Beyond Brainstorming: Planning a Successful Interdisciplinary Program.

Abstract

Though far from a panacea, admittedly demanding, and never to be taken for granted, the interdisciplinary model is still the most powerful and appropriate way to reconstruct our classrooms, Mr. Panaritis maintains. For all their potential rewards, and despite the fact that successful examples of them can be found in schools throughout the country, the truth about interdisciplinary programs is that a great many of them don't work very well - or don't work at all. On close examination, it becomes apparent that for each conspicuous success story there are many interdisciplinary programs that are abandoned, aborted, or otherwise discontinued. And of course, besides these acknowledged failures, there is another, depressingly large category of programs that, though they keep going through the motions, now consist mostly of pretense and illusion. For the sake of enabling schools to claim they are doing interdisciplinary, some of these paper tigers are allowed to sputter along pathetically for years after they ought to have been properly interred. Anyone who is seriously considering the design, evaluation, or expansion of an interdisciplinary program needs to be aware of the fact that interdisciplinary education is more than a little problematic. But as an educator who is deeply convinced of the efficacy of interdisciplinary education (and whose job it is to promote and nurture it throughout a large urban school district), I find that fact difficult, perplexing, and - frankly - somewhat embarrassing. However, because it is a truth that inevitably conduces us toward the pragmatic heart of the matter - namely, Why do some programs succeed and so many others fail? - this unfortunate reality provides an appropriate point of departure for a discussion of the potential rewards and disappointments of interdisciplinary education. There is no single, foolproof recipe for successfully implementing an interdisciplinary program, and of course no interdisciplinary model comes with a guarantee. The nature of success is as diverse as the settings, goals, capabilities, and personalities of the people who created the program. Nevertheless, the results of research and the lessons of practical experience strongly suggest that successful programs share a few key beliefs about teaching and learning and, as a result, are able to avoid some of the pitfalls lurking along the interdisciplinary path. Among the most important of the ingredients for success are: * time to learn, plan, implement, and evaluate as a team; * resources to nurture, sustain, and expand the program; * incentives to acknowledge, support, and reward participants; * talented and committed teachers to get the program off the ground; and * patience and flexibility to develop the program effectively and fully. Of course, the things that make an interdisciplinary program work are for the most part the same factors that make any bona fide school reform project succeed. Thus the findings of research on school reform and change agents are highly germane to the discussion of how to plan an effective interdisciplinary program. Indeed, at its best - in its highest purpose and when it achieves its most important effects - interdisciplinary education is school reform. It is not a mere pedagogical technique, like cooperative learning or role-playing, that teachers can learn in a workshop on Friday and use in their individual classrooms next Monday. Interdisciplinary education is instead a complicated, holistic, developmental, interactive, and inherently imprecise process for which there is no exact blueprint. Unlike a revision of the bell schedule, an after-school program, or a new English elective, viable interdisciplinary education is no simple add-on or mere logistical wrinkle that can be readily accommodated by the conventions and cultures of most schools. By promoting constructive collaboration among teachers and by enabling students to, in Linda Darling-Hammond's lovely phrase, confront powerful ideas whole,(1) the ultimate goal of interdisciplinary education is nothing less than to profoundly reconstruct what schools teach (curriculum) and how it gets taught (pedagogy). …