InterdisciplinarityIn
General Education
Division of Educational Sciences,Contents and Methods of Education
May 1986
Interdisciplinarityin
General Education
A study by Louis d'Hainautfollowing an International Symposium
on Interdisciplinarity in General Educationheld at Unesco Headquarters
from 1 to 5 July 1985
May 1986
Unesco
ED-86/WS/78
CONTENTS
Page1. Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. The subject and its context.................................... 1
2.1 The fundamentals of interdisciplinarity ................... 12.2 The concepts of interdisciplinarity ....................... 72.3 The forms of interdisciplinarity .......................... 92.4 Definition of an interdisciplinary education .............. 11
3. Interdisciplinarity from an educational point of view ......... 16
3.1 The problem .................................................... 163.2 Forms of presentation and organisation of content ......... 173.3 Levels of intervention .................................... 243.4 The sectors of education concerned ........................ 27
4. The symposium .................................................. 29
4.1 Terms of reference and justification of the symposium ..... 294.2 Organization of the symposium .............................. 324.3 Objectives proposed to participants ........................ 344.4 Synthesis of discussions ................................... 344.5 Guidelines for Member States on the value of
interdisciplinarity in general education................. 394.6 Suggestions and proposed lines of action .................. 43
5. Fundamental questions .......................................... 46
5.1 Why interdisciplinarity in general education? .............. 465.2 What fields are to be given preference? ................... 495.3 Does interdisciplinarity increase the cost of
education? .............................................. 525.4 What are the difficulties? ................................. 545.5 What is the procedure to be followed....................... 61
6. Appendices
6.1 List of participants ....................................... 896.2 List of case studies and reference documents ............... 956.4 Bibliography ............................................... 99
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1. FOREWORD
An International Symposium on Interdisciplinarity in General Educationwas held at Unesco Headquarters in Paris from 1 to 5 July 1985. In theterminology adopted by Unesco, general education is taken to mean 'educationfrom kindergarten to the pre-university level and which does not aim at anyspecialisation preparatory to a determined profession'.
At this symposium, the Unesco Secretariat requested the Rapporteur totake stock of interdisciplinarity in general education so as to place theproblem in its conceptual context and integrate the lessons learned fromthis symposium as well as from previous symposia organized by Unesco indifferent regions of the world.
It is this stock-taking which is presented here.
It comprises four main sections:
In the first section, the author places interdisciplinarity in its gen-eral context and in the context of education.
The second section consists of summaries of a series of case studiesprepared for the symposium which take stock of interdisciplinary educationprojects in some 20 member countries.
The third section is a report of the International Symposium in Paris,its discussions and conclusions.
The final section is a synthesis of replies to some fundamental practi-cal questions given by participants at the Paris International Symposium andat regional seminars organized by Unesco, together with replies to questionswhich emerge from consideration of the problems involved and the experienceacquired.
2. THE SUBJECT AND ITS CONTEXT
2.1 The fundamentals of interdisciplinarity
1. The evolution of knowledge and its discovery
The nineteenth century and the early twentieth century were marked bythe elaboration, diversification, and increasing narrow specialization offields of thought. Many disciplines came into being and development indepen-dently of one another, in some cases dividing into clearly compartmentali-zed sub-disciplines. In the twentieth century, particularly in the secondhalf, the unifying discoveries of science, already begun in the previouscentury, together with the development of epistemology and the breakdown offrontiers imposed by the complexity of areas of knowledge, increasingly ledscientists and philosophers to consider the essential unity of the variousscientific fields and subjects. This belief is the ontological unity of thesciences became an increasingly profound conviction which constitutes the
epistemological basis of interdisciplinarity.1
The present century saw the emergence of new fields which do not fallwithin traditional disciplines but which involve them and tend to fragment
1. See Smirnov (1983)
them. Information theory, which involves thermodynamics and fundamental biologyas well as telecommunications, is an example. Numerous problems of modernscience lie on the borderlines of, and overlap, several disciplines. Thisapplies, for example, to biochemistry; and as long ago as the late nineteenthcentury it became necessary to introduce the concept of physical chemistry.This trend towards integration has become more marked.
Another form of interdisciplinarity has developed spontaneously in recentyears: the use in one discipline of methods specific to another. For instance,the human sciences have increasing recourse to the experimental method, andhave borrowed models of experimental design and analysis from agriculturalresearch.
We note also, as pointed out by M. Malitza (1977), that the evolution ofhuman concerns has given rise to new groupings of the field already explored,and constantly renewed experience gives rise to new hybrid entities which, inorder to be understood, require a simultaneous examination of different dis-ciplines and the formulation of new concepts. This decompartmentalization andreorganisation of disciplines is today leading to integrations which quiterecently seemed incompatible, and suggests what I. Prigogine and I. Stengers(1979) call a 'new alliance between the natural sciences and the humans c i e n c e s ' .
Discovery, which a century ago resulted from the work of an individualscientist, is to an increasing extent the result of the work of teams ofresearch workers often belonging to different disciplines, to the point thatthere are some who believe, like Smirnov (1977, p. 53) that 'inter-disciplinarity is at the present time one of the major theoretical and prac-tical problems for scientific progress'. Collaboration between research workersand the link-up, or even integration, of disciplines and methods of working andresearch mean that specialists in different fields must be able to consult-with one another and understand one another. This necessity leads to : thecreation of common ground and areas of interface between disciplines, andcontributes to the creation of interdisciplinarity.
Advances in the human sciences have also greatly contributed to the dev-elopment of interdisciplinarity, because they have had to borrow certain oftheir theories or instruments from other disciplines; for example, games theo-ry, factorial analysis, the concept of feedback; and the complexity of theirsubject matter obliges them to have recourse to several disciplines simulta-
n e o u s l y .l
Of course, thefpresent- growth of interdisciplinarity does not mean thatindividual disciplines=areulosing their importance in the quest for and the 0organisation of knowledge,' or that 'they are to be abandoned in favour ofother approaches. What iS really happening 'is that other and more complex,more unifying and more transposable lines of approach are being added to exis-ting disciplines in
the discovery, structuring and understanding of facts and relationships.
2. Problems of the contemporary world
The world of today faces major problems - majorfin respect of their mag-nitude and the gravity of their consequences. Famine and the destitution ofentire populations, the'level attained by the exponential population growth,
1 . See L. APOSTEL (1983).
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the threat of nuclear war and the deterioration of the environment are prob-lems which ethics, science and education can no longer ignore or leave un-solved. All right-thinking people are aware of this.
But these problems do not lie within any one discipline, and their solu-tion requires interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration between special-ists in different disciplines. The same is true of many human and social prob-lems; their complexity is such that they involve interaction between very dif-ferent aspects of knowledge and its discovery. For example, the fight againstdisease often demands physiological research, chemical and pharmaceuticalinvestigations, clinical medical studies, statistical or epidemiological sur-veys, and educational measures; it can also have important economic and sociali m p l i c a t i o n s .
In the last century, science was geared to the solution of relativelysimple problems lying within a field of homogeneous relationships which couldbe embraced by a single discipline. Today, one of the essential features ofthe problems arising is their great complexity. The contemporary world posesproblems involving a considerable number of factors intwhich social and tech-nical aspects overlap, multiple and essential interactions abound, precisionis mingled with a great deal of uncertainty, and the field of relationship isheterogeneous. Such problems call for broader outlooks and approaches and arebeyond the scope of a single discipline.
Our century is also one of technological revolutions which are changingthe face of the world practically every decade. New technologies have made itnecessary to formulate problems differently and have introduced commonapproaches to their solutions. For example, the extraordinary expansion ofdata processing in all sectors of scientific; technical, practical and evencultural life has given rise to pr'oblems in differentffields posed in similarterms.
Lastly, the recent accession of many peoples to independence has facedtheir leaders with difficult and simultaneous problems. The new States havehad to cope with profound and concomitant changes of a social, political, eco-nomic, cultural and demographic nature. The solution of these interrelatedproblems obviously'calls for an interdisciplinary approach.
3. The conception of the individual
The way in which the individual is 'regarded nowadays'is more closelyrelated to an interdisciplinary approach to problems and their solution. Inthe past, individuals - with the exception of a few privileged persons - w e r eregarded as occupying a narrow andXconfined-place in the social fabric. Alimited view of problems, just enoughtto'enable them to perform their work,was sufficient, and to broaden their horizon or to relate the problems arisingto other factors - especially social factors - was considered inappropriate.This has been pointed out by the author of the present report (d'Hainaut,1979, p. 204): 'There is no doubt that the strict division into disciplineswas in linetwith the divisions in society. The caste spirit could not toleratesharing, and it is hardly surprising that the compartments into which know-ledge was divided should have become ever narrower, particularly since thisprocess was encouraged by the staggering growth in knowledge as a whole'.Today, on the contrary, most people have adopted an ideal of the individual asa person fully integrated in his social and cultural environment. This inte-gration requires not only a responsiveness to contemporary problems but alsothe ability to relate social, economic and political factors, to perceive the interactions between technical, economic and social factors, to relate
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science and ethics, and to use this overall knowledge of the environmentand its problems so as to play a part in the development of the community.
This integral view of the individual is all the more normal and neces-sary in view of the fact that the media disseminate a tremendous quantityof information which the citizen must be able to understand, evaluate anduse in establishing his frames of reference and in participating in sociallife.
Present-day conceptions tend to restore the unity of the individual.Until half-way through this century, the internal divisions of psychologyand the compartmented conception of the roles of the individual led to aseparation of the cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects of the indi-vidual. But the deeper our knowledge of psychology becomes, the more theboundaries between these aspects of the personality are removed and the moreobvious their interrelationships become. In this respect, research on lear-ning has amply demonstrated the closely-interwoven nature of the differentcomponents of the personality (cognitive, affective, sensorimotor) and theirintimately linked participation in the development of knowledge, know-howand life-skills.
4. The role and conception of education
TO an increasing extent, it is considered that 'knowledge has valueonly if it Beets the needs of the learners or it has some social utility'(APEID, 1982, p. 6). Knowledge for its own sake, which was one of the jus-tifications for education, is hardly accepted any longer nowadays. 'There isa growing realization that if education is to be effective, it must helpthe learners to seek answers to some of the fundamental real-life problemsaround them' (idem). It has often been asserted that education must be apreparation for life, but up to now it has rarely been so. But, as we haveseen, life and its current problems are not divided up into disciplines,they must be tackled through interdisciplinary approaches, for as pointedout by P. Hughes in a case study prepared for the seminar: 'the argumentfor interdisciplinarity is not that the disciplines represent a false theoryof knowledge but rather that they are not (and never will be) a completestatement if we take them on their own. It is in the interconnections, theintegration, that they attain their most effective use'. Furthermore, asnoted by G. Vaideanu in a study currently in preparation, the perception ofthe unity and diversity or specificity of things is a goal of learningwhich corresponds to a need of the learner and a reality to be discovered.
Formerly, apart from occupational training, the satisfaction of theeconomic and social needs of the community was not a priority goal of edu-cation, but rather a fortunate natural fall-out. Today, especially in deve-loping countries, education is considered as an essential factor of collec-tive prosperity and social equilibrium.** This is why modern education ismore a preparation for solving problems than the transmission of knowledge
* J.J. Rousseau wrote 'Living is the profession I want to teach Emile'. ** Nearly two centuries ago, Condorcet and Lakanal considered however that
education should serve not only the development and improvement of individuals but also the growth and improvement of society as a whole; they also agreed on the need to match education to the requirements of everyday life. But it is only nowadays that we are really beginning to put these ideas into effect.
for its own sake. It is increasingly angled towards the satisfaction ofindividual and collective needs through the acquisition of knowledge,know-how 'savoir-etre- life-skills - relevant to those needs. From thisangle, the organization of knowledge which the disciplines provide loses itsimportance by comparison with the structuring of the knowledge which willenable the pupil to integrate and apply such knowledge to better effect.Since the problems of everyday life and socially or economically useful abi-lities do not necessarily lie within a given discipline, education is natu-rally tending to abandon the division into disciplines on which for centu-ries it was mainly based.
2.2 The concepts of interdisciplinarity
1. General definition
The term 'interdisciplinarity' is not a scientific term which has aunique and universally accepted definition. The content of the concept maybe interpreted in different ways, and in writings on this subject weencounter a great number of terms which introduce nuances into the interpre-tations but which, unfortunately, do not always lie in the same dimensionand are sometimes contradictory. A symposium on interdisciplinarity therefo-re risks being one of those meetings stigmatized by Bachelard in a celebra-ted work 1 at the conclusion of which there is no general agreement as tothe actual nature of what has been discussed.
It was therefore essential at the outset to propose a definition whichcould be accepted by the participants. This definition, cited in the termsof reference of the symposium, is that which appears in the report of theDirector-General of Unesco to the Executive Board on the preparation of theMedium-Term Plan for 1984-1985 (113 EX/4, para. 426). It is worded as fol-lows:
'In epistemological terms, the concept of interdisciplinarity may be regarded as a form of co-operation between various disciplines, which contribute to the achievement of a common end and which, through their association, further the emergence and advancement of new knowledge'.
2. Definitions relating to the degree of integration of disciplines
This very general definition enabled the general framework of the dis-cussions to be clearly established. However, further precision was conside-red appropriate so as to make a finer distinction between the differentforms of interdisciplinarity under discussion, and so that each participantmight be able to relate the conceptions involved to his own frames of refe-rence and to the different generally accepted ways in which interdisciplina-rity is conceived. For this reason the Unesco Secretariat assigned G.Vaideanu the task of preparing a preliminary study of the fundamentalconcepts of interdisciplinarity. In this document, the author attempted togroup several definitions and interpretations given be specialists atvarious meetings.
From the numerous classifications of interdisciplinarity, G. Vaideanuselected that adopted at the Bucharest Symposium 2 which is based on thedegree of integration of disciplines in research or in teaching. In this
1. Bachelard, G. La formation de l'esprit scientifique. Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1967.
2. Unesco-CEPES; Interdisciplinarity in higher education, Bucharest, 1983, p. 22.
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model, it is considered that the quality of interdisciplinarity depends onthe degree of influence exerted by the respective disciplines in the co-ope-rative process. If one discipline is dominant, quality is poor. If theinfluence is balanced, quality is high.
This classification is as follows:
A. Transdisciplinarity is a state of complete balance of influencebetween all relevant participating disciplines at the highest pos-sible level of co-ordination. Co-ordination in this sense entailsan optimum of cross-contact or cross-communication. The extent andquality of co-operation are both so advanced that a new disciplinemay be established analytically and socially. When we estimate therelative success or failure of interdisciplinarity, during thelast decade or two, it seems important to bear in mind that suchnew disciplines have actually arisen.
B. Interdisciplinarity is somewhat weaker than transdisciplinarity inco-ordination or cross-communication. The balance of influence,however, of the respective disciplines, is upheld. The totalimpact of the quantitative and qualitative elements is not strongenough to establish a new discipline. One may, however, discernsome analytical building blocks which could be useful to such aprocess.
C. Cross-disciplinarity deviates from interdisciplinarity in both thequantitative and qualitative senses. Regarding the latter, thepotential for balanced influence has disappeared; one disciplinedominates the others. The degree of communication is also fadingto the extent that one can hardly talk of a mutually accepted sys-tem of co-ordination anymore. The dominant discipline is the onethat establishes all important premises. In some milieus of educa-tion and more seldom of research, interdisciplinarity is acceptedas the best compromise that can be achieved under the circum-stances.
D. Pluri-disciplinarity is characterised by the fact that communica-tion takes place between various milieus or disciplines, but thecontact may be weaker or more sporadic than in cross-disciplinari-ty. A positive factor is that the communication is symmetric, notassymetric as it is in cross-disciplinarity. The qualitativeaspect improves as the influence on a given project of educationor research is more evenly exerted.
E. Multi-disciplinarity is the least developed form of inter-disciplinarity. The communication between the various milieus isreduced to a minimum. Yet projects of education or research areoften overlapping or complementary to each other. They thus rep-resent a potential for future connection and the milieus an un-realized potential that could later be mobilised towards a commonend. It may thus be worthwhile, for a start, to put the subjectelements in juxtaposition with each other to illustrate their com-mon aspects.*
* Note: in this conception, multidisciplinarity is the least-developed form of interdisciplinarity. This is also the conception of Piaget (1972, p. 136) who considers that: 'The lower level might be called multidisciplinary and occurs when the solution to a problem makes it necessary to obtain information from two or more sciences or sectors ofknowledge without the disciplines drawn on thereby being changed or enriched’.
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The participants at the Bucharest Symposium, who were called upon totackle varied and complex questions relating to teaching and research at thehigher level, considered it appropriate to introduce this classificationinto their discussions as a complement to the clarification of terms propo-sed by Unesco. However, in studying interdisciplinarity in general educa-tion, the classification of terms proposed in the working plan seems amplysufficient, and at this level it is doubtless more operational. It is spe-cified that:
Multidisciplinarity is the simple juxtaposition of different disci-plines without any apparent connection between them.
Pluridisciplinarity is the juxtaposition of disciplines supposed to be more or less related.
Interdisciplinarity is a form of co-operation between different disciplines with regard to problems whose complexity is such that they canonly be apprehended through the convergence and careful combining of different points of view.
Transdisciplinarity refers to a general axiomatic system or to a theorywhich enables a group of disciplines to be brought together.
In this conception, unlike that of the Bucharest Symposium and that ofPiaget, multidisciplinarity is not a form of integration of disciplines, andthere remain only three levels: those adopted in a Unesco document publishedin 1985:1
Pluridisciplinarity, which merely brings in several disciplines, often going no further than to juxtapose them.
Interdisciplinarity, which assumes a good knowledge of each otherís concepts between the disciplines concerned and is based essentially on a systems approach.
Transdisciplinarity, even more ambitious, which assumes conceptual uni-fication between disciplines.
This was the distinction between the different levels of inter-disciplinarity proposed to the participants at the Symposium on Inter-disciplinarity in General Education (annotated agenda, p. 1). It proved tobe adequate in clarifying the discussions.
2.3 The forms of interdisciplinarity
The foregoing definitions related to the actual nature of inter-disciplinarity and distinguish between the degrees of integration of dis-ciplines. Another way of regarding the different aspects of interdiscipli-narity is to adopt as a criterion the form of integration; that isto say how (and not to what degree) the disciplines are integratedin relation to the problems to be solved. This conception, w h i c h we consider to be very operational and useful with r e g a r d t o r e f l e c t i o n o n t e a c h i n g a n d r e s e a r c h , w a s
1. de FELICE, J., GIORDAN, A. and SOUCHON, C. (1985). Interdisciplinary Approaches in Environmental Education (Environmental Education Series, 14). Paris, Unesco, p. 8.
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developed by a group of research workers at the Bielefeld Centre for Inter-disciplinary Research (G.C. Huerkamp et.al., 1978) and was presented at theCEPES-Unesco Symposium in Bucharest. It comprises four categories, whosecharacteristics are summed up as follows by G. Vaideanu in his preliminarystudy for the Paris Symposium: 1
1. Interdisciplinarity of neighbouring disciplines
Under this heading one could include cases in which two areas of scien-ce are becoming so closely involved with each other that there is an over-lap to which both disciplines can contribute both methods and concepts.
2. Interdisciplinarity of problems
In contrast with the previous type of interdisciplinarity, this onecould apply to certain problem groups which cannot be included in a speci-fic discipline and contain so many aspects that they could not be takencare of by just one discipline. The collaboration of several disciplineswould therefore obviously be desirable.
3. Interdisciplinarity of methods
This type of interdisciplinarity is most likely to occur when methodspeculiar to one discipline can be used for research in other disciplines aswell. One difficulty was mentioned, however: can one speak of inter-disciplinarity when one discipline makes use of an auxiliary science(statistics, for instances) without the latter gaining anything from it? Orshould it be anticipated that both disciplines will mutually benefit fromeach other, for example in game thory and its use in evolutionary biology.Game theory has thus far proved beneficial to evolutionary biologists whileproviding game theorists with some new insights when confronted, as theywere, with new problems.
4. Interdisciplinarity of concepts
This type of interdisciplinarity refers to a situation in which modelsand concepts have been developed in one discipline and are then used tosupplement research in another discipline or even supplant existing modelsand concepts.
The question of whether one can speak of interdisciplinarity when thebenefit of methods used is unilateral could also be asked in relation toconcepts, although in practice few concepts can be transfered unchanged. Ina modified form, a given concept could provide a stimulus to the disciplinefrom which it originated. The application of concepts from other fields ordisciplines must now, however, be an excuse for hiding undeveloped orunsubstantiated ideas. The choice of projects should be made contingent on adetailed presentation which delineates the concepts concerned and why theyare interesting and transferable'.
1. The text proposed at the Bucharest Symposium by W. Vosskamp, Director of the Bielefeld Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, is contained inthe report: 'Interdisciplinarity in Higher Education'. Bucharest: CEPES/Unesco, 1983, pp. 24 and 25.
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This classification is not of the same nature as the preceding ones,but it is related to them; for example, interdisciplinarity of concepts,insofar as it leads to broader conceptions and more general models, can lieat the level of transdisciplinarity; the same applies to interdisciplinarityof methods when the latter are not merely borrowed from one discipline andapplied to another, but when on the contrary the method has a logic whichis not linked with a discipline. For instance, the experimental method couldlie at a transdisciplinary level.
2.4 Definition of an interdisciplinary education
The definitions and characterisations of interdisciplinarity which wehave just cited are of an epistemological nature and relate mainly to theorganization of knowledge, research and the solution of problems. These con-ceptions of interdisciplinarity are not particularly geared to problems ofeducation, and if they relate to these problems it is because education isintimately linked with the discovery and organisation of knowledge.:
So we must not, as is sometimes done, confuse or contrast the epistemo-logical and general characterisation of interdisciplinarity with inter-disciplinarity seen as an approach to, or a method or organisation of, edu-cation. This latter conception is, of course, only one aspect of the for-mer; but the standpoint adopted is very different, because it is directedmore towards action and methodology than towards epistemological reflection.
1. The integrated curriculum
One way of regarding interdisciplinarity which we often encounter inprojects, reforms and discussions relating- to general education is the'integrated curriculum', also called 'the integration of subject areas', andsometimes in a narrower sense 'integrated sciences'. At the meeting on thistopic organized by Unesco in Bangkok in 1981, it was noted that 'the termcurriculum integration was used conventionally to denote combining two ormore subjects to form a meaningful learning area that would help effectiveintegration of learning experiences in the learner' (APEID, 1982, p. 10).The authors of the report point out in this connection that the mere combi-nation of subjects will not automatically guarantee the integration of lear-ning experiences within the learner. The aim of curriculum integration liesin the integration of learning experiences which are real and meaningful tothe learner. They add: 'In a broader sense the term integrated approachrefers to a method of instruction in which children work on a theme or on atopic or on an activity or on a real-life problem in which the workinvolves competencies related to more than one discipline or subject area.An integrated curriculum is one in which the subject boundaries are ignoredand is based on the natural and spontaneous inquiry of children as well ason the activities and experience of the learners, which do not respect sub-ject divisions. In other words, integrated curriculum involves organisationof the content and the teaching-learning process around themes or activitiesor problems or processes which require interdisciplinary learning'.
This definition of the integrated curriculum is multidimension: itrelates to a method (placing the pupil in meaningful situations not confinedwithin the frontiers of disciplines) and to a hoped-for result (effectiveintegration, through experience of what has been learned); it thereforeappears to assume that one necessarily implies the other. Where the methodproposed is concerned, it is not properly speaking a definition of
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interdisciplinarity. As for the other aspect of the definition, it relatesnot to the relationships between disciplines but to the way in which thecontent of those disciplines is organised within the cognitive structures ofthe learner. It is therefore difficult to link this definition with thepreceding ones; it is of another kind. However, from a practical point ofview we may take it that the integrated curriculum, if it achieves thehoped-for result, lies at the level of interdisciplinarity, and if it doesnot achieve the hoped-for cognitive integration it lies at the level ofpluridisciplinarity.
In the Australian case study, P. Hughes 1 proposes four forms of curri-culum integration using a classification similar to that of Pring (1971).
1. Interdisciplinarity through correlation of subjects
There are many ways of correlating subjects. In the case-study presen-ted by P. Hughes, subjects (called 'basic and essential yearnings and expe-riences') are considered as one dimension of a three-dimensional set whoseother dimensions are learning processes and learning environments.
