The subject groups

For each subject group the IB prescribes general aims and particular objectives in ways that inform
curriculum planning on site. Adding coherence to the programme, subject group aims are directly
aligned with the learner profile. Objectives highlight particular understandings, modes of thinking, skills
and attitudes to be developed by students in each subject group.

In the MYP, knowledge, concepts, skills and attitudes in the subject areas are seen as essential tools with
which students understand, act and reflect on the world.

As subject group objectives suggest, quality understanding in a discipline, involves not only having
adequate information about the core concepts, and theories, but also calls upon students to learn about
the methods by which disciplinary knowledge is produced (for example, designing experiments in
biology, interpreting sources in history); the purposes and applications for which knowledge is pursued
(for example, curing disease or understanding past human experiences); and the typical ways in which
information is communicated in the discipline (for example, scientific reports, historical narratives).

Units of work

In each school, teachers must design units of work. Units of work are the carefully planned sequences of
learning experiences that enable students to reach the objectives of each subject.

To learn the topics, concepts, and modes of thinking that are under study, students are encouraged to
think with or apply them in new situations.

In interdisciplinary instruction, units of work alternate between offering student’s opportunities to build
deep understandings within a discipline or subject, and supporting students’ capacity to make fruitful
links across disciplines in a subject group or across subject groups.

Assessment

In the MYP, assessment is criterion-related. Assessment criteria provided by the MYP are directly
aligned with the learning objectives in each subject group, thus adding coherence to teachers’
educational efforts and students’ learning in the programme. The criteria also give teachers, parents and
students reliable and valid information on the actual learning that takes place for each student.
Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning
What is interdisciplinary learning?
Definition
In the MYP interdisciplinary learning is generally defined as the process by which students
come to understand bodies of knowledge and modes of thinking from two or more disciplines or
subject groups and integrate them to create a new understanding.

In the MYP, interdisciplinary learning seeks to yield interdisciplinary understanding.

Three key qualities of interdisciplinary understanding follow from this definition.
Interdisciplinary learning is: • purposeful • grounded in the disciplines • integrative
These qualities guide the design of interdisciplinary instruction and assessment of student work
in the MYP.
1/ Interdisciplinary learning is purposeful
In quality interdisciplinary learning, the integration of disciplinary perspectives or subject areas
is purposeful. Interdisciplinary learning in the MYP seeks to:
• attend to the student learning expectations in the areas of interaction
• enrich student understanding of topics, objects or problems that they, their teachers, schools
and societies find compelling
• respond to a clear aim: for example, to solve a problem, create a product, build an explanation
• address a need
When interdisciplinary learning efforts do not have a clearly articulated purpose, contrived
connections and fragmented learning are more likely to occur.

2. Interdisciplinary learning is grounded in the disciplines

A second feature of quality interdisciplinary learning is that it is deeply grounded in the
disciplines
represented in the MYP subject areas such as biology, physics and chemistry in the sciences, or
drama, visual arts and music in the arts.
Students exhibit quality interdisciplinary understandings when they:
• know, understand and apply knowledge, concepts, findings, tools, or forms of
communication in the selected disciplines.
• employ such concepts and modes of thinking in ways that echo that of experts working
in the
discipline—avoiding misconceptions.
Disciplinary grounding of student work is an essential feature where work across disciplines and
subject areas builds on disciplinary learning.
Interdisciplinary learning is integrative
Interdisciplinary learning, as conceived in the MYP, requires that teachers and students integrate
disciplinary perspectives. Elements of different disciplines (knowledge, understanding and skills)
are put into a productive relationship with one another, and connections are considered over
time, supporting students to accomplish a new, deeper, more compelling or nuanced
understanding of the topic under study. Interdisciplinary learning invites students to:
• deepen their understanding in the areas of interaction by bringing together two or more
disciplines or subject areas
• make good connections across areas of knowledge—connections that enable a deeper, better
understanding of the topic under study
• understand the topics under study in ways that would have been impossible through single
disciplinary perspectives
Integration is at the heart of interdisciplinary work.

Chapter 3 Why does interdisciplinary learning matter?

