners so that they will want to study science not just for its own sake but because of its
relevance. If young people are interested in a problem or issue, they will become interested in the
underlying science.
Successful development and innovation comes from understanding the different aspects of a question:
a magician fools us with physical objects because our eyes don’t operate like video cameras but like
still cameras; engineering solutions for disaster don’t work if you just look at the physics of flow and
chemistry of explosions – you also have to factor in how the crowd moves and why.
Universities and employers increasingly seek students with both interdisciplinary awareness and
substantive subject knowledge.
What should be done to promote and develop interdisciplinary working?
Support for teachers - CPD, resources and exemplification
Information and training are needed to encourage changes of practice in schools. A practical proposal
is to communicate examples of good interdisciplinary and cross-curricular teaching and learning in the
2
form of short summaries (a repository) in booklet form to be made widely available to teachers,
preferably in web-based form. Practitioners should be encouraged to contribute to this development.
CPD is needed that encourages teachers (including teachers of mathematics and English at Higher) to
speak across subject boundaries and collaborate on interdisciplinary teaching.
Exemplification of inter-disciplinary topics should include good packages of teaching materials and
associated equipment to promote practical skills development and associated CPD on its
implementation, with national coverage and access for all appropriate STEM teaching staff.
To assist with the production of information and training materials best use should be made of subject
associations (IoP, RSC, SoB, ASE), science centres, SSERC and other organisations to create and
spread a dialogue about interdisciplinary learning and to create resources for CPD events.
In order to develop a common understanding of the sciences, a single resource is needed to illustrate
and celebrate the differences between the sciences, and to show that each science has developed
techniques appropriate to the experiment being undertaken. The resource would include illustrations
of graphical techniques, treatment of uncertainties, and statistical analysis. If teachers share a better
understanding of the different ways of collecting and handling data, this should enhance the delivery
of interdisciplinary projects in schools.
Much progress has been made in physics by an applications led approach. Students see the work in a
relevant context. If the contexts and themes are chosen carefully, issues such as gender bias and
topicality can be addressed. However, applications in current physics courses tend to be physics or
engineering based. Starting with a context set within one of the other sciences, it would be possible to
apply physics principles to gain an understanding.
Skills
Teachers should understand that interdisciplinarity is not a threat to their subject, but adds value for
their students. With problem solving and analysis at a high premium in the world of work and study,
an approach that demonstrably widens the skills to enable a student to cope with a novel problem
gives significant added value.
Discussions with science teachers occasionally reveal a lack of understanding of the way in which
each of the sciences works and contributes to progress. This is most apparent in a consideration of the
way collected data is analysed. Drawing of graphs, use of uncertainties, evaluating processes, drawing
conclusions are all skills that on comparison are found to have different approaches. This simply
reveals a lack of understanding of the way data is collected and handled across the sciences.
Research should be conducted to better identify the key skill-set(s) required by those completing the
junior and senior phases of secondary education, in order to inform the evolution of senior phase
curricula and assessment. Within this the fact that “thinking like a biologist” is different from
“thinking like a physicist” should be identified, explained and promoted as not being a bad thing.
Assessment of interdisciplinary learning
At qualifications level, science knowledge and skills are assessed in a subject context, and this
substantive knowledge is important. Interdisciplinary teaching opportunities are limited and secondary
teachers value subject identity. In an assessment-driven system, we need to identify new ways of
assessing cross-disciplinary thinking and common skills sets, for example in project work and by
setting problems in unfamiliar contexts.
3
If a learning outcome is an interdisciplinary approach, then assessment should reflect that. We should
develop exemplars of interdisciplinary questions, together with assessments that measure the different
inputs from the different sciences, testing the application of knowledge to unfamiliar situations.
We should ensure that SQA assessments use a broader range of interdisciplinary contexts within
which to locate examination questions, and explore with SQA innovative courses (perhaps units within
courses) which deliberately blur traditional subject boundaries. These courses will include innovative
assessment methods (synoptic questions, extended assignments and collaborative project work).
Assessments should reflect cross-context learning. Most physics assessments are set within contexts
many of which are unfamiliar to the candidate. We should aim to produce questions set in a non
physics context and ask candidates to apply their knowledge of physics to answer the question.
A requirement to have some knowledge about the application of basic science knowledge should be
incorporated into assessments. This should not be done in a restrictive way which prescribes particular
applications but allows the evolution of the curriculum and its assessment as technology and
applications develop.
Assessment of STEM subjects at National 4 through to Advanced Higher levels should be developed
further along the direction already begun in the new Higher arrangements with skills-based assessment
based on unfamiliar contexts and more open-ended questions. In order to ensure a fair and level
playing field this could be based on pre-release assessment materials. These materials could be set in
the same topical context across several subjects in any given year to emphasize the inter-disciplinary
nature of much current science research and the benefits of studying several STEM subjects
simultaneously e.g. contexts such as biomedical physics or Earth science.
4