Last night I was wondering about two things: working interdisciplinarily and also problem based learning.
About interdisciplinarity: On a superficial level, most things are interdisciplinary. If you teach English, you are also teaching things related to culture, to "self" and to many other topics. If you teach M&U, you are also teaching language, you are also teaching math, etc. However, if the school system is based on specific subjects having 45 minute blocks and there is this concept of teachers having a profile (some do English, some do art, some do French - but not all), on a feasibility level, this interdisciplinarity remains on this superficial level unless teachers really make an effort to network. So on the level of strategies, how do you have a strategy-based approach with the children in one subject and then ensure that they are transferring the strategies that they "train" to other subjects? Of course it's possible, but it's more complex due to these profiles. So I ask myself if it wouldn't be better to really get into subject-specific strategies in more depth and leave interdisciplinarity because perhaps if we start to look into depth in one subject, this makes us have another way of looking at things which then transfers to other subjects.
About Problem Based Learning: On the level of tertiary education or more concretely, when working with teacher trainees, I only wonder here if the problem shouldn't be written by the students themselves. Perhaps it's better to say: PBL is a great method but the first two weeks of the semester should be spent observing classes or reflecting upon classes previous seen so that in the third week, smaller but more relevant problems should be written and researched. PBL is supposed to be authentic and real - and this is subjective. Therefore more students would be more interested IF they could themselves decide what problem they want to solve. This is the reason we wrote our "dialogue" - we wanted everyone to find something that they're interested in but I have the feeling that like in any module, some people are really interested and the others don't see the relevance and just want to get through. And then some things stay on this superficial level. If students could write their own problems, then they would be forced to make them relevant.
About interdisciplinarity: On a superficial level, most things are interdisciplinary. If you teach English, you are also teaching things related to culture, to "self" and to many other topics. If you teach M&U, you are also teaching language, you are also teaching math, etc. However, if the school system is based on specific subjects having 45 minute blocks and there is this concept of teachers having a profile (some do English, some do art, some do French - but not all), on a feasibility level, this interdisciplinarity remains on this superficial level unless teachers really make an effort to network. So on the level of strategies, how do you have a strategy-based approach with the children in one subject and then ensure that they are transferring the strategies that they "train" to other subjects? Of course it's possible, but it's more complex due to these profiles. So I ask myself if it wouldn't be better to really get into subject-specific strategies in more depth and leave interdisciplinarity because perhaps if we start to look into depth in one subject, this makes us have another way of looking at things which then transfers to other subjects.
About Problem Based Learning: On the level of tertiary education or more concretely, when working with teacher trainees, I only wonder here if the problem shouldn't be written by the students themselves. Perhaps it's better to say: PBL is a great method but the first two weeks of the semester should be spent observing classes or reflecting upon classes previous seen so that in the third week, smaller but more relevant problems should be written and researched. PBL is supposed to be authentic and real - and this is subjective. Therefore more students would be more interested IF they could themselves decide what problem they want to solve. This is the reason we wrote our "dialogue" - we wanted everyone to find something that they're interested in but I have the feeling that like in any module, some people are really interested and the others don't see the relevance and just want to get through. And then some things stay on this superficial level. If students could write their own problems, then they would be forced to make them relevant.
Comments
Post a Comment