Paradigm Shift to Interdisciplinary Teaching in Science: History and Conceptual Framework

Hye Sun You

The University of Texas at Austin

1912 Speedway Stop D5500

SZB 462H, Austin, TX 78712-1608

Email: hyesunyou@utexas.edu

Cell: (512)-413-0177

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Paradigm Shift to Interdisciplinary Teaching in Science: History and Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Interdisciplinary teaching in science is characterized as a perspective that integrates two or more sub-disciplines into seamless and coherent connections in order to enable students to recognize various sides of science phenomena, make relevant connections, generate meaningful associations, and develop high-order thinking. While interdisciplinary approach has recently been receiving much attention from science educators, little consideration has been given to how teachers’ knowledge integration among science topics can support students’ learning. Knowledge integration refers to the process of linking ideas and organizing connections to develop a cohesive understanding of scientific phenomena. Teachers could further understand science through knowledge integration processes. To provide an effective and supportive interdisciplinary teaching, science teachers should be equipped with more interdisciplinary knowledge rather than limited and fragmented knowledge of science. This study attends to this issue by adapting lateral curriculum knowledge framework and expert-novice schema theory regarding knowledge integration. I proposed a new notion of teachers’ content knowledge through knowledge integration perspective and described how integrated knowledge of teachers affects their interdisciplinary teaching practices and eventually, student learning. This research would conduce a theoretical approach for the creation of appropriate and productive professional development programs that may foster the dynamic process of knowledge integration across various disciplines including science in the near future.

Key words: interdisciplinary teaching, integrated teacher knowledge, knowledge integration, and professional development

Today, the word 'interdisciplinary learning' is widely used throughout educational

fields corresponding to grade levels K-12 and college students due to a growing awareness of

the inherent values and benefits of interdisciplinary learning. Contemporary scholars have

also regarded interdisciplinary approach as an essential alternative method for learning (Boix

Mansilla & Duraising, 2007; Boix Mansilla, Miller, & Gardner, 2000; Boix Mansilla &

Gardner, 2006; Clarke & Russell, 1997; Jacob, 1989; Klein, 2002). Currently in Korea,

STEAM education, a combination of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering,

Mathematics) and Arts, has been implemented for the purpose of increasing both students’

interests and academic outcome. In the U.S., educators have begun to recognize the

importance and benefits of interdisciplinarity among various disciplines, and interests in a

necessity for interdisciplinary-oriented curriculum are rapidly growing.

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Over the past few years, evidence supporting interdisciplinary learning has been

found in several science standard documents at the national level. The teaching standards for

grades K-12, published by the National Science Teachers' Association (1998), revealed the

influences of integrated curriculum instruction. The National Science Education Standards

(NRC, 1996) stated, “Schools must restructure schedules so that teachers can use blocks of

time, interdisciplinary strategies and field experiences to give students many opportunities to

engage in serious scientific investigation as an integral part of their science learning” (p.44).

Documents such as Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS, 2009) suggested that science

must be taught in a way that creates connections between science-related subjects and other

fields of studies due to the fact that the basic foundations of science research occurs at the

interface of other disciplines. The Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices,

Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (National Research Council [NRC], 2012, hereafter

referred to as “the framework”) and the Next Generation Science Standards ([NGSS], Lead

States, 2013) revamped and refined itself on a national level during a time when science

education was going through major changes. From an interdisciplinary perspective, one of the

intents of the framework is to provide a K–12 science standard framework of

interdisciplinary learning, bringing a more holistic view and meaningful association of

various specific core concepts in science. Additionally, the NGSS presented a solution

through the integration of scientific fields by raising the status and bar of engineering and

technology on par with other science fields in order to assimilate multiple concepts in a

smooth manner. The trends in educational reform toward interdisciplinary learning are more

likely to approach teachers with a new perspective of interdisciplinary teaching. Cone et al.

(1998) described interdisciplinary teaching as an approach that integrates two or more subject

areas into a meaningful association in order to enhance and enrich students learning within

each subject area. Especially, one of the primary justifications for interdisciplinary learning

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and teaching for science is founded in nature itself. Science disciplines are not isolated from

one another and such separation creates an artificial way in which science is taught, not a

reflection of its true nature. Making connections between fragmentations of knowledge

structure presented within separate science subjects and assimilating those to learn and

perceive our natural world is a rational method for interdisciplinary teaching (Wenner, 1976).

