Week 31: Professional Context - Crossing Boundaries

It has been interesting reading the required readings about interdisciplinary connections, especially ‘The logic of interdisciplinary studies’, written by Mathison and Freeman.  This phrase summarises the changes and introduction of new trends that have occurred in the New Zealand education systems in the past ten years.

 “The push for interdisciplinarity or integration incorporates many of the trends that have become part of the recent discussions of educational restructuring – shared goals, flexible scheduling, site-based decision-making, collegiality, and outcome-based assessment” (Mathison & Freeman, 1997).

This week I’ve decided to explore a digital tool - coogle to draw a map which demonstrates my current and potential interdisciplinary professional connections.

My interdisciplinary connection map:

My future goals are developing these skills: research, inquiry and collaboration so I am effectively facilitating 21st century learning and teaching.

I clicked on this post about “A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration” and thought that the table below (that is displayed in this post) does endeavour to show what needs to happen for meaningful collaboration to occur.

Table 1. Qualifiers for a three-faceted conceptual model for successful collaboration

Workplace Conditions	Qualities/Attitudes	Common Goals
§  Regular communication §  Standing meetings §  Physical space §  Administrative support	§  Cooperative—able to compromise §  Equitable—respect for roles   §  Trust—perceived competence §  Shared vulnerability—safe setting to explore, inquire & critique §  Enthusiasm—desire to continue collaboration	§  Identify individual strengths §      Select conference & publication venues that “count” for both, or alternate   §Establish research “pipeline” & philosophy   §  Articulate/update timelines

Source: http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration./

The interdisciplinary connection I have we be with my teaching colleagues as we will be doing collaborative planning and sharing via Google Docs in Terms 3 and 4. As teaching professionals we will discuss and decide on learning goals with students and these goals will be integrated into our teaching and learning collaborative planning. The outcomes of the learning goals will be shared with parents or whanau either through Google Slides or kanohi-a-kanohi (face to face).

References:

ACRLog. (2015). A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration. Retrieved from http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration

Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/mathisonlogic12004.pdf