Reasons for interdisciplinary learning The MYP values interdisciplinary learning for multiple
reasons. Similar reasons are put forth by experienced teachers when they describe why they
teach in interdisciplinary ways. These include:
• building on a holistic view of students
• preparing students as lifelong learners and adaptable problem solvers
• highlighting an intellectually rigorous view of knowledge
• preparing students to understand and address global issues
• offering genuine opportunities for teachers’ professional development

1. building on a holistic view of students

Building on a holistic view of students Interdisciplinary learning recognizes students as
individuals with unique interests and diverse intellectual profiles, able to engage with relevant
topics and problems as agents in their own learning. For example, “The sound of music” unit
shows students engaging with different interests (for example, social, technical, musical, artistic)
in a meaningful way. It also calls for distinct human capacities (for example, aesthetic, logical,
qualitative, experiential, practical and interpersonal), offering powerful entry points to students
with varied intellectual profiles to engage with the topic in depth.
Teachers who embrace interdisciplinary teaching often view their students as whole individuals
and members of society, rather than exclusively in their role as aspiring masters of knowledge in
a single academic discipline.
2. Preparing students as lifelong learners and adaptable problem solvers
Teachers point out that in quality MYP classrooms students are not merely expected to record
and repeat information given by a teacher; rather they are invited to identify what they know and
what they need to know about the topic they are studying, finding new sources of relevant
information often outside of the primary discipline, considered with their teachers’ support. In so
doing, students strengthen their growing role as agents in their own learning and find
opportunities to reflect about their own approaches to learning.
Interdisciplinary instruction helps students understand their strengths and challenges as learners.
interdisciplinary teaching strives to nurture students’ long-term attitudes toward lifelong
learning.

3. Highlighting an intellectually rigorous view of knowledge

Interdisciplinary learning invites students to appreciate the nature of knowledge in particular
disciplines and see the cohesion of various fields of study. For many teachers, the central
motivation for interdisciplinary work is the rigorous teaching of their own discipline. Arts
teachers invite students to examine tensions around migration in depth and produce artworks that
make a statement in order to inform students’ understanding of the arts as a tool for cultural
critique. Biology teachers may incorporate a few lessons on still-life drawing in their class in
order to help students become more careful observers of nature during fieldwork. Physics
teachers may draw on the history of the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb
primarily to shed a human light on experimentation but also to look at ethical considerations in
scientific research.
In some cases, teachers engage in interdisciplinary work because they expect students to
appreciate similarities and differences in the ways particular disciplines shed light on the world.

4. Preparing students to understand and address complex global issues

For some teachers, the motivation for interdisciplinary work stems directly from their
engagement with a complex and relevant topic.
Issues such as the effect of global trade in developing societies, the role of the media in the
construction of body images among adolescent girls or the impact of climate change on health
cannot be satisfactorily approached through a single disciplinary means
5. Offering genuine opportunities for teachers’ professional development
Finally, the MYP encourages interdisciplinary exchanges because they offer genuine
opportunities for teachers’ professional development. Some teachers find interdisciplinary
teaching rewarding because it invites them to find novelty and interest in their work and to work
creatively using materials from other disciplines. Other teachers value the opportunity to learn
about topics of interest and to enrich their own view of their disciplines and of themselves as
learners.

Ultimately, interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP builds on a serious commitment to teachers’

capacity to grow as thinkers, citizens and professionals

Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

1. How might teachers approach interdisciplinary instruction in the MYP?

2. What are the core questions and design principles of quality interdisciplinary teaching in the
MYP?
Five teaching principles encouraged by the MYP to nurture quality interdisciplinary
understanding among students are outlined.

1. How might teachers approach interdisciplinary instruction in the MYP?

Multiple scopes for interdisciplinary work
MYP teachers are encouraged to find an adequate scope for their work depending on their
instructional purpose and level of comfort with interdisciplinary teaching.
- Most teachers approach interdisciplinary teaching with a genuine and valuable commitment
to teaching their own discipline. Frequently, these teachers find that borrowing knowledge,
concepts or skills from a neighboring discipline can enrich their students’ understanding of
the discipline they teach. A mathematics teacher may invite students to create fractal
computer art with the intention of building the visual thinking necessary to translate
functions into two- and three-dimensional spaces.
- Contrastingly, other teachers may prefer to weave an interdisciplinary thread throughout their
disciplinary courses.
- Finally, some teachers may dedicate a sizeable unit of work to a topic that demands an
interdisciplinary approach. For instance, the study of globalization requires that students
learn to think like economists, sociologists and anthropologists simultaneously.

Multiple structures for collaboration

 The MYP recognizes that multiple teacher arrangements can suit quality interdisciplinary
teaching. In some cases, a single teacher finds himself or herself to be prepared to teach
interdisciplinary topics either by virtue of their formal training or through their own informal
studies. In other cases, a single teacher may lead an interdisciplinary unit alone but only after
having worked with a group of peer advisors. In further instances, teachers engage in
collaborative planning and approach teaching either by co-teaching a single group of
students. A collaborative teaching approach enables students to witness differences and
relationships between disciplinary perspectives embodied by each teacher.