Interdisciplinary teaching is more than an organizational strategy of thinking about the way in

which the knowledge is used.

When the swing of the educational pendulum moves in a direction that is more

favorable to interdisciplinary education, students are required to be equipped with more

integrated knowledge and its corresponding understandings across two or more specific

disciplines, rather than having limited and fragmented knowledge. However, students have

problems of synthesizing different disciplines and their interdisciplinary understanding does

not occur spontaneously. It is true that interdisciplinary education could be achieved through

considerable amount of help and guidance from the teachers. Thus, teachers would not only

need to develop complex understandings of specific concepts but also recognize a concept by

mapping a variety of domains and noticing meaningful patterns of information between each

one for high-quality interdisciplinary teaching. The roles of science teachers, in regards with

interdisciplinary instruction, is to help the students deal with complex problems and natural

phenomena of the real world that are not easily comprehensible or resolvable from a single

disciplinary framework. Students who have encountered instructions that cover a multitude of

issues and problems corresponding to real-life contexts, through relevant scientific disciplines

and connections, are motivated to broaden conceptions through the process of knowledge

integration (Beane, 1995). It is ultimately believed that teachers’ knowledge towards

interdisciplinarity will aid students in advancing cognitive development including a high-

order thinking from integrated knowledge, which eventually would improve their academic

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performance (Goldsmith & Kraiger, 1997). Newell (1998, 2002) argued that the key goals of

interdisciplinary education is to develop high-order thinking: freedom of inquiry, critical

thinking deductive reasoning, reasoning by analogy, and synthetic thinking through

integrated education. Horton (1981) also has argued that interdisciplinary teaching may lead

students to a more meaningful learning experience, enabling them to reach higher levels of

scientific literacy. Thus, rather than teaching students to think solely through a single

disciplinary point of view, it is clear that science teachers should enable students to organize

and understand knowledge from multiple scientific fields of study. The PISA (Programme for

International Student Assessment) 2012 (OECD, 2013) showed that American students

performed slightly above the mean (500) with 508 points in problem solving. Although the

competency has been improved, there is still a demand in U.S. education for development of

methods to improve students’ performances when the compared average performances from

Asian countries such as Singapore (562) or South Korea (561) are significantly higher.

Although the 2012 PISA study reported that the largest achievement gap in problem solving

between the U.S. and the highest performing Asian countries was found on tasks where

students need to demonstrate high order thinking such as organizing and integrating the

information in order to formulate their understanding. Interdisciplinary science teaching will

have the potential for enhancing the students’ problem solving abilities. By focusing on

interdisciplinary science topics and problems rather than an isolated discipline, science

teachers could have an increased opportunity for students to reinforce their process of

problem solving.

This paper aims to explore historical and current trends on interdisciplinary learning

and teaching, and also further contextualize and review key literature to comprehend the

nature of knowledge integration for interdisciplinary teaching. This theoretical study is not

intended to build a general model about the interdisciplinary instruction of science teachers,

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but rather to provide an opportunity for them to consider what interdisciplinarity is and

develop their own integrated knowledge and educational practices.

This paper is guided by two research questions:

(1) What are the historical and current trends in interdisciplinary learning and teaching in

science education?

(2) What are the nature of an epistemic perspective and conceptual frameworks in regards to

explaining science teachers’ knowledge integration for interdisciplinary teaching?

The review is comprised in the following way: Part 1 dealt with Shulman’s and other

scholars’ notion of teacher knowledge, and emphasized lateral curriculum knowledge as a

precursor of integrated knowledge. In this section, a body of literature presented how the

components of teacher knowledge are conceptualized in multiple ways according to several

researchers. Part 2 described the historical and current perspectives of interdisciplinary

teaching and learning within American education. Part 3 compared a schema structure

regarding knowledge integration between expert and novice teachers. Part 4 described some

empirical literature that presents the ways they utilized knowledge integration frameworks.

Lastly, I concluded with an insight related to a further and deeper understanding, in which

professional development can contribute to an enhancement of knowledge integration of

science teachers.

