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Professional Context - Crossing Boundaries - Mindlab Week 31


Creating a map of the different connections I have in my professional setting is a humbling and inspiring act - the “it takes a village” phrase comes to mind, in terms of helping students gain a useful and relevant education, and supporting teachers and colleagues to shape and facilitate learning.
What is Interdisciplinary Practice?
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).
How does it affect me?
As a primary school teacher, much of what we teach and how we approach the curriculum is in an interdisciplinary way. Our staff, and collaboration teams within the school, are made up of people who bring a wide variety of specialist knowledge and interests to our planning and can bring a range of perspectives to learning experiences. My current collaboration team is made up of different strengths and interests - we offer our knowledge and skills where it is useful, and celebrate our differences. Sometimes we ask people with particular strengths to lead a planning discussion or teach a group of students - a succinct example of this is when I lead our team choir, because of my music strength, however another colleague who is our Enviro Leader is spearheading our “Nature Matters” inquiry this term.
Sometimes we have the opportunity to design a new unit of learning. A good example of this is an upcoming shared inquiry unit that is being taught across our local cluster of seven schools. It is part of our clusters’ shared New Pedagogies for Deeper Learning (NPDL) work. The unit of learning is called “Change Makers”, with an immersion based on the events in Parihaka. Each level of the school is approaching the unit in a way that is suitable for their age-group. We are seeking advice from our Lead Teachers of Maori (and their networks), as well as the NPDL Leads how are advising us on shaping deeper, richer learning experiences. Arts and Music Leads have contributed resources that may help people’s thinking in the planning process. It is an interesting process to be part of, as it is interdisciplinary across seven school teams.
Potential Problems
  • Fixed mindsets towards change or seeing another’s point of view.
  • Too many ideas, people unwilling to ‘let an idea go’ for the sake of another.
  • Difficulty in narrowing the scope or deciding on a way forward.
  • Communication and scheduling problems that are inherent when including more people.
  • Potential personality clashes, or culture clashes between different organisations who have different modes of operating.
Benefits of Interdisciplinary Collaborations
  • Being able to learn from each other.
  • Developing Key Competencies.
  • Preparing students for scenarios where they will work in diverse groups.
  • Learning from experts.
  • Building social capital through teamwork and strengthening relationships.
The sentence that has stood out for me in readings for this blog post was from Dr Deana McDonagh from the University of Illinois who discussed “broadening empathic horizons” and the importance of having an understanding that life can be viewed through many lenses in order to be understood more holistically (ThomasMcDonaghGroup, 2011). Joyce Thomas, in the same video, used the analogy of our ‘empathic horizon’ as a rubberband that we can learn to stretch out to incorporate others around us. Sharing expertise could be a negative experience and fall down if it were approached in a combative or competitive manner - I like the gentle, organic image of a rubberband that invokes more of a “Growth Mindset” approach to learning.


**This post was prepared as part of the requirements for CISC8100 Applied Practice in Context, for the fulfillment of requirements of a Post-Graduate Diploma in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning) via Mindlab for UNITEC.
References
Berg-Weger, M., &. Schneider, F. D. (1998). Interdisciplinary collaboration in social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 34, 97-107.

ThomasMcDonaghGroup. ( 2011, May 13). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA

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