2. Interdisciplinarity through themes, topics or ideas
This approach, in one of its two major forms, can be very like the pre-ceding one. The use of a theme as an organising or integrating element canbe used to show how different disciplines interrelate in the elaboration andillumination of the theme. This both assumes a disciplinary base and streng-thens the understanding of the disciplines themselves as they are used insequence or in concert to pursue a given theme or topic.
3. Interdisciplinarity in practical thinking
There are, however, areas of the curriculum which do not fall intotraditional subject areas. These are in the main practical areas whoseimportance is made clear by individual or social demands. The approach willnot be interdisciplinary in the sense of seeking an integration of differentdisciplines, but rather of helping students develop a capacity to operateeffectively in the particular field. Civic education is a case in point.
4. Interdisciplinarity through the learner's own interested inquiry
A further variation of approach is to make the learner's own interestedinquiry the basis of the curriculum. This, by its nature, cannot be a dis-cipline-bounded approach, since an area of inquiry will not necessarilyconfine itself in such a way if it commences with the interests of a stu-dent. It will be an interdisciplinary approach where a variety of relevantdisciplines is used to illuminate and structure the inquiry.
It is not easy, or even relevant, to tie in these different forms ofinterdisciplinarity with levels of interdisciplinarity regarded from a gene-ral standpoint. However, on the whole it may be said that these educationalapproaches lie at the level of pluridisciplinarity, with a more or lessmarked tendency towards the interdisciplinary level proper, particularly in the first and fourth types of approach, in which disciplinesare integrated in the learner's own build-up of knowledge. Theseapproaches can be brought into line with those cited above,defined by Huerkamp et al (1978): on the whole, they
1. HUGHES, P. Interdisciplinarity in general education: an Australian case study. International Symposium on Interdisciplinarity in General Education, ED/CONF.805/REF-1. Paris, Unesco 1985, pp. 13-20.
fall into line, by their nature, with 'interdisciplinarity of neighbouringdisciplines' and 'interdisciplinarity of problems'. In certain respects, forexample the application of the experimental method as a response to problemsposed by the teacher or by the pupil himself in multiple situations, theyalso touch upon interdisciplinarity of methods.
2. The instrumental transdisciplinary approach
Teaching can also be integrated through an educational approach whichconsists of using the same concepts to analyse problems within differentdisciplines or themes and situations of a pluridisciplinary nature. Forexample, a concept such as 'transformation' is useful in numerous disci-plines and pluridisciplinary situations; the pupil may use it to analyse aproblem in a way unconnected with the discipline concerned, and consequentlyin a more transferable way. When the pupil has identified a transformation,he can still, whatever the situation, put questions such as : 'What istransformed?:, 'What is not transformed?', 'How is the transformation effec-ted?'. In many cases, questions such as 'What are the phases of the trans-formation?', 'What is the rate of transformation?', 'What affects the rateof transformation?' are also relevant. There are many concepts which do notbelong to one discipline in particular and which can enable the pupil toorganize the discovery and acquisition of knowledge in different disciplinesor pluridisciplinary situations. This conception of interdisciplinarity wasdeveloped by D'Hainaut (1980) for Unesco in Côte d'Ivoire, and called 'ins-trumental transdisciplinarity'. It was adopted by various authors, includingManzat and Inoescu-Zanetti in 198L. G. Vaideanu, who attempted to use commonconcepts in aesthetic education in the early 1960s, is currently experimen-ting with the approach as defined in 'L'ébauche d'un guide pour la trans-disciplinarité instrumentale' (cf. Case study: Romania). Research of thistype was carried out in Belgium in 1983 (Lecocq) and we find similar ideasin the work of R. Semeraro (cf. Case study: Italy). (ED/CONF.805/REF. 7).
This type of interdisciplinary approach is an attempt to go beyond theconfines of disciplines and from the epistemological point of view it isbased on a theory of a unifying nature, the systems theory. From the pointof view of the level of integration, it therefore lies in principle at thelevel of transdisciplinarity. However, it is a modest attempt to go beyondthe particularities of individual disciplines in teaching and learning, andit is not the integrating theoretical 'superstructure' which some see intransdisciplinarity. However, if we take the prefix 'trans' in the sense of'through', it is indeed a form of transdisciplinarity, because through thisapproach a valid method is inculcated in the pupil through disciplines whichdo not meet up in a situation. The unity is in the pupil's approach, in theinstrument of thought which he employs.
In its form, the instrumental transdisciplinary approach obviously liesin interdisciplinarity of methods and interdisciplinarity of concepts.
3. Behavioural transdisciplinarity
Another form of non-discipline-bounded teaching is to centre the edu-cational process on the learning of very general approaches to thought andaction. These approacheso can be chosen so as to be applicable in a greatnumber of situations stemming from different disciplines at one and the sametime. For instance, procedures such as selecting, applying models, deciding,designing a plan of action and evaluating are relevant to very many situ-ations, in particular real-life situations, and they may be systematically
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learned in the context of different disciplines or of several disciplines atone and the same time. Whatever the situation, the rational choice, forexample, includes a certain number of approaches which can be taught topupils systematically in varied contexts.
This procedure, which consists of seeking, analysis and teaching gene-ral approaches applicable to the very many different situations, was propo-sed by the author of this report, who called it 'behavioural transdiscipli-narity' (D. Hainaut, 1977, 1980) and it was adopted in the work publishedby Unesco: 'Curricula and life-long education' (1979, pp. 337-352) under thetitle 'Interdisciplinary classification of types of intellectual activity'.This lists the principal approaches to a systematic interdisciplinary educa-tion; each overall approach (such as selecting, evaluating, etc.) is brokendown into partial approaches (such as 'selecting relevant information withinthe information available', 'collecting information on the criteria for jud-gement or evaluation', etc.). Thus the teacher has a line to follow and aprogression to establish the partial objectives of his teaching and to desi-gn learning situations.
In this conception of interdisciplinarity, we seek approaches or oper-ations that are common to varied disciplines or situations, the differencelying in the operator to be applied (for example, criteria of selection).So it is a form of transdisciplinarity in the sense that it goes beyond theconfines of disciplines; the latter do not determine the essential of whatis to be learned or the nature of the approach, they merely provide theinstrument by which the pupil makes the approach. Moreover, this instrumentmay not be tied in with a single discipline. Of course, in essence, thisform of transdisciplinarity is modest and has nothing in common with atheory which transcends disciplines. Its name is derived from the fact that,like the preceding form, it is a more 'transverse' form of interdisciplina-rity.
2.5 Synthesis and conclusion
The different definitions of interdisciplinarity which we have just re-viewed, though not exhaustive, reflect the essential standpoints of mostauthors and research workers 1 who have dealt with the subject. To sum up,we may make a distinction between:
the general definition of interdisciplinarity on the basis of the degree of integration of disciplines;
the definition of the general forms of interdisciplinarity;
the definition of forms of interdisciplinary education.
From a practical point of view, we may confine ourselves to threelevels of integration of disciplines:
pluridisciplinarity (interrelating disciplines with a problem);
interdisciplinarity proper (the combination or integration of disci-plines in the solution of problems);
transdisciplinarity (conceptual harmonization of disciplines).
The general forms of interdisciplinarity which it may be useful to con-sider in a context of research or teaching are:
1. In particular Jantsch, Moroni, Gusdorf, Burton and Piaget.
interdisciplinarity of neighbouring disciplines;
interdisciplinarity of problems;
interdisciplinarity of methods;
interdisciplinarity of concepts.
It is essential to make a clear distinction between:
interdisciplinarity in general, which is a way of conceiving, organizing and making use of knowledge;
interdisciplinary education, which is a means of communicating knowled-ge, know-how and life-skills in accordance with a strategy which is notconfined to progression within a single discipline or several disci-plines considered independently of one another;
interdisciplinary education aims to establish an integrated curriculum,that is to say to organize the educational process in such a way that the learner is placed in meaningful situations and engages in activi-ties which require abilities relating to more than one subject area, soas to achieve an effective integration of his learning experience.
Curriculum integration can be achieved along several lines, which arenot mutually exclusive but on the contrary complement one another:
bringing subjects into relation with one another;
studying themes which are not confined to one discipline or which constitute real-life problems;
encouraging the pupil's (spontaneous) inquiries in the light of his personal interests.
The instrumental transdisciplinary approach, that is to say, the tea-ching of common concepts and methods which are operational in situationsderiving from different disciplines or not lying within one particular dis-cipline.
The behavioural transdisciplinary approach, that is to say the teachingand systematic transfer of thought processes or actions to a wide range ofsituations.
From a practical point of view, we may consider that the curriculumand/ or the teaching-learning process involves interdisciplinarity when oneor more of the following conditions are met:
the identification, definition and teaching of fundamental concepts common to a certain number of disciplines;
the identification and teaching of methods or procedures in a perspec-tive of the transfer of thought-processes or activities.
The amplification or systematising of the points of contact of, or theinteractions between, disciplines; in particular in the study of pluri-disciplinary themes or the establishment of relationships between differentparts of the curriculum content deriving from different disciplines.
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Having teachers work as a team, for the purpose of gradually removingthe borderlines between disciplines.
Systematically co-ordinating in-school and out-of-school activities,making the latter an extension of what is learned in school and applying itto everyday situations or at least to such out-of-school activities as natu-re classes, scientific or cultural circles, competitions, social activities,etc.
3. INTERDISCIPLINARITY FROM AN EDUCATIONAL POINT OF VIEW
3.1 The problem
Everywhere in the world, it is recognized and regretted that there istoo wide a gap between school and real life, and education is seen to beinsufficiently oriented towards the problems of individuals and communities.The organisation of teaching in compartmented disciplines centres aroundtheir own objectives helps to isolate the school from social and economicreality. Furthermore, experience shows that in general the average pupil isunable on his own to transfer what he has learned in one subject toreal-life situations or even to school problems deriving from another sub-ject.
From an educational point of view, teaching that is divided into sepa-rate disciplines runs counter to the pupil's natural approach to the explo-ration of his environment, and consequently it provides less incentive forthe pupil unless he takes a particular interest in this or that subject.
An attempt was therefore made to seek new methods of putting over andorganizing knowledge so as to avoid the limitations and divisions imposed bydisciplines. In the first half of the present century, specialists in prima-ry education developed methods which broke down the boundaries between dis-ciplines and proposed the pupil's environment as the subject of his learningand his own inquiring approach as a means of acquiring knowledge. In thesecond half of the century, this trend extended to general secondary edu-cation, but its application was less widespread and less systematic, andopinions are divided as to the advisability of breaking with the traditionof discipline-bounded teaching.
In discussion of this subject, it is too often forgotten that the ques-tion is not whether disciplines should be abandoned - their utility is notchallenged - but whether they should be co-ordinated and integrated and becomplemented by other ways of presenting and structing educational content.It is also forgotten, as is unfortunately often the case where education isconcerned, that there is no universal teaching method which is superior toany other for all educational contents and in all circumstances.
So the problem is not one of making an exclusive choice; it can be sum-med up in two questions:
What are the possible forms of putting over and organizing knowledge?
What are the main advantages and drawbacks of each of these forms?
Different ways of presenting and organising educational content mayjudged in accordance with different criteria. We propose six, which covermajor aspects of education and which reveal the advantages and drawbacks thedifferent approaches.
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1. Relevance to educational goals: we have to know to what extent theway of presenting and organising knowledge and problems matches educationalgoals; whether the situations in which the pupil is placed and the ways ofstructuring knowledge fit in with the hoped-for results of the educationalprocess.
2. The transferability of what is learned: this means the extent towhich the form of organisation of acquisition of the content favours thepupil's ability to apply what he has learned to new situations or to combi-ne the various things that he has learned in order to work out solutions orto combine the various things that he has learned in order to work outsolutions to problems which he has not been taught.
3. Motivation: the degree to which the pupil is motivated by the situ-ations in which he is placed to acquire and organize new knowledge.
4. Compatibility with learning progressions: this is the extent towhich the form of presentation or acquisition and organisation of knowledgeconforms to the structure of the prerequisites. A high degree of compatibi-lity means that the form of organisation and presentation of the contentallows the pupil to progress easily from the known to the unknown and doesnot place him in situations where he has to make use of knowledge and enga-ge in activities which have not been learned.
5. Structuring capacity: this defines the aptitude of the form of pre-sentation of the content to provide a structure which organises knowledge asand when it is acquired. The structuring opacity of a method is importantbecause learning meaningful content implies a structuring by the pupil ofelements of the situations in which he is placed.
6. Feasibility: this is the ease with which the form of presentation,acquisition and organization of content may be adopted; to it may be addedthe level of competence required of the teacher and how readily he acceptsthe approach. The cost of adopting the form of organization concerned mayalso be included in feasibility.
These characteristics make it possible to form a discriminating judge-ment and to arrive at decisions as to the choice of a form of presentationor organisation of content, and in particular to make a deliberate choicebetween a discipline-oriented approach and interdisciplinary approaches. Itgoes without saying that in making a judgement or a decision each of thesecriteria does not carry the same weight. The relative importance of each ofthese characteristics depends on the basic options of those responsible formaking the choice or the decision; it depends also on the level of the formof organization in the criterion in question: for a given criterion, beyonda certain threshold a form of organisation may no longer be acceptablehowever worthwhile it may be on the basis of other criteria. Lastly, itdepends on the constraints of the educational system and the circumstancesin which the approach is to be adopted.
3.2 Forms of presentation and organisation of content
1. Interdisciplinarity and the learning situation
In order to have an overall view of the different forms of presenta-tion, organisation and acquisition of educational content and relate them toone another more clearly, it is useful to express them in the form of anoverall model of the situation at the time of learning.
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In order to teach a content, or more precisely to achieve an educatio-nal objective, the pupil must be placed in a situation and required toengage in an activity relating to one or more objects of that situation;this activity leads to a result or to products which are generally definedin the objective. To achieve this result or this product, the pupil mustmake use of an operator which, in the cognitive field, may be a relation-ship, a criterion, a concept, an algorithm or a strategy. His activity, ormore precisely his approach, is accompanied by attitudes and behaviour whichare determined by affective operators, or values. This model has been pre-sented in detail by the author in 'Curricula and lifelong education' publi-shed by Unesco (1979, p.l43 et seq.) and may be schematically representedas follows:*
The model reveals that the presentation and organization of a learningcontent can have three components:
the situation and objects presented to the pupil;
the pupil's approach;
the operators which he must use.
Thus we find the four principal forms of organisation of the content ofthe teaching-learning process.
(1) The pupil may be placed in a situation in which the objects presented to him and the operators which he must use all belong to one and the same body of knowledge which serves as the point of departure and the organizational axis of the learning process as a whole. In this case, the operators are generally specific to the objects, and the pupil's approach is specific to the situation and lies within the operations and methods specific to this body of knowledge. This is the intradisciplinary approach.
* The original model is somewhat more complex; we have retained only whatis relevant here.
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(2) We may also organize the teaching on the basis of situations and objects which do not all derive from the same discipline. In this case the operators which the pupil must use also belong to different disci-plines, as do the operations which he must perform. This is the pluri-disciplinary approach.
(3) Instead of organizing the teaching on the basis of one discipline or pluridisciplinary situations, we may approach it and structure it on the basis of a choice of concepts, methods and strategies of a trans-disciplinary nature, that is to say which can be applicable to varied disciplines or common to different disciplines. This is the instrumen-tal transdisciplinary approach.
(4) We may also take as a basis the nature of the pupil's approaches or activities to design, organize and structure the learning. In this casewe determine a series of intellectual or practical approaches which areapplicable to a wide range of circumstances and the pupil is persuaded to apply them in very different situations. The choice of situations isfree; in particular, we may select situations relevant to the roles andfunctions which the pupil will have to perform in his private, social or occupational life. This is behavioural transdisciplinarity.
It is possible, on the basis of the model, to determine variants ineach of these conceptions; but for our purposes we shall deal only with thefour principal forms of presentation and organization of teaching content.
In what follows, each of these forms is evaluated on the basis of thesix criteria cited above and on the basis of the results of research or ofinformation provided by experience acquired in interdisciplinarity and inte-grated curricula.
2. Intradisciplinary organisation
This form of presentation and structuring of teaching content is notentirely relevant to the present goals of general educations which concernthe solution of real-life problems and the satisfaction of individual aspi-rations, as well as the needs of the community. But it is adequate in res-pect of the goals of specialised or advanced education.
Experience and research have amply demonstrated that what is learned inone discipline is not spontaneously transferred by most pupils to other dis-ciplines, even neighbouring ones, or to real-life situations differing fromthe context of the discipline that has been learned. Even very general dis-ciplines such as mathematics or logic, which are applicable to very manysituations belonging to very varied disciplines, do not provide - when theyhave been learned internally - instruments which most pupils are capable ofusing spontaneously in relevant situations to solve problems outside theconfines of the discipline.
The motivation provided by disciplines is generally weak; the pupil whotakes a particular interest in one discipline tends to reject others, andthe pupil who has not yet made a choice is often more tempted by otherfields and more interested by other problems than those contained within thediscipline.
One great advantage of the intradisciplinary approach is that it pro-vides a ready-made structure for the learning process. Furthermore, thisstructure is generally highly compatible with the ordered series of prere-quisites:
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textbooks and treatises usually proceed from the known to the unknown andprovide the teacher with a model of the logical road to be followed that iscompatible with pedagogic constraints. It should be noted however that thiscompatibility is sometimes only apparent, because it rests on equating thelogical build-up of knowledge with its psychological build-up. But it is byno means rare for the logical and psychological structures of knowledge toclash. For example, many definitions which constitute the logical startingpoints of a given subject cannot be understood in their full rigour andscope unless all the objects of the field of the definition are known, inparticular cases of application, non-application and restrictions.
The intradisciplinary approach has another advantage: its great practi-cability. It is easy to adopt at the level of the educational system andeasy to apply in the classroom; numerous textbooks are available, and whena new discipline has to be taught many authors and publishers offer tea-chers a wide choice of textbooks. The intradisciplinary approach meets withthe approval of teachers because they themselves have been trained alongthese lines and have chosen the subject which they teach and to which theyare sometimes truly devoted. This form of the organisation of contentrequires the teacher to be proficient in the subject which he teaches, andthis requirement though it is not always easy to meet in countries whichare short of teachers, is at least perfectly clear. Lastly,discipline-oriented teaching has been practised for centuries and the accu-mulated experience gives teachers great confidence in it.
3. The pluridisciplinary approach
This way of putting over the teaching content is very relevant to themajor goals of education at the present time: it is highly compatible withan education geared to real life and on the solution of problems ratherthan on booklearning or knowledge for its own sake. But it is not suitable,on its own, for specialised or advanced teaching, which does not mean thatit must be excluded from teaching of this kind. If properly applied, it isa preparation for the solution of complex problems and therefore has aplace in in-depth studies.
In the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to make a defi-nitive judgement as to the transferability of what the pupil has learned ina pluridisciplinary form of teaching. If the situations in which the pupilis placed are close to real-life situations - as they almost always are -the transfer of what has been learned to similar real-life situations iseasy. This is a considerable advantage over the intradisciplinary approach,and it justifies us in considering that a pluridisciplinary approach is morerelevant to the aims of present-day education. It is doubtful however thatwhat is learned in a pluridisciplinary classroom situation is transferableto real-life situations that are markedly different from those in which thelearning has taken place. It is therefore prudent to consider that thetransferability of what has been learned in a pluridisciplinary form of tea-ching is superior to that of an intradisciplinary form of teaching, butthat it is confined to similar situations.
The pluridisciplinary approach provides much more incentive than theintradisciplinary approach. The pupil is placed in a situation, often veryclose to a real-life situation, and is set problems which fit in very wellwith his curiosity about his environment and his desire to play a part init. This is an important advantage of this form of organization and acqui-sition of educational content.
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The main difficulty of a pluridisciplinary approach is that it clasheswith the learning progressions. To understand and deal with a pluri-disciplinary situation, the pupil often needs knowledge and abilities whichhe has not yet mastered. In some cases, he can be taught the essentialknowledge and know-how in the context of the situation, but in many othercases this is impossible because the acquisition of this knowledge calls forother prerequisites which have not been mastered either. This difficulty isespecially frequent in pluridisciplinarity organised around a theme or asubject or again in pluridisciplinarity based on the pupil's own-interestinquiries. One way of getting over this difficulty is to study the samesituation or the same subject several times during schooling, at differentlevels according to the pupil's maturity and what he has previously learnedof the subject. For example, at the beginning of secondary education thepupil can be familiarised with a situation or a subject which is superfi-cially analysed, and the same subject is analysed in greater depth someyears later. But it must not be forgotten that bringing up the same themesor subjects a second or third time dulls the pupils' curiosity and motiva-tion. However, redundancy cannot be avoided in any kind of teaching.
Another weak point in the pluridisciplinary approach is the absence ofa general common core enabling what the pupils have learned to be structu-red in a coherent whole. This lack of structuring capacity risks leading toa scrappy and insufficiently integrated knowledge. To avoid this, what hasbeen learned must be synthesized and linked up. On such occasions, disci-plines can play a very positive role.
The pluridisciplinary approach has developed considerably throughoutthe world and is certainly the most widely practised form of interdiscipli-narity. This means that it is feasible, though not necessarily easy; weshall see later in detail the numerous difficulties to which it gives rise,principally at the level of the teacher.
It will be noted that the intradisciplinary and pluridisciplinaryapproaches are complementary; the weak points of one are the strong pointsof the other. Only the transferability of what has been learned to new andappreciably different situations is weak in both cases. This complementarityclearly shows that disciplines must not be abandoned, but neither must theybe the only line of approach to teaching.
4. Instrumental transdisciplinarity
This form of presenting and organizing content consists essentially ofproviding the pupil with methods and lines of thought that are transferableto situations which have not been learned. It is angled towards the solu-tion of problems rather than the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake.In this respect it is therefore particularly relevant to the aims of pre-sent-day education. If the transfer effectively occurs, if the lines ofthought and methods are properly selected, and if the pupil is taught toapply them to situations close to real life, this form of teaching fits inwell with the present orientation of education towards real-life problems,the satisfaction of individual aspirations, and the needs of the community.But this adequation is not inherent in the approach itself, as is the casewhere the pluridisciplinary approach is concerned.
The strongest point of this approach is certainly transferability; itis precisely designed so as to make the pupil capable of applying what hehad learned to new and very varied situations. It is angled towards prepa-ring the pupil to solve problems.
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Instrumental transdisciplinarity does not, in itself, possess anyparticular motivating capacity; though in this respect it is superior to theintradisciplinary approach because it does not confine the pupil within onediscipline and places him in varied situation, in particular real-life situ-ations, and sets him problems which fall within the sphere of his owninterests.
The choice and organisation of lines of thought (transdisciplinarymethods and concepts) are free and may be arranged in accordance with theordered series of prerequisites. However, since the approach is new andsince account must be taken of the situations in which the pupil is placed(which must vary depending on circumstances and the environment) the orderis not laid down in advance, as is more or less the case in the intradisci-plinary approach, and the progression may be difficult to establish.
The structuring capacity of instrumental transdisciplinarity is relati-vely considerable, for the pupil's knowledge and know-how are organizedaround units (transdisciplinary concepts) interconnected by logicalrelationships. But the latter are only partially integrated in the broaderstructures and do not lead to such complex constructions as disciplines.Insufficient data is available to evaluate the feasibility of instrumentaltransdisciplinarity. Once the concepts have been selected and defined, it isin principle fairly easy to adopt, because it does not require any reformof educational structures (as is the case in the integrated curriculum) andit can be applied progressively, even within the teaching of traditionaldisciplines. However, it is necessary to begin by defining the concepts andcircumscribing their particular aspects in terms of disciplines or situa-tions, and this is not a task of which the average teacher is capable. Thisway of presenting and organising content also implies a challenge to tea-chers' conception of their own subject matter, and given teachers' attach-ment to their subject and conformance to its traditional content, this isan important obstacle.
5. Behavioural transdisciplinarity
This approach takes as its point of departure the acquisition by thepupil of very general approaches applicable to very many situations whosechoice is unrestricted. It is thus centred on the pupil's activity, andconsequently is more relevant to the goals of education because what itamounts to, essentially, is the training of the individual. Since theapproaches are very general, the choice of situations in which the pupil isplaced is free, so that they can be selected in such a way that the pupilis prepared to deal with problems that are relevant to his roles and func-tions in the satisfaction of his personal aspirations and the needs of thecommunity. Regarded thus, behavioural transdisciplinarity is therefore high-ly relevant to educational goals.*
Having the pupil make similar approaches to very varied situations isexactly what is needed to favour the transfer of what has been learned andto enable the pupil to make the same type of approach to new situations, tosolve problems which he has not previously encountered. And this is precise-ly what is done in behavioural transdisciplinarity, in which the transfera-bility of what has been learned is consequently high.