Conceptual Framework

Conceptualization of Teacher Knowledge

Since the 1960s scholars and policymakers in the U.S. and other countries have

constantly strived to uncover optimal answers to questions pertaining to the kinds of

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knowledge that are of highest priority and are a necessity for teachers to obtain. Additionally,

researchers have focused on the definition and classification of teachers’ knowledge domains

(Gess-Newsome, 1999; Grossman, 1990; Magnusson et al., 1999; Shulman, 1986, 1987).

Recent researches have tried to document and portray teachers’ knowledge (Lee et al., 2008;

Loughran et al., 2001, 2008), and further investigated how the domains of teachers’

knowledge interacts with one another and how they impact the overall teaching/learning

experience (Park & Chen, 2012). A rich body of literature presented the complex and

multifaceted nature of teachers’ knowledge through its various classification for differing

purposes. There are strong tendencies to see knowledge that teachers have as two different

categories: ‘subject-matter knowledge’ and ‘pedagogical knowledge’. This would be before

Shulman’s PCK became generally known. However, Shulman (1986) had argued another

knowledge category area in need to be an addition to existing knowledge such as ‘subject

matter knowledge’ and ‘pedagogical knowledge’, pointing out that only two knowledge areas

are not enough to represent the teachers’ ability in the field of education. Shulman (1986)

also conceptualized ‘curriculum knowledge ' by categorizing it as four separate components

(see Table 1).

INSERT TABLE 1 HERE

The first component of curriculum knowledge consists of knowledge from different

programs and instructional materials for teaching a particular subject. Component two of

curricular knowledge entails the effectiveness and implications of programs and materials,

including the pros and cons of them. The third component is the knowledge of the content

and its corresponding materials in other subject areas that the students may have already had

or will have (lateral curriculum knowledge), and the fourth component entails the knowledge

of how the particular topics are developed across in a given program (vertical curriculum

knowledge). The definition of lateral curricular knowledge by Shulman overlaps with the

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meaning of integrated content knowledge across two or more established areas of expertise.

Although Shulman directly has not mentioned integrated knowledge of teachers, it is clear

that the concept of lateral curriculum knowledge connotes the nature of integrated content

knowledge.

Grossman (1990) suggested four general areas of teachers’ knowledge to represent

professional knowledge for teaching; general pedagogical knowledge; subject matter

knowledge; pedagogical content knowledge (PCK); and knowledge of context (see Figure 1).

Grossman’s (1990) categorization of PCK components into knowledge about curriculum,

students, instructional strategies, and learning contexts, appears to be more encompassing

than Shulman’s classification. Grossman (1990) conceptualized PCK into four central

components. One component includes knowledge and beliefs about the purposes for teaching

a subject at different grade levels. This knowledge is related to the teachers’ goals for

teaching a particular subject matter. The second component of PCK includes knowledge of

students’ understanding, conceptions, and misconceptions of particular topics. The other is

curriculum knowledge, which includes knowledge of curriculum materials, as well as both

the horizontal and vertical curriculum knowledge for a specific discipline. Grossman (1990)

argued that curriculum knowledge is a sub-category of PCK whereas Shulman (1986)

claimed that curriculum knowledge is an independent component of PCK.

INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE

Marks (1990) showed that the portrait of PCK is composed of four domains: subject

matter for instructional purposes, students’ understanding of the subject matter, media for

instruction in the subject matter, and instructional processes for the subject matter. Marks

classified that ‘grade-specific curriculum’ and ‘topic organization’ as instructional processes

that emerged from their study. Marks believed that the curriculum knowledge interacts with

one of the subcategories of PCK at the highest level within the structure.

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Gess-Newsome (1999) used the integrative and transformative model to address the

features of teachers’ knowledge using the analogy ‘mixture versus compound’. The

integrative model is like a mixture, where the original elements still have their chemical

characteristics. The knowledge domains of subject matter, pedagogy, and context in the

integrative model tend to exist as separate entities. This knowledge is melded in classroom

practice, and one particular domain of this knowledge can serve as justification for planned

instruction decision. In contrast, the transformative model implies that the initial knowledge

is combined into other forms of knowledge and consequently, a compound of knowledge are

transformed as a more substantial type of new knowledge.