What are the core questions and design principles of quality

interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP?
Core questions and design principles
Teachers planning an interdisciplinary unit must ask themselves five fundamental questions. For
each question the MYP offers a concrete strategy for quality instructional design. The strategies
or answers to the questions are
1. The MYP requires that teachers identify multifaceted unit questions that stem from the areas
of interaction and define the problem space to be studied through an interdisciplinary approach.
2. In the MYP, teachers draw on the subjects to identify disciplinary understandings (concepts,
skills, modes of thinking) that will inform student understanding of the topic or question
3. In the MYP, teachers articulate the specific connections or integrative understandings across
subjects that they seek to support among students. These understandings will also be assessed.
4. What will students do to learn? In the MYP, teachers are expected to design learning
experiences and understanding performances for students that promote purposeful, disciplined
and integrative understanding of the topics under
study.
5. In designing interdisciplinary instruction, MYP teachers are encouraged to plan a targeted
assessment approach that integrates MYP objectives and criteria to assess clarity of purpose,
disciplinary grounding, integration, and reflectiveness in students’ interdisciplinary work.
In the end, what matters is that students engage in learning experiences that are purposeful
(students clearly understand why studying the issue matters and demands an interdisciplinary
approach); disciplined (understanding that is rigorously informed by two or more disciplines)
and integrative (an understanding that is enriched by the combination of disciplinary
perspectives).

Exploring the five design principles

 1. How do we identify multifaceted unit questions?
MYP teachers are encouraged to identify “multifaceted unit questions” as a focus for their
interdisciplinary instruction. Multifaceted unit questions are a particular kind of unit question.
1. They address aspects of the world that can be productively studied by two or more disciplines.
For example, the unit on sound and music, described earlier in this guide productively addressed
the phenomenon of sound from the physics and musical perspectives, involving the
understanding of the physical properties of how sound is produced and its musical qualities and
expressive possibilities. Multifaceted unit questions 2. invite an integrative understanding and
need to be studied beyond single disciplines.
A multifaceted unit question in an interdisciplinary unit defines the problem space for student
inquiry and gives it purpose and direction In quality interdisciplinary designs, multifaceted unit
questions are relevant, feasible and clearly framed to invite student interdisciplinary inquiry.
Making multifaceted unit questions relevant
A good multifaceted unit question is relevant to students, teachers, and the societies in which we
live. Because the MYP places students at the centre of their learning and recognizes the
intellectual demands of interdisciplinary work, it is especially important that the questions be
1. meaningful and engaging to students—they must connect with students’ prior knowledge, life
circumstances, and interests in developmentally appropriate ways. Similarly, 2. powerful
questions engage teachers’ own expertise, interests and commitments. Perhaps most importantly,
3. the MYP’s multifaceted unit questions are vividly relevant to the societies in which we live—
Making multifaceted unit questions feasible
Quality multifaceted unit questions must be feasible with regard to students, context, teacher
expertise and resources. Multifaceted unit questions invite multiple connections sometimes
beyond teachers’ existing expertise and available resources, which is why considerations of
feasibility matter in how we define a multifaceted unit question. An important decision in
interdisciplinary teaching is deciding what we will not include in a unit.
Framing multifaceted unit questions clearly
Finally, quality multifaceted unit questions are framed in a way that leads students towards
purposeful inquiry. A careful framing of the topic for study conveys why students are learning
what they are in the unit (for example, developing knowledge needed to create a product, solving
a pressing societal problem, explaining a phenomenon). Such a framing gives students a sense of
what aspects of the theme will be examined, why such examination matters and why an
interdisciplinary approach is warranted.
2. What disciplinary concepts and modes of thinking in the MYP subjects will
students need to develop in order to address the question under study?
Disciplinary understandings
Because interdisciplinary work is deeply grounded in disciplines, “tooling” students to produce
quality work requires that we ensure a selective mastery of disciplinary concepts and modes of
thinking that are relevant to understanding and addressing the question under study).
In an MYP unit design, disciplinary understandings must be a. “robust” and b. “selective”.
a. Robust disciplinary understandings:
At all times, robust disciplinary understanding should echo the work of experts in each discipline
involved. For instance, teachers must recognize and modify students’ misconceptions in their
discipline. They must also embrace not only information but habits of mind central to the
disciplines they teach..

b. Selective disciplinary understandings:

Disciplinary understandings included in a design must also be strategically selected, both in
terms of which disciplines are included in an MYP unit and which specific insights from each
discipline are borrowed. In MYP units, teachers are encouraged to consider the particular ways
in which disciplines might contribute to student understanding of the multifaceted topic or unit
question. Furthermore, teachers must, for feasibility, select which insights—particular concepts,
theories, examples, methods or techniques—students will come to master and apply to the
problems under study.

