Since the first day of this semester, the definition and concept of “interdisciplinarity” has become more prominent in my academic life. Being a part of a liberal arts college, it’s almost essential to take ideas from previous experiences or studies and apply it to what is currently being taught.As students we can all relate to this, but I now know that the concept of being literate in multiple disciplines is critical to becoming aneducator. My education 215 class has multiple discussions that provide 3-D perspectives on ideas that span multiple topics. For example, the first thing my professor went over with our class was the definition of what it means to be truly “literate” in a field of study that people are eventually going to instruct others in.
To be literate does not mean to only know how to read and write, but to be able to provide students with curriculum that incorporates holistic information from multiple genres, including current and past events and even things that have been proven to be untrue. In other words, my professor outlined the definition of being “literate” as being able to explain yourself “interdisciplinarily”. This has become increasingly remarkable because as the semester progresses, the presence of intertwining disciplines has become ever present.
Even today, in my other class in english 201, our discussion brought us to span multiple topics in our culture and political atmospheres.
In the case of making lesson plans for a class I may teach one day, I must provide a lesson that would teach them a skill in the field of english, incorporate a strategy to do this, and attempt how this applies to things that students can relate to or understand in their lives today. Doing so will increase comprehension and literacy, but most importantly, it will allow them to connect the concepts using interdisciplinarity. An example would be to use a novel like The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and use excerpts to teach about literary elements, namely characterization and imagery. However, interdisciplinarity comes in handy because history comes into place, and I can implement a class discussion to connect the imagery with what was happening in America and around the world at that time.
Although the Common Core has proven to be controversial in its execution, it has also proposed the similar ideas that include interdisciplinarity, which is pretty cool. It’s becoming increasingly important as a teacher of only ONE discipline, to know what you’re talking about with respect to multiple disciplines, which is exactly what Interdisciplinarity explains in detail.