History and Current Trends of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching in American

Education.

Interdisciplinarity is important in that individuals deal with complex problems and

phenomena that are not easily comprehensible or resolvable from a single understanding or

resolution when approached from a single disciplinary framework in regards to real life

situations. The historical perspectives of interdisciplinary learning provides evidence that

educational reformers long before our time have advocated interdisiciplinarity in order to

emphasize active learning, contextual knowledge, real-life issues, and unified organization of

curriculum (Beane, 1997; Chandramohan & Fallows, 2009; Kliebard, 2004). The

“interdisciplinary” term was coined in the early decades of the twentieth century and the term

has been used for over a 100 years (Klein, 1990). However, the concept of interdisciplinarity

had existed even before the emergence of the term. Plato was the first philosopher to

advocate it as a synthesis between knowledge and unified science (Klein, 1990). Aristotle

also was a philosopher who had the innate ability to gather all kinds of knowledge and

organize it to form broader or innovative concepts.

Actual curriculum integration for interdisciplinary learning began in the late 1800s

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with the Herbartian movement named after the German philosopher and educator Johann

Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) (Drake & Burns, 2004). Ironically, the true father of

Herbartianism was Tuiskon Ziller, a disciple of Herbart. Scholars have testified that several

of Herbart’s documented works have little to no relevance to interdisciplinarity or the

educational movement that he was credited for. Ziller saw that the curriculum in his time

period segmented and isolated each subject, discouraging any connections or relationships

between them. Students were expected to take each subject during an allocated amount of

time each day, during which educators would aid the student’s understanding and base

knowledge for higher-level concepts. To rectify the given system, Ziller proposed that the

interests of children are a top priority for instruction in the classroom, and he further

developed the idea of correlating disconnected subject areas around specific themes,

sometimes referred to as “integration of studies” (Klein, 2002). The basic idea in “correlation

or concentration” was the arrangement of subjects in a curriculum in such a way that the

instruction of one subject was not discrediting the instruction of another subject. Ziller

proposed the basic idea of appropriate correlation of subjects, but he believed there was

probably one subject that should become the center for others so that there would be a

reference point that students could go back to when learning a new subject (Stack, 1961).

This is where the term “concentration” was developed, defined as “the practice of using a

particular subject, such as history of literature, as a focal point for all subjects, thereby

achieving the unity in the curriculum they sought” (Kliebard, 2004, p.16). Along with the

development of the concept of correlation of subjects and unity of learning, Herbart

developed five steps (i.e., 1. Preparation, 2. Clear presentation of ideas, 3. Association of

ideas, 4. Classification of ideas, 5. Application of ideas) in the construction of knowledge.

The idea of these five steps has become the basis for the concept of interdisciplinary learning

within America’s modern day education.

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The underlying concept of interdisciplinary learning also can be traced in the history

of the progressive education movement in the United States during the first half of the

twentieth century. This movement has been divided into two competing groups:

administrative progressivism versus pedagogical progressivism. Administrative progressives

focused on the scientific and differentiated curriculum, and acknowledged the existence of

developmental differences in children of the same age groups (Labaree, 2005). Today’s

interdisciplinary learning is much closer to pedagogical progressivism rather than

administrative progressivism. Pedagogical progressivism highlights two important

components in progressive pedagogy: developmentalism and holistic learning (Hirsch, 1996).

The second component means that authentic natural learning only occurs in a holistic manner,

where several realms of skill and knowledge are integrating units, topics, and projects rather

than being taught as separate subjects. The progressive passion for interdisciplinary studies,

thematic units, and project methods was developed and still continues to expand.