* However, one conceivable approach would be to take very general approaches as a starting-point but apply them within a discipline. To acertain extent this is what is done when the taxonomy of Bloom is applied within a discipline. Obviously, it is no longer transdiscipli-narity, and the approach is diluted and loses its relevance.
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Behavioural transdisciplinarity can be highly motivating if we selectsituations which are meaningful for the pupil. When these situations arechosen so as to relate to real situations with which the individual inquestion will be faced, the learning has clear and immediate meaning.
Teaching on the basis of the pupil's approaches or activities does not,at the outset, provide a progression which conforms broadly to the learningprogressions, as is the case with the intradisciplinary approach. However,it is possible, though more difficult, to conform thereto by establishing aprogression between the approaches on the one hand (from the simplest tothe most complex) and the objects of these approaches on the other (fromthe known to the unknown and from the simple to the complex). Thus it isoften necessary to design teaching sequences preparatory to the learning ofthe approaches proper so that pupils may acquire the necessary prerequisitesfor making these approaches (for example, the concepts involved in theOperators of the approach). In short, conformance to learning sequences inthis type of teaching is possible, but not simple.
Behavioural transdisciplinarity helps the pupils to structure andorganize each of his approaches in various situations, but it does not pro-vide an overall structure, as disciplines do.
On the material and organizational levels, the behavioural trans-disciplinary approach is easy to apply. However, it presents difficultiesfor teachers, who must concentrate on the pupil ' s activity and not on thecontent, and in order to give substance to their teaching they must them-selves see it in general and abstract terms. Progressions are more difficultto establish and since this approach is rarely adopted systematically, tea-chers have no guidelines which can be applied rationally.
6. Conclusion
This review of the principal forms of presenting and organizing edu-cational content reveals that no one form possesses all the required charac-teristics. We thus have to choose the method to be adopted in the light ofcircumstances and employ several approaches in the course of a completestage of education. As can be seen, these approaches are complementary andfurthermore they are not mutually exclusive. In an interdisciplinary educa-tion, there is no reason why at certain times the pupil should not synthe-size and reconstruct what he has learned in accordance with the logicaldiscipline-oriented organization. Thus a pluridisciplinary situation canvery well be tackled with the help of transdisciplinary operators which areprecisely more relevant because they are appropriate to different aspects ofthe situation. Again, one may use transdisciplinary concepts and operatorsin an education which remains organized in terms of disciplines. So theproblem is not to select an approach to the organisation of teaching but todecide what this main approach will be. It must not be forgotten, however,that the transition from one approach to another or the integration ofapproaches requires a great deal of versatility on the part of the teacher,as well as a thorough conceptualization of methodological problems and aconsiderable pedagogic know-how. In many cases, such requirements are notrealistic. The problem must then be assigned to specialists who develop ateaching system and establish learning instruments for the pupils and guidesfor the teachers.
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3.3 Levels of intervention
1. Educational policy and goals
The decision to adopt an interdisciplinary organisation of teaching isa thoroughgoing reform which is linked with other fundamental options andgenerally results from the desire of decision-makers and authorities to pro-vide an education better matched to reality. In many countries, this deci-sion has been triggered by the pressure and magnitude of the problems to besolved and by the inadequation of the traditional organisation of teachingto these problems. The change is preceded and accompanied by an evolutionin the scale of values defining the purpose of man's and society's existen-ce or expressing selected attitudes and behaviour to be encouraged.
Thus, contrary to what one might be inclined to think, the introductionof interdisciplinarity is not a simple innovation at the level of teachingmethods. It is a reform which touches upon educational policy options, thefundamental orientations of education, the general conception of educationalcontent, and the structure of the educational system. Measures to introduceinterdisciplinarity must therefore begin at the policy level (in the broa-dest sense of the term). In centralised systems, the decision will thusgenerally be taken at the level of the Ministry of Education, and in highlydecentralized systems at the level of the Board of Governors of the schoolor group of schools.
The problem is that an interdisciplinary reform is not always seen inits full dimensions, whereas it has repercussions on the entire educationalsystem, and if it is to produce the effects corresponding to the intentionsand motives which have given rise to the decision, consistency must beassured at each of the levels involved.
2. Definition of contents, curricula and objectives
The decision to introduce interdisciplinarity into an educational sys-tem results, as we have seen, from a desire to establish a more relevanteducation. This means that the pupil, after receiving his education, willhave a better understanding of his environment and have a better control ofit, will have acquired new abilities that are more useful to individualsand the community, will be able to solve his personal and occupational pro-blems, and his attitudes and values will be more in line with his roles andabilities.
All this means a profound change in educational objectives. Such achange is not a matter of course and it is not because one adopts anapproach aimed at attaining more relevant objectives that such objectivesare actually set.
An interdisciplinary form must therefore involve a remodelling ofobjectives and curricula so as to bring them into line with the intentionson which the reform is based. The hoped-for results must be made clearlyexplicit, even if it is difficult to do so. One might even say that themore difficult it is, the more necessary it is.
Sometimes the introduction of interdisciplinarity begins with modifi-cations in the content, in the subjects taught. The extent of these modifi-cations is proportional to the degree of integration of disciplines it isrequired to achieve. One may consider the following degrees, as defined inthe annotated agenda of the Paris Symposium in 1985:
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1. The strengthening of the coherence of instruction and the con-vergence of disciplines.
2. the regrouping of disciplines into broader units such as 'unifieddisciplines' or 'blocks of disciplines'.
3. The restructuring of the content of the various disciplines in thelight of certain common basic concepts (instrumental trans-disciplinarity) either in the working out of the syllabuses or intheir use in teaching. The latter approach is sometimes focused onall disciplines (full interdisciplinarity) and sometimes on some-of them (selective interdisciplinarity), usually neighbouring onesas in the case of integrated science teaching - but occasionallydisciplines more remote from one another (mathematics - literatu-re, physics-philosophy).
This integration of content alone is a way of introducing inter-disciplinarity, but one which cannot be strictly isolated: it must often beaccompanied by a change in methods* or in teacher training and its evalu-ation. It necessarily involves a reformulation of objectives.
3. The teaching-learning process
The classroom and the teaching-learning process are often chosen as thelevel at which interdisciplinarity is introduced. For this purpose, pluri-disciplinary situations or themes are generally proposed which, in prin-ciple, should serve for the acquisition of the usual teaching content. Inactual fact, it is neither easy nor relevant to teach the same content ininterdisciplinary situations as would have been taught separately in diffe-rent disciplines in a traditional form of teaching. So there is an implicitshift in objectives towards knowledge, know-how and life-skills more closelyrelated to the basic justifications and implications of the method. Becauseof its implicit nature, such a modification of objectives creates confusionand leads to serious difficulties where evaluation is concerned. It is muchmore coherent for interdisciplinarity at the level of the teaching-learningprocess to be accompanied by an explicit modification of objectives.
Behavioural transdisciplinarity is also a form of introduction at theclassroom level but it necessarily involves an explicit formulation of newobjectives because what is aimed at is precisely the build-up of know-howand life-skills in new contents (or possibly traditional subject matters).
4. The structure of timetables and the organisation of studies
Interdisciplinarity is frequently introduced into general education byconstituting common cores and setting aside periods in the timetable whichare common to subjects normally taught separately. The degree of integrationmay be very variable; at one extreme, it may consist merely of a few hoursof joint classes in geography, biology and history, for example. At theother extreme, the teaching of a group of more or less neighbouring disci-plines may be completely merged: in a number of integrated science projectsthe timetable includes science periods in which the discipline studied isnot specified.
* For example, integrated science teaching generally gives much more pro-minence to exploration of the environment and experimental discovery.
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A change in the structure of timetables and the organisation of studiesis an important reform in centralised systems, but it is easier in autono-mous systems. In both cases, it is not interdisciplinarity itself, it is acondition that is often necessary but never sufficient. It is essential todefine the new contents to be taught in the merged timetables of the commoncore, and this definition must cover not only the themes to be tackled butalso the know-how and attitudes which the pupils must acquire. Thus newteaching-learning situations must be designed, or teachers must be helped todesign them, and textbooks and teaching materials must be adapted to thenew form of teaching.
5. Resources
The three levels which we have just examined are at one and the sametime possible levels of introduction of interdisciplinarity and levels ofinterdisciplinary action. Resources are a necessary level of action, butthey do not usually constitute a point of introduction, though in manycases they may be an institutional and tactical level of introduction forthe innovation. In this connection we shall see the role which a good text-book and a liaison bulletin can play in an interdisciplinary teaching pro-ject.
The introduction of interdisciplinarity, like most innovations,involves changes in human and material resources and in their management.The modifications relate to teachers, who must work in concert and often asa team, timetables, which must often be arranged so as to allow of activi-ties common to different classes, and textbooks and teaching materials,which must be adapted to the new objectives, the new content and the disci-plinary approach. Closer contact with the environment also calls for newtypes of human and material resources: in an interdisciplinary educationslanted on the realities of the environment, it is not unusual for peopleoutside the school to be brought into the learning situation; visits andactivities in the field are also more frequent, and this demands otherresources and a more flexible organisation of time.
6. Evaluation
In a transparent and coherent educational system, evaluation is strict-ly determined by the objectives, and consequently by what has been taught,since we assume that the system is coherent. In such a system, the changedobjectives to which interdisciplinarity gives rise are explicit, and theevaluation situations in which the pupils are placed may be strictly deducedfrom the new objectives. The only problems which arise are of a technicalnature: it is not always easy to design and create pupil evaluation situa-tions which relate to objectives geared to the reality of the environmentand the problems of real life. In this ideal system, interdisciplinaritymakes it necessary to design new evaluation systems, but it is clearly evi-dent what these must be, even though they are difficult to create.
In reality, things are often very different. Changes in objectives aredivined or perceived in a confused manner, the educational process is notconsistent with the objectives laid down, and the evaluation is consistentneither with the implicit objectives nor with the educational process. If itremains consistent with the former objectives, it is obvously off course.Teachers and education authorities are aware of this confusion, but it fre-quently appears when it is too late, and its causes are not necessarilyobvious to everyone.
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It is therefore essential, in an interdisciplinary reform, to make surethat there is consistency between the objectives, the teaching-learning pro-cess, and the evaluation. For this to be possible, each of the componentsof the educational process must be clear, precise and circumscribed. On thetechnical level, the new types of educational objectives which interdisci-plinarity involves doubtless call for new forms of evaluation. These newforms or contexts of evaluation should be the subject of research.
Changes in evaluation which logically should be a consequence of theinnovation can, like resoures, be an institutional and tactical point ofentry. An examination incuding questions of an interdisciplinary naturerequires teachers to change the way in which they educate their pupils.
7. Teacher training
Any educational reform of any consequence must include the awareness-raising, involvement and training of teachers; things cannot be changedwithout changing people. Generally, teacher training is not the level atwhich interdisciplinarity is introduced, but it is always a necessary condi-tion for success. An interdisciplinary education is more difficult to desi-gn, organize and structure; it is usually less easy to implement; itrequires teachers to make a new interpretation of its content, a very dif-ferent one from that which they have learned; it calls for new knowledge,different representations and conceptions, new know-how, and other atti-tudes. But in many cases the training of teachers who are responsible forinterdisciplinary teaching is neglected, and sometimes even passed over;this then leads to disappointments whose origin is not always recognised andwhich create a challenge to interdisciplinarity itself.
Making allowance for interdisciplinarity in the training of teachersmust not consist merely of refresher courses or further training; it mustform part of pre-service training also. The methods by which the teacher istrained must be coherent with those which he will have to apply himself, tothe extent of course that they are appropriate to the level and content ofteacher training, which is the case where interdisciplinarity is concerned.
Pre-service and in-service training of teachers is a fundamental com-ponent of an interdisciplinary reform; any negligence or inadequacy at thislevel can cause the project to fail. We shall revert to this at some lengthin the section on the design and implementing of interdisciplinary education(para. 5.5 2B(4)).
Lastly, interdisciplinarity must be introduced at the level of thetraining of teacher educators, which obviously involves changes in universi-ty methods and conceptions.
3.4 The sectors of education concerned
All the sectors of education may be concerned by interdisciplinarity,but it is not uniformly distributed and is not applied in the same way inall types of teaching and at all levels.
In school education, interdisciplinarity has developed mainly in general education and more particularly at the primary and lowersecondary levels. Since the beginning of this century, psychologists like Wallon and Piaget and educators like Dewey, Claparède,Deeroly and Freinet, and even statesmen like Ghandi or Nyererehave helped to make general education, at the lower level,
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better matched to the psychological realities of the child and the youngadolescent - to his interests, to his approach to discovery, and to theenvironment in which he lives. They have thereby opened the way to an edu-cation that is freed from the overriding restrictions of disciplines andslanted on real-life situations and the pupil's own approaches.
It is undoubtedly at the primary level that interdisciplinarity is mostwidespread. It is at this level too that is less contested and easier toapply. The primary school-teacher is not a specialist in one subject, andhe is more prepared to accept and apply an interdisciplinary approach. Forthe past half-century, most primary education specialists have shown therelevance and necessity of methods of an interdisciplinary nature (centresof interest, study of the environment, a printing press in the school, theproject methods, etc.). Primary schoolteachers have often been trained toapply these methods. Furthermore, organisational problems are much less ofan obstacle than in secondary education; in most cases, the same teacherteaches all or most subjects, and he can thus arrange the timetable in thelight of his teaching requirements. In primary education, the most widelypractised form of interdisciplinarity is by far pluridisciplinarity, in par-ticular the study of themes and the relating of subjects one with another.
At the secondary level, it is more difficult to persuade teachers toaccept interdisciplinarity, because they are less prepared for the pedagogicaspects of teaching than for proficiency in their subject. They are alsomuch less versatile in respect of their training and their ideas than pri-mary-school teachers. Subjects at the secondary level are taught in greaterdepth and the structure of the discipline is the object, often the princi-pal one, of its teaching. All these circumstances tend to give teachers theidea that the discipline-oriented approach is more suitable, or is the onlysuitable approach. Furthermore, the lessons are divided among the teachersin accordance with a rigid timetable which it is quite difficult to modifyin the light of circumstances. Despite all these obstacles, the interdisci-plinary approach is quite widely applied in the first year or the first twoyears of secondary education. At this level, the obstacles are easier toovercome: in many cases, the teachers are to a certain extent versatile,*the subjects are not yet taught in any great depth, and the structure ofthe disciplines is not seen to be so necessary. In addition, a partiallyinterdisciplinary teaching is seen by some as a desirable transition betweenthe primary and secondary levels.
At the upper secondary level, interdisciplinarty is rarely applied, forthe reasons we have just referred to. We believe that there is another rea-son too, perhaps a more fundamental one: ignorance of the problem and ofthe different forms and possibilities of interdisciplinarity on the part ofteachers and education authorities. After having taught integrated disci-plines at the lower level, it is too readily imagined that interdisciplina-rity at the upper level must also be a merging of different subject areas,and that it means relinquishing the teaching of disciplines as such. It ispreferable to seek other lines of approach such as behavioural transdisci-plinarity and/or instrumental transdisciplinarity, together with the pluri-disciplinary solution of real-life problems or the pluridisciplinary studyof complex subjects which bring into question the quality of life of alarge part of the human race.
* For example, in a number of countries, lower secondary-school teachers are trained to teach several subject areas: science, literature, or thehuman sciences.
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Occupational training should be a privileged area of interdisciplinari-ty, since it is aimed directly at preparing the pupil to deal with occupa-tional situations. But quite often, when the teaching departs from the pure-ly occupational aspect and covers a theoretical aspect or a general theme,the teacher tends to revert to disciplines. In technical education, which ismore theoretical, this reversion to disciplines is particularly marked, per-haps even more so than in general education, because specialisation oftencoincides with a discipline or part of a discipline. However, the need forgreater versatility (hence at least pluridisciplinarity) in many areas ofoccupational and technical training is increasingly recognised.
At the university level, the problem of interdisciplinarity arises in amore complex manner, because on the one hand it must be designed at threelevels: teaching, research and service to the community and on the otherhand the university aims to inculcate professional abilities and abilitiesto solve complex problems, as well as research and abstraction abilities.Since the subject of this paper is confined to general education, we shallnot go further in this analysis; the reader is referred to the CEPESreport.
Out-of-school and non-formal education are sectors in which inter-disciplinarity can easily be introduced. This is due to several factors.Firstly, these forms of education escape many of the administrative cons-traints of in-school education. For example, the organisation of time andthe breakdown of activities over a period of time is much more flexible;the teachers are not necessarily required to possess a qualification in onediscipline, they may be - and often are - people who have experience ofreal-life activities or situations, and it is often in function of thisexperience rather than in function of a qualification that they are led toparticipate in non-formal or out-of-school education. These people are morenaturally oriented towards the solution of real-life problems than towardsthe teaching of disciplines for their own sake. In this type of education,it is essential for the learners to be motivated where the subjects dealtwith are concerned, because the teacher is aware that he will lose hispupils or his audience if he does not propose real-life problems and ques-tions which the learners judge necessary or worthwhile to solve or studyand which are directed more to the mastery of a multifaceted and complexreality rather than the learning of a discipline. The fact that this typeof teaching does not often lead to a diploma is also a favourable factor,because it gives the teacher greater freedom and enables the problem ofobjectives and evaluation to be formulated in new terms.
4. THE SYMPOSIUM
4.1 Terms of reference and justification of the symposium
Interdisciplinarity, as a new way of apprehending, acquiring and trans-mitting knowledge, necessarily merits the attention of Unesco.Interdisciplinarity can also respond to one of Unesco's constant and majorconcerns: helping countries to bring educational aims and practices intoline with reality and to achieve a harmonious overall development of theindividual and the community.
Unesco's effort in the field of interdisciplinarity began in the latesixties with integrated science teaching. At that time Unesco launched aprogramme In this field which was put onto effect in t968, and organized ameeting of experts on integrated science teaching in Varna (Bulgaria) inSeptember of that year. At this congress, the participants put forwardessential ideas
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which have retained their importance and still constitute the main lines ofreflection and action where interdisciplinarity is concerned. We find, forexample, proposals to integrate scientific disciplines as a means of under-standing the world in its entirety and solving the problems of mankind,bearing in mind their complexity and the many ways in which they interact.We also find the idea of presenting scientific concepts and principles in aunifying perspective rather than with emphasis on the differences betweenvarious scientific fields.
Unesco's action in the field of integrated sciences and the inter-disciplinary study of the environment continued and developed considerablyin the seventies. This action took practical form in assistance to numerouspilot projects and in the publication of volumes in the series 'New Trendsin Integrated Science Teaching' (part of the Environmental Education Series)and guides or modules for teachers.
Since 1968, several conference have made it possible to take stock ofthe experience acquired, study the problems involved, circulate the ideas towhich this major international trend has given rise, define the broad linesof co-ordinated action and research, and arrive at common points of view.Among these conferences are:
the co-ordinating meeting for Unesco's programme in integrated science teaching, Paris, 1972;
the international symposium in Belgrade which adopted 'The Belgrade Charter' in 1975;
the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education, Tbilisi, in 1977;
the International Seminar on Environmental Education, Budapest;
the International Expert Meeting on Progress and Trends in Environmental Education since the Tbilisi Conference, Paris 6-11 September 1982.
Unesco also formed an Interdisciplinary Working Group on EnvironmentalAspects of Engineering Education and Training. This group meets in Belgradeevery two years.
As they developed, these efforts in the field of integrated sciencesand environmental educational broadened in scope and met up with the trendtowards interdisciplinarity in its most general sense.
As early as 1970, interdisciplinarity was the subject of a Unesco semi-nar in Côte d'Ivoire on the Training of Teachers by the InterdisciplinarySystem, held at Bouaké from 29 March to 4 April 1970.
From 24 to 26 November 1981, the Unesco Centre for Higher Education inBucharest oganized a symposium on interdisciplinarity in higher education inEurope.
Two weeks later, in the same year, a meeting was organized in Bangkokby the Unesco Regional Office for Education in Asia and the Pacific and theAsian Programme of Educational Innovation for Development (APEID). The sub-ject of this meeting was 'Integrating subject areas in the primary educationcurriculum'.
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Lastly, Unesco quite recently organized a subregional workshop on aninterdisciplinary approach to curriculum development in Ibadan, Nigeria,from 27 to 31 May 1985.
In its second Medium-Term Plan (1984-1989),1 Unesco decided to requestthe Secretariat 'to continue with efforts already undertaken with a view topromoting the improvement of content and methods and, in particular, tofinding a solution to the problems of selecting, organising, presenting andintegrating content and of achieving a balance of the cognitive, ethicalaffective, aesthetic and sensory-motor aspects of content and of the variouscomponents and phases of the educational process'.
Parallel with this, Unesco developed its work on problems of an inter-disciplinary nature such as population education and the prevention of drugabuse. Programme IV.2 (1) made provision in particular as a follow-up tothe Recommendations of the International Conference on Population (MexicoCity, 1984) for technical and financial support of training aimed at inte-grating interdisciplinary subjects relating to the prevention of drug abuse,population education, nutrition education, and environmental education inthe curricula of general education and in out-of-school educational activi-ties.
During the first biennium (1984-1985), the emphasis was on inter-disciplinarity as a methodological instrument for the organisation of curri-cula and the integration of new contents. It is planned to go more deeply,during the second biennium (1986-1987), into problems concerning the balanceto be achieved between the various contents and their distribution among thedifferent elements and phases of the educational process. Lastly, during thethird biennium (1988-1989), the Plan provides for dealing more particularlywith problems relating to the relevance- of content in the context of aforward-looking consideration of the subject in order to identify those con-tents which appear to meet foreseeable needs in the years to come.
For this reason, the Approved Programme and Budget for 1984-1985 con-tained an activity related to 'the promotion of interdisciplinarity, cohe-rence and balance in the content of general education programmes' and madeprovision for an international symposium on interdisciplinarity in generaleducation to be held in 1985.
This document recommends, in the work plan of this symposium, anassessment of the advantages and limits of an interdisciplinary approach inthe development of general education curricula, based on an analysis ofsignificant examples of curriculum reform according to an overall interdis-ciplinary framework undertaken in Member States. The work plan also recom-mends that this symposium should be seen as an opportunity to explore waysand means of integrating in curricula interdisciplinary subjects linked tothe problems of today's world, the importance of which was recognised bythe General Conference, such as education for international understanding,environmental education, health and nutrition education, media education,preparation for self-instruction and the use of documentary resources within
the framework of lifelong education.2
1. Approved by the Unesco General Conference at its fourth extraordinary session.
2. Terms of reference of the symposium, Unesco document ED/CONF.805/INF.1.
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4.2 Organization of the symposium
The International Symposium on Interdisciplinarity in General Educationwas held at Unesco Headquarters in Paris from 1 to 5 July 1985. It wasorganized by the Division of Educational Sciences, Contents and Methods ofEducation.
The 18 participants, who came from all parts of the world, werespecialists in the formulation of curricula or persons responsible forinterdisciplinary projects. Unesco also invited observers from severalinternational associations, from the United Nations, and from differentdivisions of Unesco. The President of the symposium was George Marx, assis-ted by two Vice-Presidents, Devi Venkatasamy and Rudolph V. Goodridge. LouisD'Hainaut was the Rapporteur.
The symposium was preceded by a considerable amount of preparation, andeach participant was in possession of a very valuable series of workingdocuments.
The first of these documents was an annotated agenda setting forth theobjectives of the symposium, each item being accompanied by a basic textestablishing a clear framework for discussion. This working document wasrepared by G. Vaideanu and the Division of Educational Sciences, Contentsand Methods of Education. The items on this agenda were as follows:
1. Opening of the symposium.
2. Presentation by the Secretariat of the fundamental concepts, pre-paratory work and educational and socio-economic framework of thedevelopment of interdisciplinarity in general education.
3. National experiments aiming at integrating different disciplinarycontents according to an interdisciplinary approach:
(a) presentation and discussion of these experiences;
(b) problems encountered in practice; advantages and limitations.
