There are many costs accrued when setting up and educational system. School furniture, buildings, teacher’s salaries, all add up to a large investment. The system of interdisciplinary education, however, is not an added expense, and should be implemented to get the most out of our investment in the future of our children’s educations.
Here is how to implement interdisciplinary studies without any extra expense.
• Most teachers are already well-versed with the methods and empirical practices of teaching related disciplines as a whole. Therefore knowledge of how to become an interdisciplinary teacher is already at hand and can be implemented without much added training and expense.
• Many educators are also well familiar with “task modeling.” This is an instructional strategy which encourages learning through observation. Learning through observation is a fundamental aspect of interdisciplinary education that most students are not familiar with, but if teachers already know the principles no further training is needed.
• The bringing together of insights from different disciplines, which is the hardest part of teaching in this way, is something most “scholar-educators” are well-aware of. They themselves have done this, and can easily learn to teach it with little effort.
• Teachers can make their own assessment about how much of a subject should be taught using an interdisciplinary strategy. Therefore they make their own decisions about how far to take the interdisciplinary approach in their own classroom.
With so much at stake it seems allowing teachers the freedom to use interdisciplinary methodologies when they see that as the best approach for their students is an idea to consider seriously.