During the 1970s and 1980s, another traditional structure came to the forefront in

school reforms. Among educators, an important question was raised regarding the balance

between specialization and integration. Since the 1990s, scholars have paid close attention in

designing and managing interdisciplinary curricular and research projects, the practical and

philosophical consequences of relationships between particular disciplines, and the nature of

interdisciplinary theories and methods (Klein, 1990). The number of published journals and

reports dealing with the importance of interdisciplinary learning and teaching, breaking the

disciplinary boundaries has greatly increased (Gehrke, 1998). Wilson (1998, p.8) has argued

that consilience—“the jumping together of knowledge across disciplines to create a common

groundwork of explanation”—is the most promising way to foster advances in cognitive

ability and human awareness. A variety of US science standards already recognized the need

and importance of interdisciplinary approaches to science learning almost 20 years ago. In

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Shaping the Future (George & Bragg, 1996), the Advisory Committee to the National

Science Foundation repeatedly mentions interdisciplinary learning and teaching as a strategy

for keeping students competitive. The National Science Education Standards ([NRC]

National Research Council, 1996) showed interests in interdisciplinary learning and teaching

and a growing awareness of the importance and benefits of those. The NSES provided

students with productive and insightful ways of thinking about connections made through

unifying concepts to explain the natural and designed world. Unifying concepts and processes

include 1) Systems, order, and organization, 2) Evidence, models, and explanation, 3)

Change, constancy, and measurement. 4) Evolution and equilibrium forms and functions.

Similarly, the Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement

of Science [AAAS], 2009) also emphasized the importance of connections among disciplines

and presented a framework of interdisciplinary science learning, bringing a more holistic

view and meaningful association of various science disciplines. This standard asserted that

students' actual learning experiences could occur in totally integrated contexts. For example,

understanding the scientific explanation for the evolution of life depends on precursor

knowledge of the physical sciences, earth science, and some common themes that cut across

several disciplines. Interdisciplinary Education in K-12 and College: A Foundation for K- 16

Dialogue was the first book which brought exploration of the nature of interdisciplinary

education across K-16 spectrum in American education (Klein, 2002). Each chapter of this

book showed the authors’ thought and recommendation for interdisciplinary education and

they examined topics as wide ranging as curriculum development, pedagogy and integrative

process in teaching, and the basis for a common conception of interdisciplinary education.

Recently, the Framework for K–12 Science Education and NGSS are intended to

reflect a new conceptual shift for American science education-crosscutting concepts (CCCs).

The framework and NGSS identified seven crosscutting concepts (e.g., energy and matter) as

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“unifying themes” that establish meaningful connections across multiple scientific contexts.

The CCCs can be used as means to develop an organizational framework for connecting

knowledge, transcending disciplinary boundaries. The use of CCCs may be critical in

providing students and teachers with an opportunity for a more relevant and coherent

knowledge and developing their abilities in perceiving interdisciplinary relationships of

science. For example, “energy and matter” among the seven CCCs has powerful applications

in physics, chemistry, biology, and earth sciences, etc., If students draw on ideas of how the

body gets energy and matter out of foods, the concept of conservation of matter and

transformation of energy being based on physics, and the chemical reactions in a biological

context provides many opportunities to achieve interdisciplinary understanding of the overall

idea. The concept flow and conservation of energy in biological contexts could extend to

topics such as Earth’s atmosphere and ocean.

Knowledge Integration

Knowledge integration (KI) involves the process of incorporating new information

into a body of existing knowledge (Linn, 2006). The KI perspective empowers both teachers

and students. The KI perspective for interdisciplinary teaching emphasizes the role of

teachers, in which it is their responsibility to encourage their students in order to establish a

successful conceptual change by integrating prior knowledge into new ideas. A larger body of

literature usually focused on students’ KI for learning (e.g., Clark & Linn, 2003; Davis, 2003;

Ganaras et al., 2008; Lin, 2006; Lin, Clark, & Slotta, 2003; Linn & Hsi, 2000; Shen, Liu, &

Sung, 2014) whereas only a handful of literature pertaining to knowledge integration of

science teachers describes the procedures on the development of teacher knowledge

integration.

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Shen, Liu, and Sung (2014) considered three special processes in interdisciplinary

knowledge integration: translation, transfer, and transformation. Translation process

involves specialized terminologies and jargon developed within each discipline that should be

interpreted differently in other disciplines. Transfer refers to the process where students apply

explanatory models, concepts learned from one disciplinary context to another.

