Middle Years Programme

MYP guide to interdisciplinary

teaching and learning
Verónica Boix-Mansilla, Harvard Graduate School of Education
 Middle Years Programme

MYP guide to interdisciplinary

teaching and learning
Verónica Boix-Mansilla, Harvard Graduate School of Education
 Middle Years Programme
MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

Published May 2010

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© International Baccalaureate Organization 2010

The International Baccalaureate (IB) offers three high quality and challenging
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This Work has been written by Verónica Boix-Mansilla of the Harvard Graduate
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MYP184
Contents

Preface 1
The importance of quality interdisciplinary education 1
About this guide 1

Chapter I The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view 3

Overview 3
Interdisciplinary learning in the MYP 3
The IB learner profile 3
Overview of programme model 5
Fundamental concepts of the MYP 6
The areas of interaction 7
The subject groups 10
Units of work 11
Assessment 11

Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning 13

Overview 13
What is interdisciplinary learning? 13
Further examples of interdisciplinary learning 16
Relating interdisciplinary understanding to the programme model 19

Chapter 3 Why does interdisciplinary learning matter? 22

Overview 22
Reasons for interdisciplinary learning 22

Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP 27

Overview 27
How might teachers approach interdisciplinary instruction in the MYP? 27
What are the core questions and design principles of quality interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP? 28
Exploring the five design principles 29
A schematic summary of a unit of work 37
Further examples of resources for planning interdisciplinary teaching 38

Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction 42

Overview 42
What topics are worth teaching in interdisciplinary ways? 42
What makes a multifaceted unit question suitable for interdisciplinary instruction? 46
How can teachers design quality interdisciplinary units? 48

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

Contents

Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need? 54

Overview 54
What constitutes quality learning in a discipline or subject? 54
How can teachers select and craft disciplinary understandings? 58

Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together? 62

Overview 62
Why does attention to integration matter? 62
The Dawn of France 64
Developing integrative understandings 66
Forms of integration 68

Chapter 8 What will students do to learn? 72

Overview 72
How do students build deep interdisciplinary understanding? 72
How can teachers design quality performances of understanding in interdisciplinary classrooms? 75
Further explanation of performances of understanding 75
Examples of performances of understanding 76
Conclusion 81

Chapter 9 Assessing interdisciplinary learning 83

Overview 83
What are the qualities of good assessment practices in the MYP? 83
What constitutes adequate evidence of students’ interdisciplinary understanding? 84
What challenges do teachers confront when assessing interdisciplinary learning? 96
Case study 100

Chapter 10 The personal project: Supporting student

interdisciplinary research 104
Overview 104
What constitutes a high quality interdisciplinary personal project? 104
How should interdisciplinary personal projects be assessed? 111
Framework for planning a personal project 114

Chapter 11 Professional development and teacher support 116

Overview 116
How do teachers learn to teach in interdisciplinary ways? 116
Barriers to interdisciplinary teaching 118
Supporting interdisciplinary teaching 119

Chapter 12 Conclusion 121

Appendices 122
Appendix 1: Acknowledgments 122
Appendix 2: Reading list 124

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

Preface

The importance of quality interdisciplinary

education
Quality interdisciplinary education invites students to integrate concepts, theories, methods and tools from
two or more disciplines to deepen their understanding of a complex topic (for example, how cities grow,
why the climate is changing, how to make new media art). In so doing, interdisciplinary instruction enlists
students’ multiple capabilities (aesthetic, social, analytical) and prepares them to solve problems, create
products or ask questions in ways that go beyond single disciplinary perspectives.

Today, educators seeking to prepare students for the work of their generation call for interdisciplinary
education for multiple reasons. Some point out that changing global labour markets require individuals who
are able to frame and address new problems, employ expert thinking in a flexible manner, and communicate
effectively with people who hold different perspectives on the problems at hand. Others argue that today’s
knowledge societies, where scientific and technological advancements are transforming everyday life,
demand a public that understands how knowledge and technologies in areas such as communication,
genetically modified food, or stem cell research are produced, who can think critically about the relationship
between science and society. Indeed, for many observers the urgency of interdisciplinary education stems
from the fact that the most important problems of environmental and cultural survival—from mitigating
climate change to legislating immigration, from eradicating poverty to ensuring human rights—cannot be
satisfactorily addressed by individual disciplines.