4. Different approaches to the question of interdisciplinarity ingeneral education:
interdisciplinarity in the elaboration of contents; different waysand means of restructuring school curricula;
interdisciplinarity in the teaching-learning process; the role ofthe teacher;
interdisciplinarity in out-of-school activities and transfers toreal-life situations;
how these approaches are related and repercussions on the assess-ment of student performance.
5. Priority areas for the promotion of interdisciplinarity in generaleducation.
6. Guidelines for the development of contents in general educationwith a view to achieving interdisciplinarity-.
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7. Suggestions for international co-operation.
8. Closing of the symposium.
The second document made available to participants was a presentationof some basic concepts. This document, prepared by G. Vaideanu, contained aprecise and well-documented account of the definitions and forms of inter-disciplinarity. This clarification of the subject of the discussions undoub-tedly greatly contributed to their coherence and to the unity of points ofview which emerged. The document by G. Vaideanu also contained a briefaccount of the historical background, evolution and present situation ofinterdisciplinarity. Together with the terms of reference of the symposiumand the annotated agenda, it gave participants a clear idea of the perspec-tive in which their work lay.
The participants at the symposium also received a series of case stu-dies prepared by some of those present. These case studies gave each parti-cipant precise information not only on what was happening in the field indifferent regions of the world, but also on the nature of their colleagues'experience, thereby enabling them to understand and situate the latter'saccounts more clearly and making communication more effective. These casestudies were summarised by their authors and have been referred to in thepreceding section.
In the course of the symposium, participants were invited to give writ-ten replies to three questions:
Why is integration necessary?
Why is it so difficult?
How does one go about it?
Their replies to these questions are contained in the sixth section ofthis report, together with information derived from other sources, particu-larly previous meetings.
Participants were clearly informed of the results expected from theproceedings of the symposium. These consisted, in the immediate future, oftwo documents:
a document laying down guidelines for Member States on the value ofinterdisciplinarity in general education;
a document containing suggestions for measures at the national andinternational levels.
To finalise these conclusions and suggestions, the participants appoin-ted a drafting group comprising Phillip Hughes, Byong Sun Kwak, MartaMoyana, Mahinda Ranaweera and Anderson B. Shankanga.
Provision was also made for the preparation of a final report on theproceedings of the symposium, which would contain the results of the procee-dings of other Unesco seminars, in particular regional seminars (Africa andAsia and the Pacific). The present document has been prepared along theselines.
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4.3 Objectives proposed to participants
The main objectives of the symposium were to contribute to a better un-derstanding of the advantages and limits of an interdisciplinary approach togeneral education with a view to ensuring improved relevance, greater cohe-rence and better balance of the content of general education. To this end,participants were invited to engage in a broad exchange of views leadingto:
1. An analysis of the principal means used to promote interdiscipli-narity in general education:
- in connection with curriculum development, in particular througha global approach to the selection and structuring of the knowledge to be acquired;
- in the teaching-learning process through the organization of didatic activities aimed at facilitating the transfer of what has belearned to concrete situations and at strengthening the links be ween disciplines.
2. A review of the various experiments made with regard to the intro-duction of interdisciplinarity into general education curricula,including such techniques as centres of interest, interest-arou-sing activities, projects, integrated science and technology tea-ching, multi-subject programmes or blocks of knowledge, etc., withthe particular purpose of identifying their effects on the acqui-sition of basic knowledge and on helping learners to acquire amore comprehensive grasp of the complexity of the present-dayworld.
3. An analysis of the various problems encountered in the implemen-tation of interdisciplinary projects in connection with:
- the determination of objectives: order of importance, grouping, etc.;
- the organisation of instruction: timetables, structuring, sequencing;
- teacher training.
Following these exchanges of views, the participants were invited to:
1. identify priority areas for the introduction of interdisciplinarycontents or activities;
2. propose guidelines for Member States in working out their nationalstrategies for an interdisciplinary approach to the development ofthe subject content of general education;
3. formulate suggestions for international co-operation in thisfield.
4.4 Synthesis of discussions
1. Ways of approaching the problem of interdisciplinarity
The meeting discussed the problem of interdisciplinarity from threedifferent points of view:
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epistemological;
pragmatic;
socio-educational.
Epistemologically, four modes of interdisciplinarity were seen to exist:
correlation between disciplines;
formulation and implementation of concepts and methods common to seve-ral disciplines;
organized thinking for the analysis of complex situations;
discovery of knowledge through the learner's own motivation or curiosity.
The group stressed the contribution of interdisciplinarity to the ove-rall education of an individual in a society regarded as a whole. It alsoconsidered that interdisciplinarity should take more account of the affecti-ve field and be centred more around creative education (learning to learn)than normative education (learning). It was recognized that interdisciplina-rity does not constitute an end in itself, but rather a way of achievingmore relevant objectives; it cannot be a new discipline to be learned forits own sake.
Participants also referred to parallels between the pupil's learningprocess and the dynamic structure of knowledge.
Finally, it was noted that the general characteristics of knowledgemust not be confused with its transferability, which should, in fact, bethe aim of interdisciplinarity.
2. Types of projects and forms of integration
Participants had very varied experience of interdisciplinarity in theschool, but mainly in the context of the integration of disciplines and anapproach based on real-life situations or multidisciplinary themes.
Most of the participants spoke of their experience of interdisciplina-rity at the primary and secondary levels. At these two levels, numerousreference were made to integrated science teaching and the teaching of thesocial sciences. In many countries an interdisciplinary approach has beenused in an attempt to integrate the school into the life of the communityand to establish a dialectic between the environment and the school.Environmental education sometimes acts as a catalyst. The same is true ofproductive work in school, which can be either the starting point or theend-point of learning.
The introduction of a flexible curriculum allowing time for a choice ofactivities also greatly favours interdisciplinarity.
Another way of promoting interdisciplinarity is to consider on the onehand what is specific to each discipline - the core of the discipline - andon the other hand what can be exploited outside the discipline itself.
Problems of an interdisciplinary nature can also be integrated, such ashealth education, environmental education, education for peace and inter-national understanding, and the problems of the contemporary world.
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In some countries, curricula are prescribed by the educational autho-rities; in others, teachers participate in their formulation. From the pointof view of materials, the situation also varies considerably; in some cases,well-prepared and well-tested textbooks are available for the project, inothers, there is no syllabus and no textbooks.
3. The stage of development and the success of interdisciplinarity
The extent to which interdisciplinarity has been implemented, and itssuccess, varies greatly from one country to another and from one region orone school to another within a given country. A distinction should thereforebe made between countries with a very centralized educational system andthose where education is decentralised. Among the former, a further distinc-tion should be made between countries where interdisciplinarity is compulso-ry and those where it is not. Mention was also made of differences in thesuccess of interdisciplinarity in rural as opposed to urban environments.
On the whole, interdisciplinarity would seem to be more firmly estab-lished at the primary level than at the secondary level; and it is appliedmore in certain African and Asian countries than in Western Europe. InEurope, one can sometimes even discern a reverse trend, which would seem tostem from several causes: recent economic conditions focusing on the shortrather than the long term, teachers being saturated with educationalreforms, and interdisciplinarity being equated with lack of direction oreven laxity.
Most participants stressed, however, that pupils welcome an inter-disciplinary approach, which they find more lively and motivating.
4. Conditions for the implementing of interdisciplinarity
The participants emphasized that if interdisciplinarity is to bemeaningful, real problems and essential variables must be taken intoaccount, in particular societal values, the development of the individualand of the community, culture, and the needs and aspirations of pupils.
The main criterion should be the relevance of interdisciplinaryinstruction to the priorities laid down in educational policy.
The introduction of interdisciplinarity does not mean the relinquishingof traditional disciplines but a co-ordination and complementarity of suchdisciplines. One may wonder whether interdisciplinarity exists without dis-ciplines. Interdisciplinarity complements or transcends disciplines, and itspurpose is to provide the learner with integrative concepts and methods andan integrative framework.
Along these lines, teachers should be aware of the value of the subjectthey teach not in relation to the subject itself but from the point of viewof its contribution to the solution of real-life problems.
There is no one way of implementing interdisciplinarty that is the mostappropriate one for all situations and all countries. What one shouldattempt to find is a conceptual framework which allows the interdisciplinaryapproach to be adapted to national circumstances and to the prevailingsituation.
In the application of interdisciplinarity, it must be realised that theproblem lies at two levels: curriculum design on the one hand, and curricu-lum application on the other. It is at the latter level that difficulties are
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mainly encountered, but it should be borne in mind that specialists capableof designing curricula and textbooks of the interdisciplinary type need tobe trained.
5. Interdisciplinarity and out-of-school education
Several participants stressed the complementary nature of in-school andout-of-school instruction. Out-of-school activities sustain, motivate andback up formal schooling, giving the pupils and experience of life and pro-viding the teacher with resources not available in the school. Out-of-schoolactivities are a source of interdisciplinary experiences for both the pupiland the teacher. But what is taught out of school is generally poorlystructured and badly organised from the learning point of view. It musttherefore be ordered and restructured My the school. It was also noted thatthe school could and should provide pupils with experience which they cannotacquire outside because the environment cannot provide them. This is parti-cularly true of underprivileged socio-cultural groups.
Cultural associations, science clubs, and other forms of non-formaleducation are catalysts of interdisciplinarity because their organization ismore flexible and they are not subject to the constraints of the schoolsystem. This is why teachers sometimes spontaneously apply an interdiscipli-nary approach which they are unwilling to use in the classroom.
The media convey values and ideas and greatly influence the child andthe adult. This influence constitutes a 'parallel' education which theschool cannot ignore. This influence can be positive, but unfortunately itis very often negative, because events and ideas are presented in an emo-tional or biased context and the sensational aspects of things generallyoverride their educational value. This is a challenge which education mustmeet, and interdisciplinarity, which aims to be global approach to reality,cannot ignore it.
6. The problem of evaluation in interdisciplinarity
The problem of evaluation in interdisciplinarity was raised severaltimes. It was considered to be an essential one, but dificult to solve.
Traditional evaluation is not appropriate to interdisciplinarity. Theobjectives of interdisciplinarity relate to reality in its entirety and tothe pupil as an individual. Evaluation must thus involve the affective aswell as the cognitive aspects, it must cover overall abilities to grasp aproblem, make a decision, and design, organize and implement an activity ora project.
We should not lose sight of the reasons for which evaluation is under-taken. The purpose of evaluation is to improve, not to prove; it mustretain its individual function, notably its diagnostic function, but it alsohas a social function. Several participants pointed out that in interdisci-plinarity, the purpose of evaluation was not exactly the same. Of course,the pupil's ability must still be assessed, but the work of a group mustalso be assessed. Projects, activities and results of a more wide-rangingnature than customary classroom activities can also be evaluated. Evaluationcan be performed by a jury, by pupils, or even by those pupils whose workis being assessed.
Almost all the participants in the symposium emphasized thedifficulties of evaluation in the interdisciplinary context.In particular, the evaluation of attitudes and of affective a s p e c t s i s a p r o b l e m t h a t i s s t i l l u n s o l v e d a n d
which in any case calls for observation over a long period. Furthermore, inthis field attitudes are gradually built up which will not manifest them-selves in actual behaviour until much later. Evaluation in the socialsciences also poses problems, because the criteria are much more difficultto define.
Lastly, the existence of traditional external examinations such as uni-versity entrance examinations further complicates the problem of evaluationin interdisciplinary education.
7. Hindrances and difficulties
Interdisciplinarity involves profound modifications in teaching practi-ce, in the organization of the teacher's knowledge, and in his teachingrole.
Such profound modifications necessarily encounter resistance or iner-tia. This seems to be more marked among teachers at higher levels, who tendto see themselves as specialists in a subject rather than experts in thedevelopment of abilities and attitudes. However, the difficulty should notbe over-estimated, and confidence must be placed in the intelligence andwillingness of teachers, who are the major human resources in the educatio-nal system.
None the less, teachers must be convinced, persuaded and trained.Training in interdisciplinarity is in itself new, and demands not only mate-rial resources but also a certain amount of pedagogic imagination.
Although well accepted by pupils, interdisciplinarity sometimes en-counters resistance on the part of parents, who no longer recognize thetype of school they themselves attended.
An interdisciplinary approach to education requires co-operation bet-ween all levels of education and also between different ministries. The lat-ter is not easy to achieve, and on several occasions participants pointedout the constraint represented by the existence of the university as thefocus of the hopes and aspirations of pupils and parents and as a placewhere teachers are trained in the context of compartmented disciplines.Another difficult problem to which much effort must be devoted is the pro-duction of interdisciplinary textbooks. The rigidity of timetables is also amajor obstacle.
Participants also considered the problem of the cost of interdiscipli-narity, but were unable to come up with any clear-cut answer to this ques-tion. Some participants reported increases in costs due to the need to pro-duce new material and train personnel. Others saw a possibility in themedium term of reducing overall costs by reason of the concentration ofdisciplines and the reduction in the number of textbooks. Systematic resear-ch would be useful in this field.
8. Advantages
Interdisciplinarity has numerous and important advantages which amplyjustify an attempt to overcome the difficulties of introducing it.
These advantages are of three kinds: epistemological, psychological andpractical.
In epistemological terms, interdisciplinarity provides an overall graspof reality which makes possible a better understanding of its complexity,its interrelationships and its interactions. Furthermore, it provides a uni-fying framework for concepts and methods which can be used in different situa-tions and in different disciplines. Interdisciplinarity is a manner of tackling
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problems which is more operational and more relevant to the social and phy-sical environment; it shows how the complex and imbricated problems of thecontemporary world, which involve numerous disciplines, should be studied.
There are also many advantages from the point of view of educationalpsychology. Firstly, interdisciplinarity is better adapted to the overalland harmonious development of the pupil as an individual. Secondly, it isbetter able to ensure the transferability of what is learned, thereby makingthe pupil more capable of dealing with real situations and new problems.
Interdisciplinarity is an appropriate method of taking advantage of thepupil's experience and helping him to build up his knowledge on the basisof meaningful situations. It is oriented towards 'open' learning, the criti-cal analysis of situations, and creativity; furthermore, its dynamic proba-bly conforms more to the ways in which learners perceive, organize andtransform knowledge. And at the primary level it is better adapted to chil-dren's overall approach and sensibility. Generally speaking, it providesgreater incentive because the subjects studied are seen by the children tobe more relevant to their concerns and interests.
In practice, interdisciplinarity has the great advantage of establi-shing a dialectic between the school and the environment; it enables betteruse to be made of the situations and resources of the environment to orga-nize relevant educational activities. Interdisciplinary approaches are alsobetter adapted to integrating the knowledge acquired in the framework of'parallel' (informal) education.
Lastly, interdisciplinarity is a practical necessity because disci-plines embrace such an increasingly wide field of subject matter that it isno longer possible to teach everything separately.
Interdisciplinarity is a new approach which challenges centuries ofestablished ways of thinking. Its application calls for further research andeffort. It is a major innovation because it profoundly changes conceptionsof knowledge and of man's relationship with the world.
Interdisciplinary reform requires time and effort at all levels; astrategy of innovation must be worked out in all sectors of the educationalsystem. The discussions at the symposium clearly showed that all the parti-cipants were convinced that the hoped-for result is worth the effort.
4.5 Guidelines for Member States on the value of interdisciplinarity in general education
The following text was prepared by the drafting group and approved bythe participants in the symposium.
1. What is interdisciplinarity?
The most common format for the curricula of general education has beenan organisation in the form of traditional disciplines, such as mathematics,science, languages. The pattern being considered is not a move away fromthe disciplines, but rather their use in a different way.
The Unesco definition of interdisciplinarity is 'a form of co-operationbetween various disciplines which contribute to the achievement of a commonend ...1 The 1985 Unesco Symposium on Interdisciplinarity in General
1. Unesco, 1982. Report of the Director-General to the Executive Board on the Preparation of the Medium-Term Plan for 1984-1989.
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Education sees that common end as being the improvement of general educa-tion, i.e. the period of education from kindergarten to the pre-universitylevel, preceding the move into forms of specialized education or training.
Interdisciplinarity will thus involve a variety of forms of co-operati-ve effort, invoking the disciplines, to develop and strengthen general edu-cation. One form of co-operation is integration, where a number of disci-plines are combined within a single boundary to concentrate on a particulartheme, such as population education or health education. Another form is thegrouping together of distinct subjects, such as history and geography, intoa single entity, social studies. Still another form is the co-operation ofvarious people, including specialists in the disciplines, in the re-concep-tualization of the curriculum of general education. A further useful form isthe use of integration concepts as the means of organizing an interdiscipli-nary approach, e.g. such concepts as 'the experimental method'.
2. Why the recent emphasis on interdisciplinarity?
2.1 The world in which we live is a unity, but it can be looked at ina variety of ways. The disciplines look at the world from a particularviewpoint, for a particular purpose. The various areas of science, physics,chemistry, geology, have their particular forms and their particular ways ofworking. The arts present their own ways of describing and interpreting theworld, as does literature. If we concentrate in our teaching solely onthese individual approaches, it is difficult for our students to see theworld as a whole, and to develop a broad understanding necessary in generaleducation. The student has to make sense of the world, to be able to opera-te successfully as a person, as a citizen, as a productive worker. Thatsense of understanding can be helped by the capacity to use the disci-plines, singly and in co-operation, as appropriate.
2.2 What we know from psychology stresses the importance of this sortof approach. The young child's curiosity is not limited to particular sub-ject divisions. We should encourage and build on that curiosity. At a laterstage in life, the student's interest spreads to personal and societalissues which again do not fall neatly into particular subjects. It makessense to use these interests for teaching. This can provide a focus whichthe student sees as relevant, and which can mean some economy of effort.
2.3 There is a further important reason to be prepared to look at thecurriculum in an interdisciplinary way. Our present disciplines arose duringthe nineteenth century, from older ways of describing knowledge.Developments in this century cross the old boundaries, in nuclear technolo-gy, in space research, computers and molecular biology. We cannot restrictthe possibilities to dividing lines which may cease to be relevant.
2.4 The current organisation of the curriculum arose in the traditionsof Europe, with an emphasis on the preparation of an elite. They are lessappropriate as a means of preparation for a whole population, where theemphases need to be broader, including both intellectual development andaspects of productive work.
2.5 In addition to the familiar areas of study, schools are now beingasked to address quite different types of topics: environmental education,education and work, education and world peace. These are essentially inter-disciplinary studies and if they are to be dealt with by schools willrequire that type of approach.
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2.6 Students increasingly ask for, and need, courses which relate tothe problems of daily living. Such problems may involve drug education, sexeducation, interpersonal relations, etc. Problem-solving of this kindrequires an interdisciplinary approach, as well as a consideration of moraland ethical
issues.
3. Possible areas of integration
3.1 A content analysis of existing subjects may show that a number ofthem deal with common areas. Sometimes this overlap may be helpful and theinterrelationship can be strengthened. Sometimes this overlap reveals a was-tage of effort and time, which may be profitably redirected.
3.2 The content analysis may also reveal areas which are ignored, forexample important social and economic issues, pluri-cultural aspects, areproblems which should be covered specifically. They may be covered in exis-ting subjects, or perhaps new divisions of content need to be considered topermit the most effective treatment. Some problems do not lend themselves totreatment within the traditional boundaries of disciplines.
3.3 Science in the primary school is a fruitful area for an inter-disciplinary approach. In an age when all people need an adequate groundingin science, a great deal of effort is required at this introductory level.The use of science projects has proved valuable in many countries, and per-haps should be considered as an alternative to the more descriptive, naturalhistory approach.
3.4 Integration of science is more difficult at the secondary levelwithout undue distortion, but such divisions as the 'physical sciences 'lifesciences', may be worth considering. However this may be, it is importantthat science teachers should be prepared in ways that help them to crosstraditional subject boundaries.
4. How to approach interdisciplinarity
4.1 The key to the interdisciplinary approach is to recognize it as aprocess, a way of teaching and learning, and not a product. In particular,it is a way which increases the possibility of transfer of learning fromone area of activity to another area. This is an aspect which has been dif-ficult to achieve with the traditional approach, but can be a major advan-tage of an interdisciplinary approach. The purpose of the introduction ofinterdisciplinarity is the more effective and efficient achievement of theaims of education. It should not be seen as an end in itself, but is to bejudged on its improvement of general education. Where it seems appropriate,the interdisciplinary approach can work within the framework of current sub-jects. It is in the interrelationships developed, and in the emphasis onlinks with practical interests, that the major differences will emerge.
4.2 It is important to recognize that, while there are significantadvantages, there are also significant difficulties. It is not easy to chan-ge an existing system, and before this can be done the possible advantagesneed to be recognised. This may involve substantial discussion with tea-chers, with community groups in society.
4.3 In any changes to a curriculum with a more interdisciplinary formthe process of evaluation will be important. It will include curriculum eva-luation to ensure that the new developments are appropriately monitored. Itwould include forms of student assessment which recognize the broader and more
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inclusive aims of general education. Careful liaison and discussion will beneeded with respect to university examinations. It is important to see thattheir function of identification of those who are to continue can be per-formed, but without distorting the programmes for the broader age-groups.
4.4 The application of this approach does not necessarily abolishtraditional subjects. It is much more likely to identify ways in whichthese can be used in co-operation, and in which they might be used to helpsolve new problems or illuminate new issues.
4.5 There is a significant opportunity to use the interdisciplinaryapproach as a means of restructuring the curriculum of general education.Social and technological changes have occurred and are occurring at such arate that the current curriculum needs to be thoroughly reconsidered. Ameans of doing this, still retaining much of the current framework, is out-lined. This implies the need for a co-ordinated effort, involving teachersand other key groups.
(i) Develop an analysis of contemporary culture, to provide a comprehensivestatement on the common elements of the culture to be included in the curriculum of general education.
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(ii) As a part of this analysis, highlight essential values and skills of the culture, identifying the challenges to which each is subject.
(iii) Develop a curriculum matrix in which current subjects are considered in terms of their contribution to common elements of the culture, and core values and skills.
(iv) This can be the means of developing a core curriculum, common to all, beyond which students may follow electives to extend their interests and to allow limited specialisation.
4.6 The major difficulty will be experienced by teachers, particularlyat the secondary level. They have been trained in particular disciplines andhave no experience of going beyond them. It is important that they have anopportunity to discuss possible advantages, as well as difficulties, and tobe involved in any plans for change. Once changes are agreed, substantialchanges in teacher education will be needed. Those involved in these changesshould also take part in the original discussions. Such discussions may wellinvolve workshops at regional and national levels to formulate objectivesand to develop guidelines for further development. Regardless of the parti-cular directions of curriculum change, the professional development of tea-chers, both through pre-service courses and through in-service experience,will be a vital aspect. In-service courses may well be made part of theprocess of curriculum planning from its beginning, so that the processbecomes part of professional development.
4.6 Suggestions and proposed lines of action
The participants were invited to deduce and formulate, for the benefitof national curriculum development specialists, teacher educators, andvarious educational specialists in Member States, the practical consequencesof the discussion of the items on the agenda, in order to help them toimplement national strategies for the formulation of educational content inan interdisciplinary perspective.
The Unesco Secretariat also requested participants to submit their sug-gestions as to the future action of the Organization and to state whatspecific contribution international co-operation could make to the promotionof interdisciplinarity and the strengthening of national measures in thisfield. The text adopted by the participants was as follows:
The participants in the International Symposium on Interdisciplinarityin General Education agreed during their discussions that mankind todayis increasingly faced with problems which are interdisciplinary in cha-racter. Consequently, interdisciplinary aspects in education cannot beavoided. They thank Unesco for its initiatives and support of interdis-ciplinary pilot projects. These have played a very positive role at thenational, regional and international levels. These projects should becontinued at the national and international levels, and include newproblems raised by recent developments. The following is a summary ofsuggestions agreed upon by the participants during the deliberations ofthis international symposium.
A. National level
1. National educational policies should clearly express acceptance ofand support for an interdisciplinary approach in general education.
2. The goals and objectives of general education at the national levelshould reflect and incorporate aspects of interdisciplinarity.
3. Member States should continue to support general and action-orientedresearch on interdisciplinarity both by individual researchers and at theinstitutional level.
4. A curriculum development framework for general education should bedeveloped, taking into consideration the following:
implication of the goals and objectives of general education for thedevelopment of curricula within an interdisciplinary perspective;
selection and organisation of relevant content with reference to theprinciples of integration, balance and coherence, taking into accountthe need for common cores of concepts, skills and values pertaining tovarious disciplines;
teaching methodology appropriate for an interdisciplinary approach.