3. How will disciplinary insights be productively integrated to deepen student

understanding of the topic at hand?
Integrative understandings
Integrative understandings are insights that deeply connect elements from different disciplines.
That is, a student has an integrative understanding when he or she can act upon, generate, or
describe a productive relationship of ideas across disciplines. In quality interdisciplinary designs,
integrative understandings are more than superficial links among disciplinary ideas. Rather, they
deepen students’ understanding. MYP teachers must build fruitful connections over time. Two
considerations must inform teachers’ attention to integrative understandings. Integrations must
be aligned with the MYP unit question and they must clearly advance understanding.
Aligning understandings with multifaceted unit questions
In quality units, integrative understandings are visibly aligned with the multifaceted unit
question that frames a unit of work’s inquiry. The multifaceted question in a unit frames
teachers’ and students’ inquiry and learning making some connections more relevant than others.
Advancing students’ understanding
By drawing on two or more disciplines, the MYP units of work seek to do more than alert
students to possible connections among disciplines; they seek to nurture deeper understanding of
the topics under study. In the MYP units of work, integrative understandings move beyond mere
connection making. Rather, they seek to yield an explanation, a work of art, a visual model, a
realization, that students would have been unable to produce in the context of single subject
approaches.

4. What will students do to learn?

Performances of understanding
To the question of how students will learn, the MYP interdisciplinary teaching model responds
by engaging in performances of understanding. Performances of understanding are a particular
kind of learning experience—one that encourages flexible thinking with knowledge in novel
situations. For example, “going on a field trip” or “gathering information about our city” can be
engaging learning experiences for students. Yet they become performances of understanding
when students are asked to use information deliberately to advance a new understanding.
Performances of understanding allow students both to build and demonstrate their understanding
in and across subjects.
Different forms of performances of understanding
In MYP interdisciplinary designs, performances of understanding take different forms depending
on where in the unit they are placed (beginning, middle or end) and whether they target
disciplinary or integrative understandings. There are three types of integrative understanding,
introductory, midway supported synthesis and final synthesis, and one type of disciplinary
performance, disciplinary tooling performances. When designing interdisciplinary instruction,
MYP teachers must consider all four types of performances of understanding.
Performances of understanding are carefully sequenced
Performances of understanding are sequenced to advance interdisciplinary understanding of the
topic. Quality interdisciplinary units and courses sequence performances in ways that move
toward progressively deeper interdisciplinary understanding, from early intuitive introductions to
a problem under study, to guided examinations to more independent work as illustrated above.
Performances of understanding are well-supported.
In MYP units, performances are also well-supported by rich experiences and resources.
Presentations, films, readings, visits, discussions, and other activities and resources inform
students’ performances and provide added opportunities for students to advance understanding.
In “the sound of music” unit, students had master classes with local musicians, listened carefully
to performers, examined a variety of real instruments and used simple materials in their science
experiments.
5. How will teachers and students know that students are building interdisciplinary
understanding?
Targeted assessment
In the MYP teachers are encouraged to employ a variety of assessment strategies, tasks and tools
to monitor and support student learning. In the MYP, teacher-designed performances of
understanding may take the form of a composition, a research report, a presentation, or a
proposed solution. Such performances serve two functions:
1. they build student understandings, 2.and they make such understandings visible and amenable
for assessment. Teachers can use the information to find out how to support students further
(formative assessment) and whether the unit has achieved its goals (summative assessment). In
the MYP assessment is criterion-related. Each subject group offers a series of criteria and
descriptors that inform subject-based end-of-programme assessment.
Four elements are highlighted: • the degree to which student work exhibits clarity of purpose •
the degree to which the work is well grounded in subjects or disciplines (subject-specific criteria
enter here) • the degree to which student work integrates disciplines productively • the degree to
which students show a reflective stance toward their work.
The MYP interdisciplinary teaching model explained here offers conceptual tools to guide
practical decisions about what and how to teach in an interdisciplinary fashion in the MYP.
To enable the necessary flexibility for teachers to adapt design principles to school and national
curriculums worldwide, the framework does not prescribe exactly what to teach. Instead it offers
recommendations about how to design quality interdisciplinary instruction. The MYP approach
to interdisciplinary teaching pays serious attention to subject or disciplinary expertise. At the
same time, it recognizes that quality interdisciplinary learning requires more than the mere
juxtaposition of subject perspectives on a theme. Students must be supported in their capacity to
integrate perspectives in meaningful and productive ways. The model provides a common
language to frame topics for study, draw on and integrate robust disciplinary foundations, to
organize students’ learning experiences and assess and support their progress. Perhaps most
interestingly, the framework offers a common conceptual point of reference for teachers whose
interests, expertise and motivations for interdisciplinary teaching is broadly varied—in so doing
it sets the foundations for rich learning communities in schools.

Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of

interaction
Introduction
The MYP interdisciplinary teaching approach helps teachers capture the rich opportunities for
learning embedded in the subject groups and areas of interaction and turn them into concrete and
potent topics for interdisciplinary instruction. Such topics are by nature multifaceted—they
visibly address aspects of a problem that are studied by different subjects.
This chapter guides teachers interested in crafting effective topics for interdisciplinary teaching.
Specifically,
it considers:
• What makes a multifaceted unit question suitable for interdisciplinary instruction?
• How can teachers design quality interdisciplinary units?
1. What makes a multifaceted unit question suitable for interdisciplinary instruction?
To select a multifaceted unit question for interdisciplinary instruction teachers must engage in a
thoughtful process of considered judgment and deliberation, considering the learning
opportunities offered by topics against one another. In the MYP interdisciplinary teaching
approach, teachers are encouraged to craft multifaceted unit questions that will serve as the focus
of their work with students and develop student learning expectations of the areas of interaction.
Such multifaceted unit questions provide opportunities for students to develop rich
understandings, and they demand that students integrate disciplinary perspectives in order to
create more complex, detailed, and accurate explanations, solutions or products. In the MYP
interdisciplinary teaching approach three core criteria determine the quality of a multifaceted unit
question: quality questions are 1. relevant, 2. feasible and 3. clearly framed.
a. Quality questions are relevant
Judging the relevance of topics for interdisciplinary instruction in the MYP involves assessing
the degree to which a topic can invite students to become better lifelong learners (approaches
to learning), better actors in serving society (community and service), better stewards of the
environment (environments), better observers of human ingenuity (human ingenuity), better
guardians of their own health and that of others (health and social education). To meet these
aspirations teachers often must adjust the focus and scope of their multifaceted topics.
Example Placing the topic of sound waves in the larger context of human ingenuity leads
teachers and students to inquire about the ways in which humans have used waves ingeniously
to produce powerful musical experiences. Building an instrument and learning to play it in
pentatonic scale proved of great interest to students. In turn, placing the construction of an
instrument in the larger context of community and service gave a new meaning, urgency and
social purpose to the instrument production task: to preserve a cultural heritage at risk of
extinction.
To engage students’ interest and commitment to dedicated work, Teachers are encouraged to
select questions that students can come to see as genuinely important to study in depth . To
sustain their own commitment to teaching interdisciplinary units, teachers are encouraged, to
select multifaceted unit questions that capture their own interests and expertise
Finally, relevant multifaceted unit questions tend to be relevant towards our societies. Open
any newspaper and you can find a multitude of strong choices for multifaceted topics, for
example, stem cell research, global warming, global migrations, computer ar
b. Quality questions are feasible
Considerations of feasibility play an important role in how teachers select and define a given
multifaceted question for instruction.
• Teachers are encouraged to consider the time needed to prepare to teach elements from an
unfamiliar discipline or to collaborate with others in a well-integrated design.
• Teachers must craft topics for which they have the necessary sources of expertise and materials
(often beyond their own disciplines of training), and topics that are manageable enough to foster
deep learning and understanding.
• Teachers must think about who the students are and how much support they will need to
understand the topic and the emotional or cognitive complexity of the topic. For instance,
exploring the human rights violations associated with the Rwandan genocide might be
appropriate for MYP years 4 and 5, but younger students may not be mature enough to handle
the intense subject matter. Selecting a feasible topic also means: MYP teachers are encouraged
to assess the degree to which this disciplinary content can be naturally integrated into an
interdisciplinary unit.
c. Quality questions are clearly framed
Because multifaceted questions articulate the purposes of learning in a unit of work, their
framing must be clear and accessible. Multifaceted unit questions outline the issue students will
seek to understand and often preview the connections that teachers expect students to make. In
quality units, multifaceted questions or topics point to or take the form of an issue to explore, a
problem to solve or a product to be created. A complex issue may include “how could humans
allow the Holocaust and other genocides to happen?” Looking only through a historical
perspective cannot fully answer this question. We must also bring to bear psychological findings
on obedience (for example, Milgram’s experiment) and economic disparities that contributed to
social unrest. These perspectives then intertwine to propose a more complex, thorough and
accurate explanation as to why these genocides took place.
A problem approach to topic framing involves drawing on multiple disciplines to fully
understand a problem and to propose solutions to it, for example, “what can people do to
mitigate climate change?” In this case, students come to understand the science of global
warming). Understanding these events called upon students to learn history, psychology and
sociology. Presenting them called for an understanding of film, sculpture, architecture and
memorials