Transformation indicates the potential to apply explanatory models and concepts learned

from one discipline to conceptually transform a system typically considered in a different

discipline into a new system. Teachers are able to not only conceptualize the core knowledge

from a single discipline, but also apply prior concepts into another discipline through ‘deep

transfer’ (Chin & Brown, 2000), not just surface level transfer. Teachers experience

interdisciplinary transformation by applying prior cognitive structures/models and concepts

learned from one discipline into a new system to conceptually transform a system that was

previously considered to be part of a different discipline. The transformation process requires

both integration of relevant disciplinary knowledge and the appropriate transfer. Linn and

Eylon (2006) identified four general processes that can promote KI: eliciting current ideas,

adding new ideas, distinguishing among ideas, and sorting out ideas. Linn (1995) suggested a

method of teaching called scaffolded knowledge integration, which can encourage students to

develop interdisciplinary understanding, especially, of a complex domain by enabling them to

develop more coherent scientific literacy. The goal of instruction is to motivate students to

integrate new models with existing views and to distinguish among the models. In the

interdisciplinary instruction, students can have a cohesive view of a domain while identifying

a process that will allow them to add more sophisticated models to their repertoire, and then

be able to apply their ideas to relevant problems. Davis (2004) analyzed changes of

knowledge integration for one prospective science teacher in a unit of instruction. He

characterized a prospective teacher’s knowledge in terms of the knowledge integration

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processes, found in Linn and Hsi (2000)’s work, of adding new ideas, making links among

ideas, and distinguishing between ideas. The prospective teacher had relatively well-

integrated science subject matter knowledge, adding ideas to her repertoire and identifying

weaknesses in her knowledge, but she did not consistently use her strong and well-integrated

science content knowledge for teaching. Ma (1999) argued that teachers need a robust and

well-integrated knowledge that could be used in a meaningful manner. In particular, because

science has an intrinsically interdisciplinary nature, this study highlighted that science

teachers are in greater need for professional interdisciplinary understanding of content

knowledge. They argued that combining the four processes provides promising ways to

improve science instruction. Lederman et al. (1994) found the developmental changes in pre-

service science teachers’ subject matter and pedagogy knowledge structures as they went

through professional teacher education program. Their initial knowledge structure

representations showed primarily listings of discrete science topics with lack of coherence.

However, their knowledge structures became more interconnected and complex during the

teacher education program.

Expert-Novice Theory on Knowledge Integration

Interdisciplinary understanding can be defined as “the capacity to integrate knowledge

and modes of thinking in two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to produce

a cognitive advancement” (Boix Mansilla & Duraisingh, 2007, p. 219) for a particular task

such as explaining a scientific phenomenon or solving a problem. It is certainly true that there

is a stark contrast in the interdisciplinary understandings between expert and novice teachers,

where experts vary in the methods and usage of their knowledge in comparison with novices

in regards with interdisciplinary instruction. The experts tend to find core concepts and

central theoretical constructs of the corresponding field first, and then further utilizes them in

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order to solve problems that are related with the given concept. Novices, on the other hand,

tend to possess shallow concepts and isolates them as separate factual knowledge, which in

turn prevents them from comprehending or being able to solve complex problems with an

interdisciplinary approach. Understanding the differences in cognitive processes regarding KI

between experts and novices could provide a basis of recognizing the nature of the

development of interdisciplinary knowledge and help teachers find an efficient way to

integrate prior knowledge with new information.

According to a schema theory dealing with a human’s cognitive architecture

suggested by Sweller, Merrienboer, and Paas (1998), in long-term memory, a complex

schema is constructed by merging a large number of lower level schemas into one higher

level schema that plays a critical role in reducing working memory load in regards with

learning processes. However, all individuals are not on the same process of schema

construction. The large numbers of lower-level knowledge structures for one person may be

perceived as a single entity for someone more knowledgeable and well-informed. A main

difference between expert and novice teachers is that experts have a wider range of existing

knowledge in comparison with the novices in terms of long-term memory, which affects the

degree of connections between the knowledge items, and further causes differences in the

cognitive construction with regards to interdisciplinary understanding. Experts are superior to

novices in terms of making inferences on which new concepts fits into the existing

knowledge clusters (Chi & Ceci, 1987). The knowledge of novices is limited and insufficient

in understanding the given core concepts and tend to have a lower sensitivity in recognizing

the relationships between patterns and hierarchical classification of knowledge (Bransford,

Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Chi and Ceci (1987, adapted from Keil, 1981) represented the

gradually changing structural levels that show how KI is processed. Among them, “super

link,” captures the developmental difference between experts and novices and is applicable to

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interdisciplinary teaching (see Figure 2). Novice teachers tend to acquire the knowledge in an

isolated manner, which in turn may lead to them failing to present that the knowledge

overlaps with different disciplines. As cognitive processes proceeds, schema structures are

changed qualitatively and quantitatively in ways in which the disconnected knowledge

components have a “local coherence”, which in turn provides “super link” between each

module of knowledge. These coherently developed structures of knowledge with super links

allows teachers to see or understand the entire knowledge structure and further recognizes

that the interconnected knowledge allows them to facilitate interdisciplinary understandings

through integrations of information of new disciplines.

INSERT FIGURE 2 HERE

The diagram of developmental structure on the right in Figure 2 represents the

obvious differences in the range of accessible knowledge depending on the level of cognitive

development. Even though learners have an entire and relevant amount of knowledge in long-

term memory, there might be differences in the ability to access a wider range of the

knowledge structure between novices and experts. Some learners can access some

overlapping knowledge, while others can access the entire knowledge base to solve a specific

task. It is assumed that the accessibility of the knowledge might serve as a precondition for

interdisciplinary understanding. Two examples of knowledge developmental structure shows

the plausibility of there being a gap in interdisciplinary understanding between experts and

novices, which in turn implies what schema structure is needed for interdisciplinary teaching.

An analysis of experts’ cognitive development, which clarifies the learning process of expert

teachers could provide a promising theoretical framework that shows the potential of

interdisciplinary teaching.

Discussion and Conclusions

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Interdisciplinary teaching has become an integral component of the secondary

education since the mid-1960s (St. Clair & Hough, 1992). The need for an interdisciplinary

perspective is especially pertinent to science because the natural phenomena studied by

science are intrinsically interdisciplinary. The natural phenomena shown in people’s lives

within the real world are not isolated into separate science subjects, so instructional strategy

in school should reflect likewise as well. Additionally, due to the increase in the amount of

knowledge and research in various science disciplines, the current science education system

needs to address the explosive growth of domain-specific knowledge as well as the

relationship of relevance among the disciplines. However, students have a difficulty to make

the interdisciplinary connections in secondary education, which poses needs of a considerable

amount of guidance and aid from science teachers in order to achieve students’

interdisciplinary understanding.

The paradigm shift of discipline-based learning into interdisciplinary curriculum

could help students make sense of the multitude of issues and problems in a real-life context

and understand knowledge associated with any relevant disciplines in an integrated manner.

Of course, it is admitted that interdisciplinary science is built upon the well-established

disciplinary sciences since specialization is a precursor to interdsiciplinarity. The specialized

content knowledge is not only a necessary condition, but also a prerequisite to acquire other

diverse categorization of knowledge bases and ultimately, for the provision of powerful

teaching (Baumert et al., 2009; Sadler et al., 2013). If science teachers have insufficient

knowledge among the specific discipline topics, they will also lack an ability to integrate

those concepts, preventing their students from having a more holistic view of science, which

in turn can limit the degree to which they would be able to continue their improvement of

ability to learn advanced and real life related science.

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The ‘KI’ framework along with lateral curriculum knowledge could enable science

teachers to recognize the nature of integration of knowledge and thus have a meta-perspective

on multiple scientific disciplines, even though the science courses remain as separate

disciplines. Also, an interweaving of science subject matters could develop if teachers gain

insight on the conceptual framework of expert-novice theory. Understanding the differences

between experts and novice teachers based on schema theory helps teachers perceive

cognitive developmental process of KI, where novice and expert teachers gain knowledge

and integrate it on different levels. The enhanced KI ability allows teachers to better perceive

a grouped meaningful pattern of the information and acquire a more thematic knowledge,

which may eventually lead to successful interdisciplinary teaching. As shown in Simon and

Chase’s study (1973), expert chess players could not only identify isolated patterns, but also

perceive an integrated configuration of chess piece positions. In contrast, novice players

could not construct these interconnected links. The development of KI is never a linear

process. This development is rooted in the teachers’ individual contexts and is influenced by

factors such as characteristics of the school culture and support for professional development.