5. Teaching-learning materials, such as textbooks, teacher's guides andresource materials should be developed on the basis of the aims, objectivesand methodology of curricula within an interdisciplinary perspective.
6. Appropriate arrangements should be made to ensure that in-schoolprogrammes and out-of-school activities support and reinforce each other inorder to achieve the aims and objectives of curricula within an interdisci-plinary perspective.
7. The system of general education should develop appropriate innovati-ve strategies, methods and techniques of evaluation to suit the aims andobjectives of interdisciplinarity, placing due emphasis on the psycho-motorand affective domains, in addition to the cognitive domain.
8. Pre-service and in-service teacher training programmes should bedesigned to assist teachers to implement curricula within an interdiscipli-nary perspective.
9. Measures should also be taken to retrain and re-orient administra-tors, inspectors and other personnel responsible for the implementation ofcurricula, including the training of specialists in curriculum developmentand evaluation, with an interdisciplinary orientation, and create an aware-ness among parents and the general public of the purpose of reforms aimingat the introduction of interdisciplinarity in general education.
10. As part of the general education preparation of undergraduates,universities might be encouraged to give consideration to the development ofintegrative or interdisciplinary, as distinct from discipline-based, coursesas well as the treatment of selected topics/problems from disciplines in anintegrative or interdisciplinary way.
11. In view of the considerable influence exerted by higher educationinstitutions, particularly universities, on the school curriculum and exami-nations, curricular reforms should be developed with the co-operation andparticipation of the higher education authorities.
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12. The teams responsible for the elaboration of reforms in generaleducation should be interdisciplinary in nature, including specialists fromsectors outside that of education.
13. Reform programmes should be guided by appropriate research, inclu-ding ongoing programmes of monitoring and evaluation.
B. Regional and international co-operation
14. Unesco and the regional networks should provide assistance in:
(a) the research efforts of Member States, and the dissemination of findings;
(b) the organisation of regional and international seminars and work-shops, and the encouragement of co-operative research;
(c) a programme of exchange of information, personnel and resourcematerials among Member States.
15. In particular, the following concrete suggestions were proposed:
(a) the experience gained in the Associated Schools Project concerningthe education of young people in a spirit of international unders-tanding, co-operation and peace by means of an interdisciplinaryapproach should be generalised and exchanged at national andregional levels;
(b) Unesco should promote case studies of the development and imple-mentation of programmes based on an interdisciplinary approach inorder to assist curriculum developers, teacher educators, class-room teachers, evaluators, etc.;
(c) Unesco should assist in developing a sourcebook to make achieve-ments available at the international level, with particular empha-sis on approaches, methodologies and assessment procedures;
(d) in order to overcome isolation of specialists in national projectsand avoid duplication of efforts, Unesco should encourage theestablishment of transnational projects and teams in co-operationwith intergovernmental organisations at international and regionallevels.
16. Concerning evaluation:
(a) Unesco should provide a forum of a limited number of experts tolook into assessment and evaluation strategies for interdisciplinarity and the development of relevant instruments;
(b) a comprehensive handbook on interdisciplinary assessment should becommissioned and produced for dissemination to Member States;
(c) a small evaluation team should be maintained for at least two yearsto monitor and suggest diagnostic procedures in interdisciplinari-ty.
17. Concerning special research topics, particular attention could begiven, in an appropriate manner, to the process of dissemination of curricu-lar reform:
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(a) the speed and degree of completeness with which decisions in cur-ricular reform taken at the national and international levels havereached the practising classroom teacher and his inspector, overthe last 20 years;
(b) difficulties at the national and international levels in existingcommunication channels for curricular innovations;
(c) practical measures to be considered to overcome these difficul-ties.
18. Unesco and the International Atomic Energy Agency should promote aco-operative project in education on risk assessment and make the experiencegained in different countries available to the international community.
5. FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
Education authorities who have to make a decision on interdisciplinari-ty are obviously faced with questions as to the expediency of adopting thisapproach in general education. The points at issue can be boiled down tofive fundamental questions:
1. Why interdisciplinarity in education?
2. What fields are to be given precedence?
3. Does interdisciplinarity increase the cost of education?
4. What are the difficulties?
5. What is the procedure to be followed?
In this section we shall try to give answers or partial answers tothese questions on the basis of the experience and the ideas of those whohave studied and practised interdisciplinarity in general education. Therelevant information has been drawn from the reports of the numerous mee-tings which Unesco has devoted to the problem of interdisciplinarity, and inparticular the Paris Symposium at which four of these questions (1, 2, 4and 5) were explicitly put to the participants. In establishing this synthe-sis we encountered gaps, in particular with regard to the cost of interdis-ciplinarity, curriculum design, privileged fields, and pupil evaluation; wethen formulated elements of replies by analysing cases and setting theinformation obtained against the logic of curriculum development and educa-tional innovation.
5.1 Why interdisciplinarity in general education?
Education authorities who have been involved in interdisciplinary inno-vations justify them by arguments which are closely related to the actualfundamentals of interdisciplinarity, and by considerations relating to edu-cational psychology.
A. Justifications relating to the fundamentals of interdisciplinarity
1. The development of science, technology and research increasinglyleads us to take an integrated view of scientific work and studies. Manyscientific achievements of our time are interdisciplinary, or have takenplace at the frontiers between disciplines, new fields such as ecology andpolitical sociology are essentially of an interdisciplinary nature.
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School education cannot ignore this evolution, just as it must promotethe unity of the knowledge and perception of phenomena and problems intheir entirety. Further, it must help to safeguard the conceptual unity ofthe individual and society.
2. Education must prepare people to understand the realities of thecontemporary world; and mankind is faced with problems which challenge itssurvival and which cannot be tackled in the narrow context of a single dis-cipline. These problems call for mutual comprehension and co-ordinatedefforts between disciplines, nations, peoples and ideologies.
The complexity of life is increasing, and with it the responsibility ofhuman beings. Our society demands citizens whose outlook is sufficientlybroad for them to understand reality and its changes in all their aspectsin order to be able to co-operate effectively in the mastery of the presentand the construction of the future. These citizens must be capable of gras-ping reality in all its complexity and in its entirety; depending on thenature of the problem, they must be able to make use of several disciplinesas well as of a single one, and they must be able to communicate with spe-cialists and to participate in multi-disciplinary co-operation.
B. Justifications relating to educational psychology
1. Interdisciplinarity in education is not an end in itself, but anessential condition and a means of conceiving an education which is relevantto the personal aspirations of the learner and to the socio-economic andcultural needs of the community. In order to bring education into line withreality, the pupil must be given the possibility of undergoing learningexperiences that are related to real life and that ensure the developmentof balanced individuals who are well adapted to the environment which theyare about to enter. The interdisciplinary approach makes it possible tounify the curriculum, and this is an essential condition of relevance wheregeneral education is concerned; it better serves the socio-economic inter-ests of many countries, whereas the intradisciplinary approach is relevantonly to the extent that it serves mainly as a preparation for higher stu-dies, but in doing so it centres education on a minority.Interdisciplinarity makes it possible to achieve a better integration and abetter co-operation between the school and its environment; in this approa-ch, the school serves the community better, and the community serves theschool better.
2. It is not natural for a child who is discovering the world aroundhim to separate his activity and its purpose into compartmentalised dis-ciplines. The curiosity of young pupils is not and must not be confined toa particular category of subjects; it is therefore ill-matched to a compart-mentalization of learning processes. Similarly, the interest which adoles-cents take in their own development and in social problems cannot be divi-ded into disciplines. In order to give pupils an incentive to learn, toeducate themselves, to prepare them to apply in their lives the knowledge,know-how and life-skills which they acquire in school, they must be given aschooling which is in line with their interests, their natural approachesand real-life situations. The content of education must therefore be decom-partmented.
3. The human being whom any education worthy of the name tends to valo-rize is a cohesive and integrated individual. The compartmentalization ofeducation is certainly not the right way to achieve this cohesion and thisintegration of the personality. It is much more relevant to avoid compart-mentalization of the learning experience and early specialisation and togive the child or the adolescent unifying learning experiences and an ove-rall grasp of reality.
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The curriculum, particularly at the secondary level, is often merely ajuxtaposition of unconnected parts. Such a disparity is incompatible withthe cognitive and affective integration of the education which the pupilshould receive .
It is essential to avoid the alienation caused by a narrow special-ization and the confusion of the pupil in the face of disciplines all ofwhich are presented to him as being very important but each of which seemsmerely to serve to solve problems specific to its own field and often bea-ring no relation to the pupil's life or to the basic problems of the realworld.
Interdisciplinarity tends, by contrast, to establish broader conceptualframework, to favour the overall perception of situations and problems, tobring out the ability to grasp interactions, and to bring various aspectsand areas of reality into line with one another. It is directed towards an'open' learning and the critical analysis of situations, and is more likelyto help the pupil to integrate the knowledge which he acquires outsideschool.
4. Experience has amply shown that the study of subjects consideredseparately does not lead most pupils to the ability to apply what they havelearned to life in general or to another subject, or even in many cases toanother part of the same subject. An interdisciplinary approach, on the con-trary, can increase the pupil's ability to apply the essential of what hehas learned in order to cope with situations which he has not previouslyencountered, and to find solutions which he has not learned to problemswith which he is faced. Interdisciplinarity thus helps to make the pupilautonomous in relation to what he learns and encourages him to apply whathe has learned to the solution of problems.
5. Many authorities regard interdisciplinarity as an economical way ofcoping with the explosion of knowledge. The proliferation of new subjects inan already heavily loaded curriculum makes it necessary to merge conceptsderiving from different disciplines, and to avoid duplication. It is muchmore relevant and economical for a pupil to study the same subject fromdifferent angles than to teach him the different branches of the subjectindependently. It should be added that the co-ordination of subject teachingenables each teacher to make a better assessment of the pupils' overallworkload and helps to spread and balance the latter more judiciously.
6. Interdisciplinary education is also necessary because many subjectsor relevant fields of knowledge are not covered by specific disciplines andremain untaught, though everyone recognizes that they deserve to be taught.
The interdisciplinary approach even makes it possible to developfavourable attitudes to disciplines in the pupil, because faced with a pro-blem which interests him the pupil realizes that in order to solve it hemust have recourse to concepts, methods or techniques which have been taughtto him in different disciplines.
Lastly, whereas the intradisciplinary approach creates structureswithin disciplines, the interdisciplinary approach helps to structure thepupil's overall knowledge.
7. Teachers who express suspicion, reticence or hostility on the sub-ject of interdisciplinary education do not refuse the arguments in itsfavour very convincingly. Their opposition stems from legitimate fears whichmay be summed up as follows:
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the absence or insufficiency of structuring of learning processes whichare not organized by the structure of disciplines;
the absence or insufficiency of systematic learning processes and exer-cises;
the relinquishment of disciplines which up to the present have consti-tuted the main thrust and organising principles of teaching and lear-ning;
the inadequacy of personal work on the part of the pupil, who in thestudy of interdisciplinary problems is often integrated in a group.
These fears could only be justified if the interdisciplinary approachwere the only approach adopted in education. In actual fact, most authori-ties who wish to promote interdisciplinarity have no intention on thataccount of eliminating the study of individual subjects, and particularlybasic subjects. The two approaches are complementary and mutually reinforceeach others It is agreed that interdisciplinarity, properly understood andthought out, must be accompanied by periods of synthesis, exercises, by thestructuring and systematic exploitation of what has been learned. Thesestandpoints have been expressed on numerous occasions by those who are res-ponsible for and those who practise interdisciplinary education, and havebeen reasserted at various Unesco meetings, notably the Paris Symposium.
5.2 What fields are to be given precedence?
We shall consider the fields in which interdisciplinarity is mostsusceptible of introduction from three angles, corresponding to differentinterdisciplinary approaches:
disciplines which may be integrated;
problems worth dealing with (including new fields);
methods and concepts whose teaching may be co-ordinated.
1. Disciplines which may be integrated
It is clear that scientific subjects, and more particularly the naturalsciences, lend themselves well to integration at the primary and lowersecondary levels. In very many countries, the teching of the naturalsciences is merged at the primary level; often this integration includes, atleast in part, geography and history; mathematics are integrated to a lesserdegree and less often. At the lower secondary level, we note a tendency tocontinue this integration begun at the primary level, but generally mathema-tics are detached from the integrated group and are taught separately. Atthe lower secondary level, the natural sciences are often integrated in thecontext of the study of ecology and the environment, which is a naturalextension, in greater depth, of the study of the environment in primaryschool.
The human and social sciences form an extensive field in which inte-gration appears appropriate and fairly easy to achieve at the secondarylevel. Human geography and history, the elements of sociology, law and civiceducation may be studied together in terms of their interactions and theirdynamics.
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Art and all forms of artistic expression may also be the subject of anintegrated aesthetic education, which must moreover be related to historyand the social environment. This integration is possible, in principle, atthe primary and secondary levels, and even at the higher level. This aes-thetic and cultural education should be imparted in an interdisciplinarymanner in the perspective of the cultural identity of the peoples concerned,and also from the angle of universal values and from the point of view ofthe common heritage of mankind and intercultural exchanges.
2. Problems worth dealing with
Many new problems or questions which are not commonly dealt with underall their relevant aspects can and should be the subject of interdisciplina-ry teaching. These fields are very varied, and all of them are seen to beimportant in respect of their scope, significance and social, economic orscientific value. It is therefore neither possible nor relevant to establisha rank order of different subjects.
The study of environmental problems and the quality of life is general-ly considered to be very important; it obviously calls for an interdiscipli-nary approach, and lends itself well to such an approach. Among the sub-jects often cited and introduced into the curriculum may be mentioned ecolo-gy and the environment in the broad sense, population education, health andnutrition education, the problem of drug abuse, and questions concerningenergy.
Moral, ethical, civic and social training is another field in the fore-front of interdisciplinary education. The subjects most often cited or dealtwith are peace and international understanding, human rights, education withregard to values, the solidarity of peoples and individuals, the dynamics ofhuman societies, and the harmonious development of the individual.
The integrated study of science and technology, together with data pro-cessing, data communication, and their influence on society are widelybelieved to be important subjects worth dealing with.
In the field of socio-economic development, the problem of world hun-ger, productive work in schools, agricultural education, economic mecha-nisms, and consumer education are all subjects which it would be appropriateto study in schools in accordance with an interdisciplinary approach.
Another field is often cited among those which can and should be thesubject of interdisciplinary teaching: communication, and in particularmedia education and training in the techniques and languages of communica-tion and information.
3. Methods and concepts whose teaching may be co-ordinated
Observation is a method employed in very many disciplines deriving notonly from the natural sciences but also from the human sciences and even,certain extent, aesthetics. It is thus an interdisciplinary method parexcellence. From the teaching point of view, it also has the advantage ofbeing applicable from primary school onwards up to university level, withvery variable degrees of difficulty, complexity, rigour and interpretationwhich may be the subject of a pedagogic progression extending from basiceducation to higher education. Direct observation may be applied both in thenatural sciences and in the human sciences, where it is however often more c o m p l e xand tricky to interpret. The survey is a method of observing the human environment
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which may be adopted by young children or by students at the higher levelof education, depending on the problem involved and the extent to which theconclusions may be generalised. Observation also provides an opportunity oflearning an important form of communication: the accurate and objectivereport, whose basic principles are common to very many situations and dis-ciplines. Through observation and the recording of what they observe, pupilswill learn many concepts which are common to or useful in very differentdisciplines; for example, the notions of descriptive statistics, theconcepts of facts, reproducible facts, opinions, results, conclusions,interpretations, concommitances, correlations, parameters, etc.
The experimental method is also very widely employed in a large numberof disciplines, and can be taught by the interdisciplinary approach from theend of primary schooling up to the end of university studies. Very often itis one of the fundamental lines of development of an integrated sciencecurriculum. The field of application of the experimental method is narrowerthan that of observation; for example, it is not applicable to history orto geography, where observation and analysis of facts-or written materialare employed to a large extent. But it must not be forgotten that experi-mentation can also be applied in the human sciences: in sociology, psycholo-gy and educational science, for example. Like observation, experimentationcan be the subject of a learning progression ranging from the simple to thecomplex and from the concrete to the abstract. Unfortunately, this possibi-lity of progression is not identical in all fields: in the naturalsciences, the teacher has available a very wide range of possible experi-ments, from the simplest to the most complex. In the human sciences, therange is narrower; simple experiments are few, and their interpretation isalmost always complex. Like observation, experimentation can provide anopportunity of learning notions which are applicable in different contexts.Observation and experimentation have the further advantage of being activemethods which can be applied to the study of the environment and may beundertaken either individually or in groups.
Two other methods are employed to an increasing extent in very diversedisciplines: 'modelling' and 'simulation'. These methods too can be taughtby the interdisciplinary approach, but up to the present little use hasbeen made of this approach, despite the growing interest taken in thesemethods in scientific circles, and the possibilities offered in this fieldby the increasing use of computers in schools. From the educational angle,these methods are interesting because they provide new and very general waysof tackling and solving problems. In its principle, simulation is sometimesvery close to the natural approach of the young pupil, and advantage couldbe taken of this fact. But in practice teaching by simulation poses pro-blems which have scarcely been studied up to the present but which deserveto be. Modelling involves a level of abstraction and generality which inprinciple is possible only at the upper secondary stage and beyond. Itconstitutes a fundamental extension of observation and experimentation.
Lastly, independently of the methods employed, common concepts can betaught within disciplines in such a way as to achieve a conceptual unityamong the different fields of knowledge acquired by the pupil. Some attemptshave been made along these lines (see above) and it has become clear thatthe concepts which best lend themselves to this form of teaching are thoseof systems theory and the systems approach. We also find such concepts inecology, which is moreover a systematic conception of the study of the environment.
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5.3 Does interdisciplinarity increase the cost of education?
It is very difficult to answer this question, because very littleinformation is available. To the best of our knowledge, there has been nosystematic and general study in this field; nor has interdisciplinary educa-tion in practice provided specific and generally applicable answers, becausethe cost of an interdisciplinary reform depends to a large extent on localor particular circumstances, and furthermore it is often difficult to calcu-late the share of cost increases or reductions which are attributable tothe interdisciplinary nature of a reform and cost differences deriving fromother aspects of the reform. In most of the seminars on interdisciplinarityin education, very little has been said about the cost of the interdisci-plinary approach.
We are therefore obliged to present an analysis based on this meagreinformation and on the general economics of educational innovation.
Before examining the specific sources of costs and savings, two remarksshould be made.
The first is that the cost of introducing interdisciplinarity intogeneral education greatly depends on factors specific to each particularcase: the form of interdisciplinarity adopted, the scope and depth of thechange, the numbers of pupils concerned, the level of teaching ability andprevious training of the personnel, the structures of conception and formu-lation of the curriculum, etc. Consequently, in looking at this problem wemust confine ourselves to qualitative aspects, because at the present timeit is not possible to propose formulae or elements of calculation applicableto all cases. However, authorities can be helped to evaluate the cost of aninterdisciplinary reform by analysing the sources of possible costs andsavings.
1. Cost sources
The principal cost source of the introduction of interdisciplinary edu-cation is the training and briefing of the serving teaching personnel. Theexpenditure that has to be met in this field is absolutely essential, andto refuse to accept it or to reduce it below an indispensable minimum is afalse economy, because the hoped-for benefit of the interdisciplinary reformis lost. The training of the personnel in situ is a source of expenditurewhich is not specific to interdisicplinarity, but which stems from its inno-vative character; it is part of the cost of launching the reform, which inprinciple is absorbed after a few years. If the country undertaking thereform already has a permanent training system for teaching staff, which isseldom the case, the capital outlay involved in the reform is proportionate-ly reduced, but allowance must however be made for additional expenditure inthe existing system.
Another source of cost where an interdisciplinary reform is concernedis the concomitant innovation in the pre-service training of teachers.
The reform must be designed, directed and put into effect by one ormore groups of 'experts' and leading spirits, comprising research workers,specialists, inspectors and teachers specially recruited or detached fromtheir usual jobs and given an innovative mission. The remuneration of these personsor of those who replace them in their usual jobs is a temporary source of costs
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which must be financed from the time the decision is taken to implement thereform up to the time when it is put into effect. To this source of expen-diture must be added, where applicable, feasibility and other studies priorto the decision.
The introduction of interdisciplinarity means that existing textbooksmust be replaced. It also calls for new teaching materials (documentation,audio-visual materials, etc.). This cost source is not so great as it mightappear, because in any case textbooks cannot last forever, and as we shallpoint out below, a single interdisciplinary textbook can sometimes replaceseveral textbooks on different subjects. The cost of new books or materialsmust be broken down into three elements: the cost of preparation, the costof production and the cost of distribution. The only cost specific to inno-vation is the cost of preparation, which is relatively low; to this cost isadded the non-amortized part of the financing of the production and distri-bution of textbooks and materials already in use.
All these costs which we have just examined relate to the setting up ofthe reform; once it has been definitively set up, they do not recur. Inaddition to these innovation costs, we must consider the possible increasein operational teaching costs entailed by the introduction of interdiscipli-narity in the school. Consideration of these costs is particularly impor-tant, because they involve recurrent expenditure. They are low, or evennon-existent where interdisciplinarity is concerned. The only additionaloperating cost referred to in case studies and at meetings concerning inter-disciplinarity results from the fact that the application of this approach,at least in its early stages, places a heavier workload on the teachers; itis noted for example that several hours a week must be set aside forconsultation between teachers. One may however take the view that interdis-ciplinarity does not necessarily entail more work for teachers, but ratherdifferent work. This means that the teacher must go through a period ofadaptation, which effectively means more work, but this period is temporary:it is an innovation cost and not a normal operating cost. Consultation bet-ween teachers, which must take place during normal operation as well as thetime of the change, is nothing more than a phase of preparation of lessons,the difference being that the teacher, instead of preparing his lesson onhis own at home, must prepare it in conjunction with his colleagues, andthis does not necessarily require more actual working time. Of course, whenthe preparation is collective, the shortcomings of the less conscientiousteachers are brought to light ... but that is another story.
It may be wondered whether the interdisciplinary approach requires areduction in the pupil/teacher ratio. Nothing pointing explicitly in thatdirection has been reported in case studies or at meetings on interdiscipli-narity. In some cases, however, reference is made to the participation ofseveral teachers in one and the same activity. If this practice becamegeneral, it would obviously be bound to reduce the teacher/pupil ratio con-siderably, and to increase costs proportionately. In actual fact, it isexceptional, and applies to large groups of pupils; for instance, when seve-ral teachers take several classes on an excursion or a field activity.
To sum up, costs are accounted for not so much by the practice ofinterdisciplinary education as by the switch from an education centred onthe exclusive and compartmented study of subjects to an interdisciplinaryeducation which, without relinquishing the study of subjects as such formspoints of contact between them.
2. Sources of economy
The fundamental source of economy in interdisciplinary education is thegreater relevance of an education of this type to socio-economic realitiesand needs. It is a source of economy in the medium or long-term whichunfortunately is not directly apparent, nor is it easily calculable.Nevertheless it is real, and it can be very substantial if the interdisci-plinary curriculum is designed carefully and slanted not only on the needsof individual development and self-fulfilment, but also on the needs of thecommunity and the constraints of the environment. It is probable that thebenefit of a more relevant education very soon offsets (but obviously inthe space of a few years) the cost of the interdisciplinary reform. Whenthis cost is amortised, the benefit is net, because once interdisciplinarityhas been established its normal functioning is no more costly than that ofan intradisciplinary approach.
Indeed, interdisciplinary education often works more economicallybecause it is more efficient; it makes it possible to avoid excessive over-loading of the curriculum by centring on what is most significant for thepupil and for the community and by avoiding duplication. Where teachingmaterials are concerned, a single pluridisciplinary textbook can replaceseveral books each dealing with a single subject, and which the teachercannot always follow in detail. The reduction in the number of textbooksmeans a reduction not only in the cost of the books themselves but also inthe cost of transport and distribution. It enables the quality of theinterdisciplinary textbook to be enhanced. At the primary level, the tea-ching of several different grades in a single classroom by a single teacheris much more acceptable in the case of interdisciplinary activities.
3. The overall picture
The implementing of a well-designed and well-organized reform iswithout doubt the most costly aspect of the switch from teaching exclusivelycentred on traditional disciplines to an education centred on interdiscipli-narity. The operating cost of interdisciplinary education is comparable tothat of traditional teaching; if there is a difference, it is doubtless tothe advantage of interdisciplinarity.