2. How can teachers design quality interdisciplinary units?

Designing multifaceted unit questions with the areas of interaction in mind
The areas of interaction play a key role in inviting teachers to pose important questions about
what students are expected to learn.
Multifaceted unit questions play a central role in focusing teachers’ and students’ attention on
optimal topics for interdisciplinary instruction. During the implementation of the unit of
instruction the areas of interaction continue to orient teachers and students to reflect and adjust
the emphasis of their learning and the multifaceted topics maintain the focus and coherence of
students’ and teachers’ inquiries.
By using the areas of interaction to craft good questions for interdisciplinary inquiry, MYP
teachers support students in learning the concepts, modes of thinking and attitudes in two or
more subject areas and make sense of them in meaningful ways. In this unit, students had a
chance to reflect about the roles our environments play in the lives and well-being of humankind
(a key outcome in environments). Students also had an opportunity to judge the aesthetic and
technological transformations that have led civilizations to unfold and appreciate their intended
and unintended consequences (central to human ingenuity). Areas of interaction and multifaceted
unit questions help teachers and students maintain their inquiry focus and make new connections.
To summarize, MYP teachers are encouraged to engage students in the areas of interaction
during the early unit planning phase and during the unit application in many ways. Productive
use of the areas of interaction as a conceptual tool for thinking about content should produce an
enriched sense of what and how teachers teach and students learn. It should also yield an
informed reflection about areas of human development and citizenship captured by the areas of
interaction (for example, learning to learn, environmental stewardship, community service). In
contrast, a non-productive use of the areas of interaction involves merely linking a given unit to
various areas as a rote exercise, without further enrichment of the unit itself. One important way
in which teachers begin to map their curriculum across subjects is around the key questions
proposed by the student learning expectations of each area of interaction.

The problem with “thematic units”

All too often, interdisciplinary teaching in schools takes the form of “thematic units”, whereby a
large theme such as “civilizations” or “water” is established and teachers are charged with
finding how to connect these. Too broad a topic definition is likely to result in a lack of clarity
about what exactly it is that we would like students to understand about the theme in question.
As a result, not uncommonly, broad themes can yield superficial or forced connections and
fragile understandings.

The problem with field trips

Like thematic units, field trips hold the promise of integrative learning. Trips into cities, parks
and mountains engage students in real-life experiences that can be opportunities for deep
learning. Teachers take advantage of such opportunities when they arrange the trip around key
multifaceted unit questions for inquiry. Consider two contrasting examples. A unit on national
parks concludes with a day-long visit to the local park. A group of excited 14-year-old students
step off the school bus and prepare to walk from one landmark area to another in the park—the
sandy shore, riverside and mangroves. Their task is to listen carefully to the guide and gather as
much information as possible about each area. For the first hour some students take notes
diligently while others scribble haphazardly onto a page a few names of local species and
information on local tourism. As the day unfolds it becomes clear that the main source of
excitement for students is the experience of a day out of school.
In a different case (a unit portrayed in the next chapter) students visit a local park with an
important purpose in mind. The area has been attracting tourists to the park and students are
expected to measure levels of pollution at particular areas. They employ geographic and
biological tools to map the three courses of the rivers and the shape of the shore, and to assess
the conditions of the environment. Unlike their peers in the previous example, these students
approach their fieldwork with multifaceted unit questions in mind. They ask the following. How
is human activity affecting the mangroves and sandy shores that attract tourism to the region? •
How can an ecotourism initiative support a sustainable and balanced relationship between water
and humans?

Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?  JUST READ IT