Even more, individual teachers sense that these factors affects their abilities to teach in

different manners, which eventually leads to a gap in their abilities in perceiving

interdisciplinary relationships of science.

This study has an assumption that professional development (PD) may provide teachers with

specific input that can contribute to the development of their KI, focusing on the horizontal

process across boundaries of science disciplines. Although KI is a complex process that is

highly specific to the context, situation, and person, there is an intuitive reasoning in that

teachers’ KI could be achieved by PD. Lederman, Gess-Newsome and Latz (1994) argued

that providing teachers with PD that supports some aspects of teachers’ interconnected

content knowledge allowed them to contemplate several important aspects of their science

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teaching in an integrated manner, and to enact instructional strategies in accordance with

interdisciplinary learning. This paper implies that a specific PD in alignment with

interdisciplinarity is needed for teachers’ content knowledge integration and further

professional practices. Although the PD for interdisciplinary teaching in school reform will

require a considerable investment of resources to develop appropriate instructional materials

and tools needed to support interdisciplinary teaching, PD can provide science teachers with a

focus of not only integrated content knowledge, but also, how the whole structure of teacher

knowledge interacts with instruction strategies and student achievement. The effectiveness of

PD can compensate for the existing problem of modern-day American school systems, which

is still in the direction of establishing rigorous education practices toward disciplinarity.

Individual science teachers receive a certification on a separate subject, going through teacher

preparation program focusing on their specific major such as chemistry and biology during

their undergraduate or graduate studies. This education system naturally allows science

teachers to teach the specific discipline and have difficulty with implementing an

interdisciplinary instruction due to their own unpreparedness and ill-informed knowledge on

integrated knowledge.

Science teachers in middle schools are less dedicated to a particular science

discipline, but even so, most middle-school general-science classes tend to build separate

blocks of physical, chemical, biological, and earth sciences. If nobody teaches students how

to integrate the different disciplines, because what the students learn is prominently affected

by how the teachers are teaching them, students are prevented from discovering and creating

links between any relevant subject matters, which eventually prevents interdisciplinary

understanding in science and even leads to poor academic performances, which in turn puts

constant pressure on both the educators and students. It seems that we may be stuck in a

vicious cycle of pedagogical challenges. To break this cycle, interdisciplinary teaching

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should be integrated into the mainstream of current science education.

In future studies, empirical evidence supporting the rationale for interdisciplinary

teaching is needed. Examining the underlying professional development mechanism of

teachers who have had exposure to interdisciplinary teaching practices on how knowledge

integration could be facilitated and its impacts on the quality of teaching, and if possible

student learning as well would support the theoretical argument of this study. It is a crucial

moment for the collective efforts of teachers and administrators to come together and propel

science education into an interdisciplinary direction.

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Figure 1. Grossman’s teacher knowledge model. Adapted from “The making of a teacher: Teacher knowledge & teacher education,” by P. L. Grossman, 1990. Copyright 1990 by New York: Teachers College Press.

Figure 2. Developmental sequences representing structural changes. Adapted from “Content

Level III

Level II

Level I

 

   

 

 

  

 

   

 

   

 

    

   

  

 

 

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knowledge: Its role, representation and restructuring in memory development,” by M. T. Chi, and S. J. Ceci, 1987, Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 20, p. 131. Copyright 1987 by the New York Academic Press.

Table1Descriptions of curriculum knowledge by Shulman (1986)

Components Excerpts from p. 10 of Shulman (1986)'Curriculum Knowledge' is

Program & Materials

Knowledge of “the full range of programs designed for the teaching of particular subjects and topics at a given level [and] the variety of instructional materials available in relations to those programs”

Indications & Contraindications

Knowledge of: “the set of characteristics that serves as both the indications and contraindications for the use of particular curriculum or program materials in particular circumstances”

LateralKnowledge of: “curriculum materials under study by his or her students in other subjects they are studying at the time” (Lateral curriculum knowledge)

Vertical

Knowledge of: “familiarity with the topics and issues that have been and will be taught in the same subject area during the preceding and later years in school, and the materials that embody them” (Vertical curriculum knowledge)

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