The principal benefit of a well-designed and carefully applied inter-disciplinary curriculum lies in its greater relevance to the harmonious per-sonal development of the pupils, to the socio-economic needs of the communi-ty, and to the integration of the people educated in real life and theenvironment. The economic yield of this more relevant education produces itseffects for as long as it remains adequate. Thus the cost of implementingthe reform is very soon offset and subsequently outstripped.
5.4 What are the difficulties?
The difficulties encountered in an interdisciplinary reform have manyorigins, and the points of resistance are varied. Some of these difficultiesoccur in most innovations, and are most characteristic of a resistance tochange than of an opposition to interdisciplinarity; others, on the contra-ry, are specific to interdisciplinarity or are not encountered in all reforms.
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We have classified the difficulties according to their origins:
1. the nature and originality of interdisciplinarity;
2. the deadweight of the existing system;
3. teachers;
4. teaching materials;
5. the deadweight of the environment.
Within these categories, we have broken down these difficulties inaccordance with the points of resistance or the part of the system to whichthey relate. This breakdown is far from being constant or rigorous, becausethe nature of the obstacles is often complex, and what is listed in oneplace could very well be listed elsewhere. For the sake of coherence andclarity, we have in some cases not hesitated to admit redundancies.
The examination of the obstacles to the introduction of inter-disciplinarity in general education must not give rise to anxiety or dis-couragement. Any innovation comes up against numerous difficulties. To over-come them, it is first necessary to know them so as to apply a policy ofprevention rather than closing one's eyes to them. In the next sectionsuggestions are given as to ways and means of surmounting these difficul-ties.
1. The nature and originality of interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity runs counter to several centuries of establishedattitudes; it involves a new organisation, knowledge and view of the pro-blems and ways of solving them. It requires not only a different conceptionof the teaching and acquisition of knowledge, but also adaptations of educa-tional structures. Interdisciplinarity does more than hold in question theway teachers teach: it transforms their very conception of the subjectswhich they teach.
Interdisciplinarity does not provide those who practise it with aclearly demarcated structure or with well-defined and reassuring lines tofollow. The content of the teaching and the course to follow cannot be des-cribed in detail in a rigorous and logical sequence, as the subjects taughtcan be. Interdisciplinarity thus implies a change in the role of teachers,requiring of them new and more widely applicable knowledge and the abilityto adapt their teaching to problems and circumstances and to apply methodsand strategies whose procedures are not always predefined, or models whichthey can use as a basis. Thus what is required of them is a spirit ofenterprise, an ability to solve problems, and an autonomy and availabilitywhich not all of them possess to the same degree. The absence of a preciseframe of reference or of a clearly established paradigm can discourage hesi-tant teachers and can be seen as a major difficulty for beginners in theprofession; and it provides a sound argument for opponents of the system.It is therefore essential to exploit the experience acquired in order toclarify terms of reference, suggest lines of procedure, and propose solu-tions or elements of solutions. Teachers must also be backed up by collec-tive action.
Another difficulty of interdisciplinarity which derives from its verynature is that it does not conform to established learning procedures, thatis to say the activities and the problems involved do not arise in an order in
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which the pupil, at the time he is faced with them, has necessarily maste-red if he has properly acquired what has gone before - the knowledge andknow-how necessary to solve such problems or engage in such activities. Thisis obviously due to the fact that interdisciplinarity does not lie in arigid structure proceeding from the known to the unknown. The fact of pre-senting the pupil with situations close to reality, in multiple aspects,increases the risk of placing him in a situation which he is not ready toface. Furthermore, in the integration of disciplines we come up against thefact that learning progressions do not follow the same logic in differentdisciplines; the forms of progression can often be reconciled, but this isnot always easy. It is up to the teacher, much more so than in intradisci-plinary teaching, properly to select the learning situations and activitiesdemanded by his pupils, to analyse all the knowledge and know-how necessaryfor the correct exercise of these activities, to teach them to pupils andto confine the treatment of the situation presented to those aspects whichare within the pupils' scope, in the light of what they have already beentaught. All this demands an adequate teaching ability on the part of tea-chers and an effective pedagogic back-up structure.
In interdisciplinary education, the path followed and the progressionare less evident than in the case of the logical development of a particu-lar discipline. Because of this, the position of teachers and pupils isless clear in respect of what is expected of them and in respect of the'programme' to be covered. As a consequence, both teachers and pupils mayhave the impression of making less progress or of advancing in a lessobvious manner. This feeling may lead to a certain slackening of effort orfrustration. The only remedy is a precise definition of the objectives tobe attained and an ongoing evaluation which provides a feedback for bothteachers and pupils.
Any form of teaching comes up against problems of depth and scope, butthese problems are doubtless more acute in an interdisciplinary curriculum.Because on the one hand the complexity of the problems tackled, combinedwith their reality and their significance, sometimes if not always makes itnecessary to deal with them superficially; and on the other hand, a situa-tion-centred approach carries the risk, if care is not taken, of not goingbeyond the particular circumstances of the situation which serves as thepoint of departure. For this reason it is useful to adopt transdisciplinaryapproaches (instrumental or behavioural) as the same time as a teachingapproach centred on multidisicplinary situations.
All these problems show that it is not easy to design and formulate acoherent and well-balanced interdisciplinary or integrated curriculum.Furthermore, the relevance of this curriculum is not always easy to ensure,because there is always a time-lag between the economic, social and culturaltransformations of the society concerned, the clear awareness of thesechanges, and the implementing of corresponding educational modifications.Hence permanent allowance must be made for adjustment of the curriculum, andcurriculum designers must be trained accordingly, for even they often expe-rience difficulties in regarding their own discipline in a perspective ofintegration.
Lastly, all those who have had practical experience of interdisciplina-ry education recognise that the evaluation of what is learned poses seriousproblems. It must be realized however that many of these problems are notspecific to interdisciplinarity; but they are more evident where interdisci-plinarity is concerned because certain intentions are more evident than in othertypes of education. For example, one of the difficulties arises from the fact that
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interdisciplinary education aims to achieve a harmonious integration of thepersonality, assigning equal importance to both the socio-affective and thecognitive aspects. But evaluation in the affective or socio-affective fieldis difficult, and raises unsolved problems. But these problems arise no dif-ferently than in any education which aims to achieve socio-affective objec-tives. And what education would confess to renouncing these objectives?Another difficulty of evaluation in an interdisciplinary teaching approachderives from the fact that some of the learning activities take place ingroups, but here again interdisciplinarity is not to blame, for group work-ing is a strategy adopted in many present-day teaching methods. The diffi-culty of evaluation that is specific to interdisciplinary education stemsfrom the fact that the pupil is placed in situations close to reality,often of a complex nature, to which a simple and standardized response isnot always expected of him. It is clear that it is necessary to adopt anevaluation and examination system adapted to the objectives and characteris-tics of an interdisciplinary education. We shall revert to this questionlater, and make some concrete proposals.
2. The deadweight of the existing system
Like any innovation, interdisciplinarity must overcome the scepticismof disillusioned teachers, the resistance of those who prefer the comfort ofthe status quo and of routine to the adventures of change, and the doubtsand fears of cautious teachers aware of their responsibilities.
To this intertia on the part of individuals is added the constraint ofslow-moving administrative structures and the obstacle of historical fac-tors.
These are normal difficulties which any innovation must overcome. Un-fortunately, where interdisciplinarity is concerned they have not yet beenovercome at the middle and higher levels of the educational systems of manycountries, including industrialised countries. The example of the latternaturally causes developing countries to hesitate, and what is more theystill sometimes remain influenced by the educational system if the formercolonial power.
On the whole, with a few rare exceptions, the structure of the univer-sity, its teaching and its system of evaluation have remained very compart-mented. Individual disciplines largely predominate, even in departments res-ponsible for the formulation of curricula and in teaching faculties. As aresult, higher education requires the mastery of separate disciplines ratherthan the capacity to solve problems of an interdisciplinary nature.Secondary education tends to align itself with this requirement and toneglect - at least at the upper secondary level - the interdisciplinarycomponent of a well-balanced education. Furthermore, university-trained tea-chers receive an education which is highly discipline-centred and compart-mented; subsequently they are not easily convinced of the expediency, ofinterdisciplinarity, they are not easily capable of a certain degree ofopen-mindedness or versatility and of adopting attitudes very different fromthose which they acquired when they were students.
Interdisciplinarity often calls for a new conception of the use ofschool space and time which is difficult to achieve in the traditionalorganisation of the school. Lessons do not always take place in the class-room, and sometimes the teacher requires non-traditional premises or loca-tions in which real-life activities take place (gardens, fields, workshops, construc-tion sites, etc.). A number of interdisciplinary activities also require frequentmovements of pupils from one place to another to gather information in the
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field. The division of time in the school, particularly at the secondarylevel, is rigid, and organised on the principle that subjects are learnedseparately in accordance with a strictly established timetable. In secondaryeducation, it is moreover often extremely difficult to establish flexibletimetables because there is a different teacher for each subject. Experiencehas shown that when a time-slot is shared between several subjects at thesecondary level, there is a strong tendency in practice to divide up thisperiod of time among the teachers concerned, and consequently to divide itin terms of subject matter.
The introduction of interdisciplinarity in education is accompanied bya change in aims and objectives. Examinations must obviously relate to themastery of the new objectives and the new content. However, it often hap-pens particularly when evaluation is external or based on external criteria- that examinations continue to relate to the former objectives or to thetraditional mastery of disciplines regarded exclusively as such and from astrictly compartmented angle. This situation occurs in particular in thecase of secondary or higher entrance examinations. This lack of coherenceobviously discourages pupils and their parents, who tend to match theirrequirements where subject matter is concerned to the requirements of exami-nations. An interdisciplinary reform must therefore be accompanied by areform of examinations at the completion of studies, and by a reform of thecontent of entrance examinations for the subsequent stage of education orcompetitive examinations for administrative posts.
3. Teachers
Like any innovation, interdisciplinarity encounters resistance on thepart of those who have to implement it. Teachers are sometimes accused ofnot being sufficiently willing to adapt to change, but this is perhapsbecause more is expected of teachers in this respect than of members ofother professions. In some countries, too, teachers have had their fill ofreforms. Education is the point of convergence of politics, philosophy,sociology, psychology, pedagogy and science. Each of these forces generatestrends or imposes fashions which disappear after a few years to give way toothers. Sometimes the replacement of an inspector suffices to relegate tooblivion what was sacrosanct a month earlier. To keep their balance amidthis instability, many teachers establish a personal frame of reference anda line of conduct which it is sometimes difficult for them to hold in ques-tion. It is therefore essential to help teachers to distinguish betweendeep-seated reforms generated by the evolution of the needs of the communityor the aspirations of individuals and by advances in the subject taught orin the educational sciences on the one hand; and superficial, incidental orbaseless changes brought about by the adoption of a priori standpoints, wildideas, unsubstantiated theories, or questionable convictions.
This is why there is often a greater motivation for interdisciplinarityoutside the world of education than among teachers, and it is also why manyteachers have a wrong idea of interdisciplinarity, sometimes tending toequate it with lack of direction, slackness, the relinquishment of the tea-ching of subject matter, amateurism, or the abandonment of a structuredknowledge and mastery of a given subject. It should be added that teachersdo not always clearly perceive the relation between the practice of theirprofession, the goals of education, and the socio-economic and culturalneeds of the community.
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On the other hand, teachers are always clearly aware that an importantaspect of their job is to teach a subject, and this role is so obvious thatit tends to overshadow others. Many teachers tend to teach a subject forits own sake and to preserve the distinct character of that subject. Someteachers more or less consciously feel that the mastery of a given subjectgives the person who acquires it a prestige and an authority over those whoare ignorant of it. The interdisciplinary approach does not make it so easyfor them to be regarded by their pupils and by the community as the custo-dians of a body of knowledge which enhances their moral status. On thecontrary, many teachers are ill at ease and feel incompetent when they haveto deal with an overall situation which does not solely depend on theirspeciality. Instead of relatively simple and clearly foreseen problems towhich they provide solutions prepared in advance, they find themselves facedwith complex problems which they have not been trained to solve, which mayhold surprises in store for them or leave them nonplussed in front of theclass whose pupils participate actively in seeking a solution which theythemselves do not know in advance. Teachers fear these situations, whichcarry the risk of a loss of self-confidence which they find it difficult tobear.
Lastly, interdisciplinary reform may encounter opposition from teachingstaff because the innovation and the change of role which it involves placea greater workload upon them. Not only must they adapt themselves, radicallychange their methods, and participate in co-ordination meetings, but a largepart of their accumulated work of preparation and a part of their previousexperience are no longer of any use. They have to rebuild what is has takenthem years to develop, and re-learn what they must teach and how to teachit at a time when they feel secure in their teaching ability and their mas-tery of their subject. As we have already pointed out in connection withthe costs of interdisciplinary reform, this is a transitory situation whichaffects serving staff for a few years and which may possibly have compensa-tions (such as slight reductions in working hours).
Many difficulties which have their origin in the abilities and atti-tudes of teachers may be solved through adequate training. The customarytraining of teachers does not prepare them for the conception or practiceof interdisciplinary education. Teachers have all received a general educa-tion which was not interdisciplinary, and they have received a professionaltraining in which subjects remained compartmented and the methods learnedwere centred on the teaching of individual subjects. They therefore have noexperience of anything beyond the teaching of individual subjects and notraining for interdisciplinary education. This confinement of teacher trai-ning to the teaching of individual subjects is particularly marked in thecase of secondary school teachers, who are often trained essentially in onesingle subject. It is therefore not surprising that the introduction ofinterdisciplinarity raises problems among teachers. In most cases, insuffi-cient attention has been paid to the problem of teacher training, whereasinterdisciplinarity requires of them a relatively high degree of versatili-ty, beyond that at present possessed by many teachers. It is thereforeessential to make provision for the in-service training of teachers and toreassess their pre-service training so that they are no longer confined toa given subject but acquire a mastery of a sufficient number of subjects tobe able to provide an education which interrelates, integrates and goesbeyond individual disciplines.
4. Teaching materials
In Many interdisciplinary reforms, there is a lack of teaching and learn-ing materials. It frequently happens that no adequate textbook for the pupils
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or guide for the teacher is available. When textbooks exist, it is by nomeans rare for them to be of mediocre quality or ill-adapted to the localcontext. Certain pluridisciplinary textbooks lack rigour and consequentlyare not highly regarded by teachers who specialize in individual subjects.When a guide for the teacher does exist, it is rarely sufficiently preciseand is not always based on its author's real experience. Teaching centredon life in the real world demands a sufficiency of up-to-date written mate-rial, and this is not always available, especially in developing countries -where the reproduction of material for pupils can also be a problem.
The teacher has no methodology of interdisciplinarity which could pro-vide him with a clear frame of reference and a specific guide for his tea-ching. At the present time, no such methodology exists, or rather no suchset of methods of proven efficacity which are integrable and lead to aneducation that is balanced from the point of view of its relevance to edu-cational goals5 the transferability of what is learned, and the motivatingpower and structuring of learning processes.
The absence of specific guides and of textbooks and other written mate-rial obliges teachers to create methods and materials themselves, whereasthey are generally ill-prepared for that task. The lack of resources isoften resented by teachers, who do not understand why the effort requiredof them is not accompanied by an equivalent financial effort on the part ofthe administrative in order to give the reform the instruments and resourceswhich it needs.
On the whole, the lack of materials is not the most important obstacleto the introduction of an interdisciplinary reform; it often results from apremature generalisation of the reform or from a lack of foresight orrigour in its application. On the other hand, the lack of financialresources necessary for the innovation, in particular for the training ofteachers, has compromised and retarded more than one attempt at reform.
5. The deadweight of the environment
Many voices, outside the educational system, have been raised in favourof interdisciplinarity; they come from those concerned with social work,research, and many professional sectors. However, the importance of inter-disciplinarity is not yet universally recognised and this approach is notaccepted by everyone. It does not have the support of families, becausewhere education is concerned many parents are very traditional. They fearthat their children will pay the price of an experiment that has no futuresand they prefer 'good old proven methods' to innovative ventures, especiallyif the innovation is not unanimously approved by the teaching profession.Many more educated - and hence more influential - parents are quite satis-fied with the education which they themselves received (they remember onlyits good points, or they are influenced by their present status) and theywant their children to receive the same type of education.
The opinion of parents influences politicians and decision-makers whodo not always precisely know what interdisciplinarity is and who themselvesare often parents who tend to reject a school which is very different fromthe one they have known, and to which they owe their knowledge and some-times their position.
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Lastly, the attractive aspects of the innovation may lead some of itssupporters to hold narrow, rigid or extreme views which can not only harmthe reform but also scare parents, discourage reasonable teachers and provi-de arguments for the opponents. The extreme standpoints, black-and-whiteviews or incautious pronouncements of the promoters of interdisciplinarityhave in some cases led to the belief that interdisciplinary reform involvesthe abandonment of the structured study of individual subjects and curricu-lum content, and relegates them to secondary roles. Obviously such is notthe case, but people who do not have an overall view of the problem mayallow themselves tube impressed by such a standpoint. In this respect,international seminars of experts convened by an organization whose authori-ty is unquestioned car. greatly help to give the man in the streets tea-chers, politicians and decision-makers a broader, more accurate and lessblack-and-white view of the true nature of an interdisciplinary reform.
5.5 What is the procedure to be followed?
We shall reply to this question by making a distinction, as we did inthe previous questions, between the aspects connected with the implementingof an interdisciplinary education and those which concern the launching of areform directed towards interdisciplinarity. We are thus led to divide thequestion into two parts:
1. How is an interdisciplinary education or an interdisciplinary cur-riculum to be designed and formulated?
2. How can the switch successfully be made from the traditional cur-riculum to the interdisciplinary form of education?
Obviously there is no universal recipe for the implementing of aninterdisciplinary education, nor is there any unique solution valid at alllevels, in all countries and in all circumstances. Everything depends oneducational policies, special situations and circumstances. The procedure tobe followed also depends on the form of interdisciplinarity on which theeducation is based and on the degree of integration which it is desired toachieve.
Nevertheless, experience acquired in the design and application of cur-ricula, in the introduction of innovations and in the practice of inter-disciplinary education makes it possible to elicit some broad principles andgeneral lines of action which can be recommended in very many cases.
A. The design and formulation of an interdisciplinary curriculum
1. The general approach
It is worth recalling here the most widely accepted logic of curriculumdesign which has Underlain most of the discussions at the various Unescoseminars on interdisciplinarity.
This logic can be summed up briefly as follows. Educational intentionsand goals must be determined by the social, economic and cultural needs ofthe community and by the needs and aspirations of individuals. These needs andaspirations are influenced by the values prevalent in the society in questionand by the values adopted in educational policies. From the goals, intentionsand aims of education are deduced the teaching objectives and contents which
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determine teaching strategies, teaching resources and evaluation content.The evaluation of the curriculum covers the objectives, strategies, teachingresources and the results obtained by pupils; this evaluation enables read-justments to be made so as to improve the results. The objectives andcontent, teaching strategies and resources, and the form of evaluationdetermine the objectives and content of teacher training.
This logic may be schematically represented as follows:
CURRICULUM FORMULATION LOGIC
* Choice of teaching methods and approaches, design (and applications of learningsituations, the manner in which these strategies are applied by teachers
** Textbooks, teachers' guides, roneotyped documents, audio-visual materials, banks of objectives, evaluation charts, tests, banks of items, instructional software, teaching equipment
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It is clear from experience acquired and from consideration of the con-ditions of relevance of the education in question that the procedure follo-wed must be based on a similar pattern if we wish to adhere faithfully tothe fundamental justifications and initial intentions of the education inquestion by ensuring coherence between all the phases and all the levels ofchoice, decision, action and evaluation. These conceptions are particularlyapplicable to an education which, as in the case of interdisciplinary educa-tion, aims to be better adjusted to the needs of the community and of theindividual and which is not principally determined by the content of diffe-rent juxtaposed disciplines.
To design an interdisciplinary education, we therefore have to proceedas follows:
(1) analyse the social, cultural and economic needs of the communitytogether with the needs and aspirations of the pupils or theirparents;
(2) accurately analyse the national educational policy so as to clarifythe educational intentions, goals and aims and select the valuesto be promoted, the priority needs to be met, and the aspirationsto be encouraged and served;
(3) set precise objectives and link these objectives with inter-disciplinary contents or situations falling within different dis-ciplines.
(4) select or develop teaching strategies; in particular, choose fromwithin and without the different juxtaposed or integrated dis-ciplines themes and situations which may be learned or experiencedaround central themes or in accordance with a logical or pedagogicprogression;
(5) design, produce and test textbooks, printed material, audio-visualaids, teachers' guides and requisite teaching equipment;
(6) develop techniques and forms of pupil evaluation and design, pro-duce and test charts and documents for the evaluation of pupils infunction of the educational objectives, intentions and goals;
(7) design and apply a curriculum evaluation system, in particular asystem of checking the relevance of the objectives to the inten-tions and the consistency of strategies, contents, teachingresources and pupil evaluation with the objectives;
(8) develop a form of feedback geared to the results achieved bypupils, the observation of lessons, and any useful information onteaching progress;
(9) design and apply a training curriculum for teachers, inspectors,school principals and those responsible for the training of tea-cher educators which coheres with the general educational inten-tions, objectives, contents, strategies and teaching resources ofinterdisciplinary education.
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2. Objectives
It is essential for the objectives of interdisciplinary education to bedetermined precisely and expressed clearly. This is all the more necessarythan in the case of interdisciplinary education, because in the latter theknowledge of subject matter subtends or implies the mastery of a certainnumber of pedagogic objectives which, even though they may not be explicit,are all the same suggested by the statement of the subjects to be learnedor the knowledge to be acquired. In this case, objectives are not complete-ly non-existent, but confusion and misunderstanding may arise as to thenature or the expected degree of mastery of the know-how involved. Ininterdisciplinarity, on the other hand, there is no strictly predeterminedsubject matter, no time-honoured experience, and no evidence derived fromcustomary practice. If the learning objectives are not explicitly laid down,one is faced with a void. Only the teacher knows more or less what he isgoing to do, and what he does is entirely based on improvisation and pro-fessional intuition. These approaches no doubt have their place in the tea-ching process, but an entire lesson - and much less an entire teaching-pro-cess - cannot be based on an inspiration which does not manifest itselfcontinuously or to the same degree among all teachers. Furthermore, theabsence of objectives makes evaluation very difficult and reduces its rele-vance.
So the powers of expression, know-how and life-skills expected ofpupils at the completion of interdisciplinary education must be expressedprecisely. This is a condition for interdisciplinary in education to be cre-dible and for its evaluation to be possible. Note that 'powers of expres-sion' refers to what the pupil knows and is capable of expressing; by'know-how' is meant all the intellectual and psycho-motor processes of whichhe is capable. Know-how covers cognitive operations such as identifying,applying, exploring, and handling information; solving problems; making achoice or a decision; and also fitting an electric socket, dismantling andreassembling a piece of machinery, etc. 'Life-skills' are expressed in termsof attitudes, reactions and affective behaviour in a given situation.
Among these three proposed objectives - powers of expression, know-howand life-skills - we must consider separately:
those which pupils must master individually and independently of thegroup in which they have been learned;
those which are expected of pupils within the group (interactions bet-ween individuals and the group);
those which are expected of the group, without distinction between theindividuals who compose it.
In the choice of objectives, it is important to be realistic; over-ambition at this stage often leads to a setback or to an unwanted elitistresult, to the detriment of those who have most need of teaching. It isextremely useful and relevant to establish a minimum threshold in the formof a set of objectives which must be attained by the great majority ofpupils. But is must not be forgotten that one of the aims of interdiscipli-narity in education is to favour transfer. Thus objectives should be chosenwhich cover this transfer and the application of what has been learned toreal-life situations, or at least to situations close to them.
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Objectives and content can be derived from an analysis of the culturalheritage, the contemporary culture, and the subject areas encountered inmodern life. This analysis, undertaken jointly with that of the needs ofthe community and the aspirations of individuals, must make it possible toidentify the factors, concepts, abilities and values common to differentsituations and different disciplines, or which interact in important situa-tions or problems. These factors, concepts, abilities and values whichpupils have to be taught constitute the object of interdisciplinary educa-tion; others which are specific to a given discipline, situation or problem,must not be neglected on that account; they may be important in themselvesor essential in dealing with broader problems. They are covered by intradis-ciplinary education.
We may thus develop the two matrices proposed in the guidelines forMember States which bring subject matter into relation with common elementsor concepts, and into relation with fundamental values. It is important tosubmit the concepts, abilities and situations selected to experts or specia-lists concerned for their opinion.
An educational objective describes an activity of the pupils which iscentred on an object or a situation, and involves an intellectual and/orpsycho-motor and/or socio-affective approach. This approach involves opera-tors (relationships, concepts, methods, values). An objective can beinterdisciplinary if one of these components is interdisciplinary. We thenhave interdisciplinary objectives at the level of:
the situation dealt with by the pupils;
the manner in which the pupils deal with this situation;
the operators (concepts, methods, etc.) necessary for the pupil to per-form this task.
Here we find again the different forms of interdisciplinarity referredto earlier.
When the situation specified by the objective is complex and involvesseveral disciplines or must be dealt with under different aspects which donot all come under a single discipline, the objective is pluridisciplinary(or multidisciplinary, depending on the degree of interaction of the diffe-rent disciplines concerned).
When the approach to the situation is applicable to different situa-tions or to different objects not belonging to a single discipline, theobjective is a behavioural transdisciplinary one; objectives which involveverbs such as choosing, deciding, predicting, analysing, synthesising,translating, evaluating, planning and organising are behavioural transdisci-plinary objectives.
If the approach which the pupil must adopt to deal with the situationinvolves the use of methods, concepts, procedures or strategies of a verygeneral nature which are applicable to numerous situations covered by dif-ferent disciplines, or which are extra-disciplinary, the objective is aninstrumental transdisciplinary one. For example, an objective such as 'in agiven situation, using a given source of information, pupils will discoverthe relationship between A and B' can mean that the pupils have to useeither the experimental method or a systems analysis approach. These methodsare transdisciplinary, and the objective is itself an instrumental transdis-ciplinary one.
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In the formulation of an interdisciplinary curriculum, it is generallywise to select and combine objectives belonging to these three categories.Lastly, in choosing objectives it must also be recognized that on the onehand different communities may have different priorities, and on the otherhand the same situations or the same themes may be dealt with at differentlevels of complexity in different classes.
3. Strategies
The essential condition of relevance of teaching strategies and lear-ning situations is their consistency with objectives; in other words, theteaching activities must help the pupil to make use of the powers ofexpression, know-how and life-skills specified in the objectives and expres-sing the intentions and hoped-for results of the educational process. Thisis, of course, obvious; but unfortunately, in practice, there is a tendencyfor this condition of relevance to be lost to view or for its importance tobe insufficiently recognised.
Almost everyone agrees that it would be dangerous to relinquish thestudy of individual subjects, or even to replace them at one fell swoop bynew subjects better matched to present-day realities. Such a rupture wouldvery likely lead to chaos and to a decline in the quality of education.
We must therefore achieve a harmonious balance between the study ofindividual subjects in customary educational structures, the more or lessthoroughgoing integration of disciplines, and the study of pluridisciplinarysubjects or new fields which are important and which receive insufficientconsideration in traditional education. The point of balance varies depen-ding on the level. It is generally believed that the degree of integrationof disciplines should diminish as one proceeds from the primary level tothe lower secondary and upper secondary levels. But parallel with this, thecomplexity of pluridisciplinary situations and the depth of their analysiscan be increased. In any case, it is important for the role of disciplinesto be clearly demarcated and for the ways in which they are integrated tobe clearly defined Many authorities believe that interdisciplinary problemsmust not be conceived or presented as subjects of study just as disciplinesthemselves are, and intended to replace the latter, but as important ques-tions where it is possible to apply methods or approaches common to severaldisciplines or which are specific but complementary and to combinethought-processes (rational empirical, analogical, social, etc.) to arriveat the best possible solution of the different aspects of one and the samecomplex problem.
This balance between the study of individual subjects and their in-tegration is established through decisions concerning the timetable and theorganization of teaching, and the content of lessons. At the very least,one may retain the former subjects as the framework of the school organisa-tion, but introducing harmonised contents (co-ordinated transdisciplinaryconcepts and methods, new ideas and new subjects relating to real life andto the needs and problems of the contemporary world, studied in co-ordina-tion) and reserving a part of the timetable for interdisciplinary activitiesengaged in outside the usual constraints (field studies, joint studies ofcomplex problems, syntheses of what has been learned in several disciplineson the occasion of pluridisciplinary situations, etc.).
The effects of this minimal reform do not become Apparent immediately,and co-ordination is easier to recommend than to adopt in practice. Itrequires just as much preparation as a more thoroughgoing reform, otherwise it
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remains an ambition rather than a reality. Decisions as to the organisationof teaching in an interdisciplinary perspective may go further en the direc-tion of a prudent or more radical integration depending on the educationallevel, context and policy. This integration may be centred solely on pluri-disciplinary themes (centres of interest, projects, complex problems, inter-disciplinary fields, etc.) or also on a merging of more or less neighbou-ring disciplines (the natural sciences, the human sciences, science in gene-ral, etc.). In both cases, the timetable must be organised in function ofthe degree of integration aimed at, and the content must be determined asfollows:
identify the interdisciplinary concepts, methods and themes in which the learning experience corresponds to the objectives assigned;
determine at what level (the age-level of pupils) these themes, methods and concepts can be tackled;
determine the place of these themes, methods and concepts in the logical sequence of teaching in function of their nature, what has been previously learned, and the depth and scope of study contemplated;
choose, in the different disciplines, the contents which can form the basis of the study of these themes, concepts and methods;
design a satisfactory teaching of these disciplines on these necessary bases, and the prerequisites of these bases;
organize and structure interdisciplinary learning situations aroundthese interdisciplinary themes, concepts and methods.
The methods most appropriate to interdisciplinarity are discovery,through the study of centres of interest or real-life problems, or theimplementing of projects; systems analysis; and, on another level, the co-ordination and integration of the teaching content.
Discovery is obviously the royal road to meaningful learning, but sincein the reality of the classroom it is rare for all or almost all of thepupils to discover effectively and perceive clearly what has to be ascertai-ned, it does not dispense with teaching the essentials by direct communica-tion. It must also be complemented by systematic exercises making use ofwhat has been learned or discovered.
Thus an interdisciplinary teaching-learning sequence comprises, likemost other teaching-learning sequences, the following phases:
Discovery: Exploration of the situation, theme or problem. Analysis, induction or resolution. Conclusions, solution or synthesis.
Clear and precise expression of the conclusions, solution or synthesis.
Exploitation: Exercises in the application to closely related situtions, themes or problemsExercises in the transfer of what has been learned to varied situations, themes or problems.
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A proper balance should be achieved between these different phases,each of which has an essential role: discovery creates motivation and aninvestigative attitude; it has a practical starting-point and depends on thepupil's induction and initiative. Clear and precise expression creates aclear awareness of what has been learned and leads to a better faculty ofdiscrimination and possibly a better structuring of what has been learned.Its exploitation is based on deduction, on the relevant generalisation andtransfer of what has been learned; it renders the knowledge acquired instru-mental and effective, leading the pupil from power of expression toknow-how. If there is not a proper balance between the different phases,one of these functions is neglected and what is learned risks beingone-sided or incomplete.
The share assigned to the implementing of projects in relation tocentres of interest or the study of transdisciplinary concepts andapproaches, or again integrated themes, varies depending on the level of thepupils and the objectives set. The project method currently seems to bemuch in favour in primary education; integrated science teaching is fairlywidespread at the lower secondary level, but it is unwise to make generalrecommendations in this field.
Interdisciplinary education must be carefully prepared, even more sothan traditional education, because the subjects taught vary from one yearto another and from one set of circumstances to another and the teachingcannot always be based on a textbook. It is frequently necessary to under-take research in the field, to gather documentation, to modify what hasbeen prepared the previous year in function of the course of events.
In the teachers' work schedule, allowance must be made for time spentin consultation. If the consultation is not formally organized, experiencehas shown that it does not take place. Meetings (once a week, for example)must therefore be made compulsory, chaired by a teacher who leads the otherteachers to reflect and work on co-ordinated subjects or practical jointprojects. The chairman of these meetings must be one of the teachersconcerned; he must change in the course of the year and the choice may, forexample, be determined by the discipline which plays a central role in thesubject dealt with (the discipline being the pivot of the project ortheme).
4. Teaching resources
It is essential for the teachers and their pupils to have a good text-book. It can be prepared by a team of teachers of different subjects,assisted by a competent textbook writer. It must present learning situationsand suggestions for relevant activities in the whole geographical area inwhich it is to be used. It must incorporate syntheses and exercises, andmust also be able to serve as a work of reference for pupils and even tea-chers.
The initial version of the textbook must be submitted to specialists inthe different subjects which it incorporates and reviewed in the light oftheir opinion. The corrected version must be tried out on pupils and testedin the classroom (for example in pilot schools). Following these trials, itcan be printed in a large number of copies.
So far as possible, the textbook must be accompanied by a teacher'sguide designed not only to help the teacher to make best use of the bookbut also to provide him with guidelines and suggestions enabling ham todesign activities
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similar to those presented in the book, but which he adapts to specificlocal condition. The teacher's guide should also specify, for each of theactivities concerned:
the time required;
the method to be adopted, if it is a special method;
the time to be devoted to applications, and the number of exercises tobe set;
suggestions for evaluation.
Along with the textbook and the teacher's guide, teachers may be provi-ded with 'banks' of objectives and 'banks' of items for the evaluation ofthe attainment of the objectives. Like the textbook, these items and objec-tives must be tried out in the field before being circulated. The banks inquestion will moreover remain open; that is to say they will be designed sothat they may easily incorporate material produced and used by teachers inthe course of their work.
One may envisage, as has been done in Chile, developing around a verybroad subjects sets of modules extending over several consecutive years.Each module can comprise a presentation of the subject, objectives, methodo-logical suggestions, tests of mastery of the prerequisites and the terminalobjectives, a series of interdisciplinary activities, a vocabulary, anddirect applications and exercises in transference to new situations.
The modules and textbooks may be designed on the following pattern (dueto Mr Veda Prakasha):
Year:
* Activities, tasks, projects, problems.
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Such a chart is very useful not only for the planner but also for theteacher. It enables the former to make a judicious choice, to determine apath to be followed and to ensure that all the objectives are covered bythe textbook. It provides the latter with a clear view of the contents asthey relate to work in the classroom and to the structure of the disci-plines concerned; it also helps the teacher to organize his progress and toevaluate his position at any time vis-a-vis the subject to be covered andthe objectives to be attained.
5. Pupil evaluation
The problem of evaluation in interdisciplinary education is no diffe-rent, in essence, from the problem of evaluation in intradisciplinary educa-tion. But is does not arise in the same manner, because the nature of theobjectives aimed at in interdisciplinary education is quite different, andvery often the attainment of these objectives cannot be checked by aconventional evaluation situation.
In the cognitive field, the evaluation of interdisciplinary educationpresents particularities which set it apart from the traditional frameworkand consequently create difficulties for teachers and/or evaluators. Theseparticularities are as follows;
(1) The objectives aimed at by interdisciplinary education are generallysituated at higher levels than in intradisciplinary education. Becausethe results expected of an interdisciplinary education are generally:
the ability to transfer what has been learned to new situations;
the ability to perceive situations in their entirety, in their diversity, and in their complexity;
the ability to handle such situations in a relevant manner.
(2) Interdisciplinary education takes place, at least in part, in thefield or in the community. Consequently its evaluation must alsotake place in the field and in the community.
(3) The general aim of interdisciplinary education is to make the pupilcapable of dealing with real problems; evaluation should thereforetake the form of facing the pupil with real problems in which heis effectively and really involved.
(4) The content of interdisciplinary education is often tied in withlocal conditions and varies from one region to another, even fromone locality to another.
The first of these particularities, the high level of the objectives,poses scarcely any problems of principle: it suffices to match the evaluationquestions and situations to the new objectives. In practice, however, thingsare not so simple, and teachers and/or evaluators have to make an effort ofimagination to think up situations in which the pupil can manifest his abilityto apply what he has learned in a new context and to perceive and cope withcomplex situations relevantly. Furthermore, those responsible for evaluatingdesign must adjust the difficulty of the questions very finely: the situationspresented must be sufficiently unfamiliar and sufficiently complex to revealthe expected abilities, but they must remain within reasonable limits, that is
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to say the majority of pupils who have received a good education must beable to succeed. This last condition is extremely vague and somewhat arbi-trary (what is a 'good education'?); it involves empirical tests. It istherefore necessary to think up a great number of questions and situations,put them to pupils, and modify them in the light of these tests in such away that they remain significant but are within the pupils' scope. In doingthis, a considerable risk is run: that of not measuring an ability initself, but of making use of it and modifying it so as to adjust the eva-luation in function of the average of a group. In doing this one risksswitching from a 'criterionbased evaluation' (a judgement of performance inrelation to a criterion) to a 'norm-based evaluation' (a judgement of apupil's performance in relation to that of a group). It is therefore essen-tial not to lose sight of the objectives and to check that the testsconform to them. If the objectives prove to be too ambitious, they must becorrected.
The second particularity makes it necessary to design ways and means ofevaluation that can be used in the field. Here too, teachers and/or evalua-tors must be creative. They must think up situations in the light of possi-bilities existing in the field and in the light of local resources; andconstruct charts for the observation of pupils's significant behaviour andcriteria of evaluating the yield or the result of the pupils' activity.These charts and lists of criteria must incorporate precise scales of mar-king. They must also be developed empirically.
The third particularity of evaluation in an interdisciplinary contextis the one which presents the greatest difficulty in principles It is prac-tically impossible to place the pupil in a real-life situation in which heis involved naturally, and not by the fact of the evaluation. Furthermore,the observation in itself, if it is perceived by the pupil, creates anartifice which means that the situation is not always a genuine real-lifesituation. At most, we may gather indications from the pupils' spontaneousbehaviour out of school.
Collaboration between parents and the school can help to provide usefulinformation. In practice, one is obliged to set tests in which the pupilsare placed in situations close to reality, or which simulate reality. Theinformation gathered will not be completely valid, but it will be considera-bly better than that obtained in most traditional examinations.
The final particularity of interdisciplinary education, the variabilityof the content from one place to another, means that absolutely identicaltests cannot be set throughout a given country; an instrument which isvalid in one place is sometimes unusable elsewhere. This does not mean thatteachers cannot take advantage of the work of their colleagues in otherregions, or of an evaluation team. Though they may not make use of an ins-trument as such, they can use it as a source of ideas to create their owninstrument which is valid in the place where they teach. It must not beforgotten that even in interdisciplinary education, all the objectives donot differ from one place to another and a number of them can be relevantthroughout an entire country and beyond its frontiers.
One of the difficulties often referred to in connection with evaluatingthe results of interdisciplinary education is that activities in this kindof education are often group activities.
If we wish to assess the extent to which the teaching has achieved theh o p e d-for results, we may simply place the same group in a similar situationor set it a problem of a similar nature and of comparable difficulty. We then
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observe how the group deals with the problem, and the merits of the solu-tions or results which it arrives at. Of course, this procedure evaluatesessentially the performance of the group and not that of the individualswhich comprise it. When we wish to evaluate a particular pupil and determi-ne the extent to which the teaching borne fruit for each pupil individual-ly, we must obviously place each pupil in a revelatory situation in whichhe must perform a task or produce a reply on his own, and observe the qua-lity of the result and possibly the way in which it is arrived at. It isalso useful to observe the interactions between pupils in a group whichmust tackle a problem or perform a task, and evaluate the participation ofeach of them in arriving at the result of the solution. In this way we eva-luate at three levels: the collective level, the individual level, and theinteractive level. Evaluation must obviously be performed at these threelevels, for the information obtained in each of these forms is different,and all of it is necessary. Everyone, in the course of his life, must some-times act on his own and sometimes in a group; this education must preparehim to master these two types of situations and consequently it must eva-luate pupils from these different angles.
Evaluation must cover the affective aspects as well as the cognitiveaspects of education. The problem is not specific to the interdisciplinaryapproach, and it is not a new one. It arises in connection with inter-disciplinarity because interdisciplinary education aims to be more integra-ted and to achieve a harmonious development of the personality.
Evaluation in the socio-affective field presents numerous difficulties,for the following reasons:
1. Socio-affective objectives are generally very vague and badly for-mulated; in many cases they are not formulated at all, even iftheir importance is recognised.
2. Imposing or even proposing objectives in the socio-affective fieldraises ethical problems, and it is often considered a priori thatit is difficult to reach agreement on many of these objectives.
3. In many cases, teachers have a very poor grasp of the socio-affective field.
4. The validity of socio-affective evaluations is relatively poor;their predictive value is very slight, they are far from beingstable over a period of time, and when special precautions are nottaken assessments may differ from one evaluator to another.
5. There is a lack of evaluation instruments in the educationalsocio-affective field, and the instruments which are available arenot familiar to teachers. Sometimes their use and interpretationare complex and demand abilities which cannot be expected of ateacher.
Hence it has become a truism to say that evaluation in the affectivefield is difficult and that the teacher does not have infallible means of per-forming it. However, if we wish to make progress, we must begin by using themeans available. A first step to be made in this direction is to state, doubt-less imperfectly but as clearly as possible, the socio-affective objectives.For example, one may say: 'in this or that situation or circumstances, thepupil will adopt this or that attitude', and specify the indicators or thebehaviour patterns of the pupil on the basis of which the evaluator can
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acquire the conviction (failing the proof) that the pupil indeed adopts thehoped-for attitudes) in function of which the pupil should behave, andaccompany the formulation of these values with a brief description of therevelatory indicators or behaviour patterns. The values should be listed inorder of importance, for example in three categories such as 'essential,important, desirable'.
There are three forms of socio-affective evaluation:
observation of the behaviour of the pupil (or of the group);
study of what the pupil (or the group) produces;
It is obvious that the choice between these three forms does not arisein terms of exclusivity, but of complementarity.
In order that the teacher's observation may be systematic and relative-ly valid, he must be provided with charts containing the values and atti-tudes to be promoted, and the revelatory indicators; these charts must besimple and easy to complete. For example, a + for the manifestation of adesired value or attitude, a - for the manifestation of the opposite valueor attitude, and a O for the absence of the hoped-for behaviour or forambiguous or doubtful behaviour. The number of observations is more impor-tant than an illusory precision. The observation must be made systematicallyduring work in the classroom and in the field, during sporting activities,games, group working and individual working. One may also think up situa-tions which reveal certain attitudes. A socio-affective evaluation requiresobservation in many and varied situations, for one situation or type ofsituation cannot reveal more than a limited number of attitudes; forexample, observation of a pupil in the course of a fairly lengthy indivi-dual task may reveal his perseverance, his attentiveness, etc., but obvious-ly reveals little or nothing of his social behaviour. To assess teachingresults, it is necessary to evaluate the evolution of the pupils' attitudesand behaviour in the course of their studies. This evolution is generallyslow, and real differences are partly dissimulated by variability of beha-viour depending on circumstances.
The study of the pupil's (or the group's) production can reveal certainattitudes or the degree of integration of certain values connected with thework, such as pride in a job well done, attentiveness, accuracy, conformityto norms, and sometimes the sense of responsibility or even of honesty.
Tests make it possible to assess personality traits, attitudes, and thedegree of integration of values. Of the two principal kinds of socio-a f f e c t i-ve tests - projective tests and questionnaires - only the latter do notrequire a knowledge and experience of clinical psychology beyond the abilityof teachers. Questionnaires often require from those who reply to them a sin-cerity and a certain self-knowledge which obviously limits their validity.However, research has shown that the validity of many questionnaires is com-parable, and sometimes superior, to that of projective tests, which seem tobe less influenced by sincerity. Methods exist of correcting the subjects'tendency to give answers which they believe are expected of them, but the useof these methods is complicated for the teacher. However, guidance centres,when they exist, can participate actively in the evaluation of pupil's socio-affective progress There also exist questionnaires which ask the subject howhe would react to a given situation presented to him in such a way that none
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of the proposed replies from among which the subject must choose appearsmore socially desirable than others. Lastly, in certain tests the pupil isplaced in a specific practically and affectively conflictual situation. Hemust suggest a way out of it, or form a judgement which he must justify,thereby revealing the values which guide him and their order of importance.An example of this type of test is the 'DIT' (Defining Issues Test) develo-ped by J.R. Dest at the University of Minnesota and used in nearly 60scientific studies in which it has proved able to reveal changes in moraldevelopment due to educational action.
Tests are not immune to criticism, but they are useful to provide apicture - imperfect, but doubtless real - of the pupil's socio-affectiveprofile at a given moment. They can render great service in evaluatingchanges of attitudes and consequently in assessing the efficacity of a tea-ching process.
To conclude and sum up, here are five lines of action which can makeevaluation in general, and particularly evaluation in interdisciplinary edu-cation, clearer, easier and more effective:
(1) Express objectives clearly, in terms of activities, approaches, andh o p e d-for attitudes on the part of pupils in specific situations.
(2) Make a distinction between evaluation of:
the group; pupils in their relationships with the group; pupils independently of the group.
These distinctions are parallel to those recommended in the formu-lation of objectives.
(3) Base evaluation on:
careful examination of the product of the pupil's (or the group's)activity in the light of explicit criteria and in accordance witha precise scale;
observation of his behaviour in different situations, and compari-son of it with specifically expected behaviour;
the use of tests and questionnaires, but only insofar as the acti-vities which they require correspond to teaching goals and objec-tives, or when the replies called for in these tests revealvalues, attitudes, or the mastery of knowledge and know-how laiddown in the objectives.
(4) Constitute a bank of evaluation situations and items in which eachitem comprises:
the description of the situation in which the pupil is placed, andwhat he is provided with (objects, data, instruments, documents,etc.);
the specification and description (if it is observable) of the waythe pupil perceives and the criteria of quality of this approach,the limits of tolerates, and a precise scale of marking;
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the specification of desirable attitudes and/or values underlyingthese attitudes, together with behaviour which reveals these atti-tudes and the integration of the values concerned;
a reference to the corresponding objective or objectives;
indications as to the difficulty of the item and where applicableits discriminatory property.
These item banks can be initiated by an ad hoc team and subse-quently added to by the work of teachers in the field. Each itemmust be tried out on pupils before being made available to tea-chers.
(5) On the basis of the above item banks, the construction of chartsfor the evaluation of the know-how and behaviour patterns ofpupils and of the group. These charts can, for example, be of thefollowing form:
Evaluation chart of pupils' (or groups') products
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Evaluation chart of pupils' (or groups')behaviour or approaches
* Mark or assessment on a 5-level scale (A,B,C,D,E, or ++, +, 0, -, --) ora 3-level scale (+ present or satisfactory, 0 doubtful or just adequate, - absent or inadequate)
** Numbers or letters identifying pupils
Chart of continuous socio-affective observation (one per pupil)
One may also use a chart in which the subjects under observation aregrouped by objectives.
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* Mark or assessment on a 5-level scale (A,B,C,D,E, or ++, +, 0, --) or
a 3-level scale (+ present or satisfactory, 0 doubtful or just adequate,
- inadequate or absent)
** Assessment on a 3-level scale: + presence of behaviour revealing the value
shown in previous column; 0 absence of this behaviour: - presence of opposite
behaviour or incompatible behaviour (revealing the opposite value)
*** Numbers or letters identifying pupils
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If resources are available, it is useful to set up an evaluation teamcomprising at least one pedagogic evaluation specialist, a psychologist com-petent in socio-affective evaluation, a specialist in experimental educa-tion, teachers, and one or more inspectors. This evaluation team can performthe following tasks:
(1) establish instruments for evaluating the performance and attitudesof pupils such as item hanks, tests, observable situations, obser-vation charts, etc.;
(2) help teachers to formulate objectives operationally, to observepupils, and to evaluate their knowledge, know-how and life-skills;
(3) gather information on teachers' needs, the successes, difficul-ties, gaps and solutions adopted in the implementing of the inter-disciplinary reform;
(4) evaluate written material and other materials and make suggestionsfor their improvement;
(5) design and possibly test and apply a plan of evaluation of theresults obtained in interdisciplinary education in the light ofthe hoped-for results.
B. Setting up an interdisciplinary reform
1. Convincing decision-makers and the community
To set up an educational reform, it-is first necessary to convince thedecision-makers that the reform is necessary and that its benefits - in thewidest sense - for pupils and for the community, justify the cost and therisks of the undertaking. The arguments in favour of interdisciplinarity andthe question of cost has been dealt with previously; we shall not revert tothem, but we shall concern ourselves rather with measures to be taken tocreate conditions favourable for the reform to be decided upon.
The need for a reform is generally felt initially by the educationauthorities, educational specialists and certain teachers. This need, eventhough it is very real, is not often felt by the majority of the peopleconcerned. In the first instance it is up to the authorities and to thespecialists and teachers preoccupied by this need to examine its reality,and if need be to study the timeliness of a reform in order to help everyo-ne concerned to realize the need and to request it. The first importantstep in the strategy of a reform is therefore often the organisation of aseminar bringing together the persons concerned by the problem who havemanifested their interest and shown evidence of their competence in the sub-ject in question, in this case interdisciplinarity. The purpose of thisseminar is to bring out the advantages and drawbacks of interdisciplinarity,the need for an interdisciplinary reform, the advisability of undertakingit, and means and strategies of implementing it. Such a seminar can be heldat the international level, like the Unesco seminar in Paris, or at theregional level, like the seminars held in Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica. These international or regional seminars can lead to nationalseminars attended by the education authorities who, in conjunction withexperts, study the advisability and feasibility of an interdisciplinaryreform in the country concerned.
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Parallel with national seminars, or as a preparation for them, meetingsmust be held with teachers' associations and/or trade unions and withparents' associations. These meetings are intended not only to inform thepeople concerned, to make them see the need for a reform and convince themof the advisability of interdisciplinarity, but also to gather all necessaryor useful information for the preparatory phase of the reform. It is alsonecessary to arouse the interest of parents and the whole educational commu-nity by bringing them into the picture at an early stage and by providing aflow of information creating favourable conditions for a policy decision.
At the same time as conditions favourable to a policy decision arecreated, the concept of interdisciplinarity must be clarified for the deci-sion-makers and those responsible for educational policies. On the basis ofthe-information gathered, a substantial file must be prepared, including allthe elements which will enable the decision-makers to judge of the rele-vance, timeliness and feasibility of the reform. The contents of this filemay also serve as a basis for requests for external financing, in particu-lar from international organisations. This file may also advantageouslyinclude elements gathered in the preliminary analysis of the reform (firststage: see below) and a programme or plan of the operations envisaged.
2. Overall strategy
An education system is a whole involving multiple interactions, and onecannot introduce a reform into one of its parts as though the others didnot exist. It is therefore necessary to establish a reform strategy whichmakes allowance for:
the interactions of the curriculum contemplated with the different groupsof persons involved;
the interactions of the subsystem into which the curriculum is introducedwith the other subsystems.
More practically, the reform must be conducted in harmony with thegroups of people represented in the following diagram:
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We shall revert below to the prime necessity of acting in harmony withthe persons concerned.
The interactions between the subsystems involved may be depicted asfollows:
The continuous arrows show the most important direction of interactionto be considered by the planners of the reform.
This diagram clearly reveals that the conception of a new curriculummust be preceded by three types of analyses:
an analysis of the knowledge, know-how and life-skills previouslyapplied by pupils in primary and secondary education and which they stillpossess or which can easily be reactivated at the time when they enter thelevel at which the reform is introduced;
analysis of requirements on entering the higher level and negotiationwith that level to arrive at a compromise between the initial intentions ofthe reform and the constraints of higher education;
an analysis of the positive and negative contributions of non-formaleducation, in particular the family background, the media, and youngpeoples' groups.
The diagram further shows that special attention must be paid to thetraining of teachers, because the innovation involves changes in theirp r e-service and in-service training; if these changes are neglected or If they
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are inadequate, there is a strong risk of the reform failing. The chainmust even extend back to the training of teacher educators, for they are atthe top of the pyramid and under normal logical circumstances it is theywho determine the conceptual frameworks and abilities acquired by teacherswhich the latter pass on, in part, to their pupils. We shall revert laterto the question of teacher training.
The reform must be properly designed and planned before being put intoeffect; this is obvious, but it is not always the case in practise, and theimplications are not always clear. A proper preliminary design of the reformmeans that when it comes to be tried out in pilot classrooms there isalready a clear conceptual framework, a provisional syllabus, and a methodo-logy; the principal pedagogic objectives have been defined, and provisionalinstruments of evaluation are available. It is also necessary, at the out-set, to draw up a list of the resources that are needed and those that areavailable. Prior studies are too often neglected, because they are notalways seen to be essential; it is thought that once the broad lines of thereform have been defined, it can be designed as it goes along and that theresources for its implementation can be planned and produced at the sametime as the reform is put into effect. The experience of the participantsin the Paris Symposium shows that where interdisciplinarity is concerned,clarification is necessary at the outset and that the time and resourcesdevoted to a preliminary phase of conceptualization, research and planningare much less than the time and resources wasted in major changes of direc-tion or in the failure of the reform.
It is generally agreed that a reform must be implemented progressivelyfollowing small-scale trials and readjustments in the light of such trials.In what follows an example is given of an approach to the introduction of areform comprising six main stages and which results from the comparison andsynthesis of different experiences of reform.* Each of the stages must beimplemented by curriculum specialists, inspectors and teachers working toge-ther in collaboration with inspectors and teachers in the field.
(1) Preliminary analysis: clarification of the needs of the community and of individuals which the curriculum must meet, clarification of the goals and aims of the education in question, determination of what pupils have already learned, the requirements of the higher level of education, and the positive and negative contributions of education through the environment. Initial estimate of the resources needed.
(2) Curriculum design: definition of objectives, choice and clarification of strategies, definition of resources, establishment of a provisional syllabus, and establishment of methods of evaluation (the start of an item bank). Fresh estimate of resources needed.
(3) Initial trial in the field: a trial in a few pilot schools; improvementobjectives, strategies and resources. The whole can be integrated in a series of provisional modules.
(4) Second trial in the field: experimental use of resources or provisionalmodules in a larger number of experimental schools. Initial attempt to compare the attainment of common objectives recognized as important in the experimental schools and in non-experimental schools. Improvement of resources and strategies in the light of the difficulties or shortcomings observed.
* Their successful aspects as well as their shortcomings.
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(5) General application: application of the reform in a large number of schools and development of an evaluation plan.
(6) Final evaluation of the implementing of the reform in the course of theyear and evaluation of the knowledge, know-how and life-skills acquiredby the pupils at the end of the year.
The implementing of the reform must be accompanied, from the outset, bycareful observation of what happens so as to reveal the strong points andthe weak points, enumerate the difficulties encountered and how they havebeen overcome, perfect methods and procedures, improve written and othermaterial, and review objectives. This continuous formative evaluation of thereform is made by a team comprising specialists or research workers, inspec-tors and teachers.
This curriculum evaluation team may employ the following methods:
(1) the testing of knowledge, know-how and life-skills;
(2) observation of pupils and teachers in classrooms and in the field;
(3) questionnaires submitted to pupils, teachers, inspectors, school principals and parents.
(4) interviews with teachers, inspectors, school principals, parentsand educational administrators;
(5) examination of the work performed by pupils, teaching documents,evaluation documents and teaching materials.
The evaluation team should also be responsible for helping to dissemi-nate among teachers useful information gathered in the course of its obser-vations.
The implementing of the interdisciplinary reform and, to a lesserextent, its design, vary depending on whether the system into which it isto be introduced is centralized or decentralised.
In both cases, one simple and practical reform strategy is to centrethe effort around the production of a good textbook accompanied by a tea-chers's guide. This textbook and guide must be prepared and produced inaccordance with all the stages recommended above, but these stages canappear more practical or more evident, and perhaps easier to accept, whenthe reform is organized around the production of the textbook. This obvious-ly does not mean that an interdisciplinary reform can be reduced to themere production of a good textbook; but the latter can constitute a pivotaround which turn the preliminary analysis, the definition of objectives,the conception of teaching strategies and methods of evaluation, trials andreadjustments, general application of the reform, and the evaluation andtraining of teachers. In place of, or in conjunction with, the textbook,teaching-learning modules can be established; they may be simple or verycomplex, depending on the time and resources available.
3. Convincing and helping teachers
It must never be forgotten that an educational reform is put intoeffect by teachers under the supervision and with the help of inspectorsand school principals. If all the teaching personnel are not won over,involved and brought into the picture, the reform aborts.
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Experience acquired in many previous educational reforms has shown thatan innovation has little chance of being accepted or imposed if it is desi-gned by a group of experts and leads to a ready-made curriculum which tea-chers are obliged to apply without having participated in its design. Norwill a reform designed exclusively by teachers lead to an acceptable curri-culum, because as a rule teachers are not proficient in all the aspects ofcurriculum design and the introduction of an innovation; their positionoften prevents them from seeing things in a sufficiently broad perspective.From the outset of the reform, curriculum experts, inspectors and teachersmust therefore work together in working out the plan and the strategy ofimplementation of interdisciplinary education.
To convince teachers of the relevance and timeliness of an inter-disciplinary reform, the aims of general education in present-day societymust be made clear to them, and they must be helped to perceive the rela-tionships between their work, educational goals, the aspirations of indivi-duals, and the socio-economic and cultural needs of the community.Interdisciplinarity must be presented as a means of attaining an objectiveand not as an end in itself. It should be shown that interdisciplinarity isnot a passing fashion, but a thoroughgoing adaptation of the school to theworld and life in general. It must further be made clear that the intentionis not to abandon traditional disciplines but to bring them into closeassociation and use them together and in co-ordination in order to providea more relevant and effective education. Every teacher must be persuaded tosee his discipline as a source of knowledge and of operators which cancontribute, in conjunction with other disciplines, to the solution of pro-blems, and not as an object of study in itself or as a superior form ofthought.
In introducing interdisciplinary education at the secondary level, tea-chers must also be persuaded to work in co-ordination and to co-operate inthe preparation of joint lessons. It is therefore appropriate to establishwhen, how often and how teachers will have to work together; to specify thetasks they will have to perform together, and the practical results expectedof their work in common.
To implement an interdisciplinary reform, it is essential to secure andsustain the interest and efforts of the people involved. All the protago-nists must be given all necessary or useful information for its implementa-tion. Their motivation must be revived from time to time; they must neverfeel themselves isolated, but on the contrary must feel that they are par-ticipating in a joint effort in which their work is backed up by that ofthe others and in which everyone benefits from the experience of everyoneelse. A simple way of meeting these conditions fairly easily is to publisha periodical or a regular liaison bulletin containing news and articlescontributed mainly by teachers.
A media campaign can be useful to inform the community, arouse itsinterest, ensure it support of teachers, and help to motivate them.
Lastly, to provide the teacher with the professional and psyhologicalback-up which he needs, recourse can be had to the following measures:
give him an instrumental training (that is to say one which provides himwith directly useful know-how and skills);
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propose a wide range of relevant objectives, clearly expressed in termsof pupils' activities or the results expected of such activities (bankof objectives);
suggest situations of which advantage may be taken, concepts to teach,questions to put to pupils, and teaching strategies;
give him access to a range of evaluation items or situationscorresponding to the objectives (item bank);
provide him with good teaching resources (in particular a good textbookand methodological guide);
inform him of the solutions found by his colleagues to the difficultiesencountered;
provide him with examples;
provide him with the opportunity of meeting his colleagues;
have colleagues visit his classroom;
have him visit other classrooms;
integrate his school in a group of schools, possibly headed by a pilotschool;
provide him with information on the reform and its progress;
enable him to benefit from the work of others and to allow others tobenefit from his own work;
inform him of successful interdisciplinary experiments, and in particulartheir results and the ways and means by which they were implemented.
4. Training educational personnel
Unless they have received an adequate training and possess the necessa-ry skills, teachers will feel insecure and many of them will lack incenti-ve. Experience shows that in these circumstances they apply the reform onlyif they are forced to do so, and sidetrack it in order to bring it intoline with their abilities and their way of teasing. The teacher's superiorsor those who design teaching methods must also have experience of interdis-ciplinary teaching and must themselves be capable of giving a lesson froman interdisciplinary angle.
It is therefore essential to train teachers in interdisciplinarity andin interdisciplinary teaching.
This training must cover:
working teachers; student teachers; inspectors; school principals; those responsible for training teacher educators; curriculum designers.
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The training must aim at socio-affective and cognitive objectives. Itmust convince teachers of the relevance and the educational and social uti-lity of interdisciplinarity. It must also teach them to reason in aninterdisciplinary manner, and provide them with the necessary skills andabilities to plan and implement interdisciplinary teaching.
The pre-service and in-service training of teachers should enable themto relate their practice of the profession to the realities of life, theaspirations of individuals, and the social, economic and cultural needs ofthe community. It must help them to have confidence in themselves, broadentheir outlook so that they do not see things only from the point of view oftheir own subjects, and familiarize them with the perception of problems intheir entirety and the multidisciplinary solution of real-life problems.Teachers should also learn to design, prepare and if need be practise tea-ching as a team. Furthermore, they should be made more proficient in tea-ching, observation and evaluation in the socio-affective field.
The pre-service training of teachers should itself be interdisciplina-ry, providing them with a sound grasp of the relevant aspects of severaldifferent disciplines which they will have to bring into their teaching.
It should be noted that the problem of the training of secondary-schoolteachers in an interdisciplinary project arises differently from one countryto another. In some countries secondary-school teachers, particularly at thelower secondary level, are trained to teach more or less related subjectssuch as chemistry, biology and physics or history, geography and sociology.In other countries the emphasis is more on a single subject or on two veryclosely related subject (e.g. physics and chemistry). It goes without sayingthat in the latter case the interdisciplinary project calls for a more tho-roughgoing reform of pre-service training and a much greater effort in thetraining of teachers in service.
The in-service training of teachers can take such forms as:
seminars in which, in particular, teachers inform their colleagues oftheir experience;
visits to pilot schools and observation of interdisciplinary lessons;
participation in working groups compising at least one person who isalready trained and experienced and which produce written material forpupils or teachers;
preparation of interdisciplinary lessons in a group comprising at leastone teacher with experience in interdisciplinarity.
Interdisciplinary know-how and skills may be disseminated in the follo-wing manner :
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A reform rarely places sufficient importance on the training of edu-cational personnel. This is a serious mistake, because the success of thereform is always closely linked with the quality of teacher training. Thisis particularly true of reforms involving profound changes in the conceptionof education and in teaching practice. This is precisely the case whereinterdisciplinary reform is concerned, and the difficulties which it raisesshow the need for a proper training of the people responsible for puttingit into practice. The cost of training, which is the principal item ofexpenditure in an interdisciplinary reform, may be a temptation to reduce itor tamper with it. This is bad policy, because it means losing the benefitof the efforts put into the reform and condemning them to failure.Furthermore, the failure of an innovation, especially a major one, producesby reaction an immobility which can be highly prejudicial to the relevanceand efficacity of education.
The introduction of interdisciplinarity in general education is a com-plex and difficult reform because it is a fundamental innovation touchingupon the relevance of education and brings it into line with the complexrealities of the real world. But for these very reasons it is an indispen-sable reform and one which is worth the effort it requires.
5. Twelve keys to the success of an interdisciplinary reform
(1) Carry out preliminary analysis to specify the conceptual framework of the reform and ensure its relevance to needs and its coherence with the rest of the educational process.
(2) Organize seminars for educational policy-makers and those responsible for school curricula.
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(3) Prepare a file for the intention of decision-makers so as to clarify the concept, reveal the cultural value, socio-economic relevance and timeliness of the reform, and present a plan of its implementation.
(4) Make realistic estimates of the resources needed.
(5) Determine explicit, clear and precise cognitive, socio-affective and psycho-motor objectives consistent with the educational intentions (thevalues, needs and aspirations of individuals and of the community).
(6) Prepare, submit to specialists and test a good textbook, accompanied bya teacher's guide.
(7) Win over and secure the participation of teachers, inspectors and school principals from the outset of the reform.
(8) Circulate a liaison bulletin designed to provide teachers with a psychological and professional back-up, exchange information and experiences, take stock of the progress of the reform, and give teachers the feeling of participating in a general effort.
(9) Gradually build up an item bank and a bank of evaluation situations corresponding to objectives.
(10) Make at least two trial applications of the reform in experimental schools, carefully observe how the new teaching works and the results it achieves, and adjust the objectives, strategies and resources accordingly.
(11) Properly train working teachers in interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary teaching.
(12) Adapt the; pre-service training of teachers to interdisciplinary education.
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
Arfah A. AzizDeputy DirectorSEAMES920 Sukhumvit RoadBANGKOK 10110Thailand
Dr S.T. BajahActing DirectorInstitute of EducationUniversity of IbadanIBADANNigeria
Francine BestDirecteurInstitut National de Recherche Pédagogique29 rue d'Ulm75230 PARIS CEDEX 05France
Dr J.C. van BruggenDirector, CurriculumStichting voor de LeerplanontwikkelingPostbus 20417500 CA ENSCHEDENetherlands
Byong Sun KwakDirectorCurriculum Research and Development DepartmentKorean Educational Development Institute20-1 Umyeon-DongGangnam-GuSEOULKorea
Professeur L. d'HainautUniversité de l'Etat à MonsFaculté des Sciences Psycho-PédagogiquesPlace du Parc, 217000 MONSBelgium
Michel GomezDirecteur-généralMinistère des enseignements maternel et de baseBP no. 10PORTO NOVORépublique populaire du Bénin
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Rudoph V. GoodridgePro-Vice-Chancellor and DirectorUniversity of the West IndiesOffice of University ServicesCave Hill, P.O. Box 64BRIDGETOWNBarbados
Phillip HughesProfessor of EducationHead, Department of Teacher EducationThe University of TasmaniaCentre for EducationBox 252C GPO HOBARTTasmaniaAustralia
Dr Klaus JaritzC/o Commission of the German Democratic Republic for UnescoMinistry of Foreign Affairs of the GDRMarx Engels PlatzPSF 101102 BERLINGerman Democratic Republic
Professor G. MarxDept of Atomic PhysicsEotvos UniversityPushkin u, 5-7H-1088 BUDAPESTHungary
Carlos Paladines EscuderoCentro de Estudios LatinoamericanosApartado 2184QUITOEcuador
Veda Prakasha14 Vasant EnclavePalam MargNEW DELHI 10017India
Mahinda RanaweeraUnesco Institute for Education (UIE)Feldbrunnenstrasse, 58,D-HAMBURG 13Federal Republic of Germany
Professor R. SemeraroDirecteur, Sezione 'Pedagogia, didattica, scuola e territorio'Départment des Sciences de l'EducationUniversité de PadouePiazza Capitaniato, 335100 PADOVA,Italy
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Marta Sota Directrice Centro de Perfecctionamiento, Experimentacion e Investigaciones PedagogicasMinisterio de Educacion Casilla 16162, Correo 9 Providencia Santiago de Chile Chile
Professor G. VaideanuUniversité de Jassya.b.s. Directeur, CEPES39 rue Stirbei VodaBUCHARESTRomania
Dr D. VenkatasamyDirectorCurriculum Development Centre.(ex-MCE Campus),Beau-BassinMauritius
Observers
Confédération mondiale des organisations de la profession enseignante (World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession) 5 avenue du Moulin 1110 MORGES Switzerland
Marc-Alain Berberat
Conseil international pour l'éducation physique et la science du sport(International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education) Maison de l'Unesco 1 rue Miollis 75015 PARIS
Liliane Meunier
Conseil international des sciences sociales (International Social Sciences Council) Maison de l'Unesco 1 rue Miollis 75015 PARIS
E. Blamont
Fédération internationale syndicale de l'enseignement (World Federation of Teachers' Unions) 21 Wilhelm Wolffstrasse 111 BERLIN République démocratique allemande
Louis Weber
Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique 29 rue d'Ulm 75230 PARIS CEDEX 05 France
François Audigier
Unesco
Mr BomaBREDABP 3311DakarSénégal
Mr LatifROEAPGPO Box 1427Bangkok 11Thailand
Mr E. El-Wardini,UNEDBASUnescoParisFrance
Marta Moyano Conseiller Technique Principal (Chief Technical Adviser) Projet PER/83/P07 a.b.s. PNUD Apartado 4480 LimaPeru
Headquarters
Division of Educational Policy and Planning L. Atherley
Division of Equality of Educational Opportunity and Special Programmes M. Berchiche L. Saleh
Division of Primary Education, Literacy, Adult Education and Education inRural Areas A. Hamadache
Division of Science, Technical and Environmental Education A. Albala Bertrand F. Vohra
Division of Higher Education and Training of Educational Personnel D. Borges
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Division of Educational Sciences, Contents and Methods of EducationH. DieuzeideM. AlmadaE. BrunswicB. BiyongE. Cattarini-LegerA.B. ShankangaP. ChiangG. Britland
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LIST OF DOCUMENTS AND CASE STUDIES
Working documents
ED/CONF-805/1 Agenda
ED/CONF-805/2 Annotated agenda
ED/CONF-805/3 Presentation of some basic concepts George Vaideanu
ED/CONF-805/4 Bibliography
Information documents
ED/CONF-805/INF.1 Terms of reference
ED/CONF-805/INF.2 Timetable of proceedings
ED/CONF-805/INF.3 List of participants
ED/CONF-805/INF.4 List of documents
List of case-studies and reference documents
ED/CONF-805/REF. 1 Interdisciplinarity in General Education: An Australian Case Study (Phillip Hughes, University ofTasmania)
ED/CONF-805/REF.2 Interdisciplinarity in General Education in Egypt (Youssef Khalil Youssef, National Centre for Education Research)
ED/CONF-805/REF.3 Interdisciplinarity in General Education in Ecuador (Carlos Paladines Escudero, Centro de Estudios latinoamericanos, Quito)
ED/CONF-805/REF.4 E t u d e-bilan sur les activités d'éveil dans le système éducatif français (Francine Best, INRP, Paris)
ED/CONF-805/REF.5 Experience in revising Curricula with regard to the Comprehensive Integration and Improved Balance of Cognitive, Affective and Sensomotoric Aspects of Educational Contents in the German DemocraticRepublic (Helmut Weck, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences)
ED/CONF-805/REF.6 Gandhi's approach to interdisciplinary teaching and learning: some lessons of experience (Veda Prakasha, Unesco consultant)
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ED/CONF-805/REF.7 Etude d 'un cas illustrant l'application de l'approcheinterdisciplinaire dans l’enseignement secondaire enItalie (Raffaella Semeraro, Université de Padoue)
ED/CONF-805/REF.8 A case study of curriculum integration in Korean Primary Education (Byong-sun Kwak, KEDI)
ED/CONF-805/REF.9 Case study on projects for interdisciplinarity in General Education: Mauritius (Dr Venkatasamy, Mauritius Institute of Education)
ED/CONF-805/REF.10 Interdisciplinarity in General Education - Nigeria (S.T. Bajah, University of Ibadan)
ED/CONF-805/REF.11 Les dimensions d'une recherche sur la promotion de l'interdisciplinarité dans l’enseignement pré-universitaire (G. Vaideanu, Université de Jassy,Roumanie)
ED/CONF-805/REF.12 Intégration de la problématique du monde contemporain dans les programmes d'enseignement général selon une perspective interdisciplinaire globale (André Drubay, C M O P E )
ED/CONF-805/REF.13 C a s e-study prepared by the Etude de cas préparée par leCMOPE (in French)
ED/CONF-805/REF.14 Interdisciplinarity in General Education with special regard to aesthetic education: Report and working document INTART Symposium, Hungary (prepared by the National Centre for Educational Technology)
ED/CONF-805/REF.15 L'interdisciplinarité et l'intégration/ interdisciplinarity and integration L. d'Hainaut
ED/CONF-805/REF.16 Méthodologie d'une éducation esthétique pluridisciplinaire: pluridisciplinarité et identité culturelle/The Multidisciplinary Approach: The Multidisciplinary Concept and Cultural Identity H. Gratiot Alphandery
ED/CONF-805/REF.17 Unesco's programme in integrated science education: interdisciplinary aspects Sheila Haggis
ED/CONF-805/REF.18 The interdisciplinary approach in general education inAfrica A. Boma
ED/CONF-805/REF.l9 Population education in Latin AmericaM. de Moyano
ED/CONF-805/REF.20 Interdisciplinarity in Caribbean EducationR.V. Goodridge
ED/CONF-805/REF.21 Interdisciplinarity in Chilean EducationM. Soto
Interdisciplinary approaches in environmental education
Unesco-UNEP, Environmental Education Series No. 14
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