With a renewed interest in interdisciplinary education there is a legitimate concern about the lack of rigour
or direction observed in certain interdisciplinary teaching practices from elementary school onward.
Experienced educators worry if interdisciplinary instruction should be embraced at the expense of learning
in the disciplines, or should interdisciplinary teaching build on individual disciplines? Are “thematic units”
in which all teachers in a school are required to address a single theme effective, “Water” or “Ancient
Egypt”, for example? Or do they fail to establish meaningful connections among perspectives? To address
questions of this kind and support quality interdisciplinary learning in the Middle Years Programme (MYP),
the International Baccalaureate (IB) and researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education initiated a
collaboration designed to produce the research-based model for quality interdisciplinary education in the
MYP introduced in this guide written by Verónica Boix-Mansilla. In it, a pedagogical model of principles and
recommendations grounded in empirical research conducted at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of
Education, are used to illuminate the interdisciplinary nature of the MYP and offer practical guidance.

About this guide

This publication is a guide to interdisciplinary teaching, learning and assessment in the MYP. It offers
an in-depth definition of interdisciplinary learning and presents the MYP’s recommended approach to
interdisciplinary teaching. It offers a practical framework that teachers in the programme are encouraged
to use to design quality assignments, projects and units of work, as well as to support students in their
personal project inquiries.

These principles are illustrated by multiple examples of MYP practices from around the world. Model units
of instruction, assignments, samples of student interdisciplinary work and personal projects are included. To
bring core principles of interdisciplinary practice to life, reflections by experienced interdisciplinary teachers
within and outside of the MYP are featured.

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 1

Preface

“Reflection point” sections in each chapter invite readers to engage in thought experiments as they become
acquainted with, and master, the principles of quality interdisciplinary instruction in the MYP. “Connections”
boxes point the reader to related relevant sections in the guide.

Specifically this publication offers:

• a conceptual definition of “interdisciplinary understanding”

• an MYP approach to interdisciplinary teaching that lays out core principles to design instruction
geared to fostering student interdisciplinary understanding in the MYP
• concrete ideas about how to enhance the quality of interdisciplinary teaching in MYP classrooms
• examples of teachers’ interdisciplinary planning and teaching
• examples of students’ interdisciplinary work
• criteria to be used to evaluate the quality of interdisciplinary student learning as well as teachers’
interdisciplinary instruction in the MYP
• recommendations to administrators seeking to support the teachers and interdisciplinary learning
communities in their schools.
Schools are expected to read this guide in conjunction with MYP: From principles into practice (August 2008),
which offers an overview of all aspects of curriculum, assessment, teaching and student learning in the
programme. Within each subject group this guide is to be read together with the subject group guides that
offer subject-specific information, such as aims, objectives and assessment criteria, and a subject view of the
areas of interaction.

MYP coordinators and school administrators should have access to and read this publication, as it provides
guidance that can lead to successful interdisciplinary teaching in the areas of interaction and across subject
groups. In the MYP, it is recognized that successful interdisciplinary instruction demands administrative
support and coordination. Therefore, school leaders have a key role to play in setting the necessary
conditions for collaboration and planning required for an adequate implementation of interdisciplinary
teaching in the programme.

This guide should inform individual teachers interested in designing quality instruction for interdisciplinary
learning, as well as whole-school planning teams and teachers’ continuing professional development
initiatives in the MYP.

To maximize the use of this guide, readers are encouraged to:

• begin with the introductory chapters, chapters 1 to 4, but feel free to browse through chapters 5 to 11
as there is no linear order in the process of instructional design
• keep their own practice in mind as they become acquainted with the numerous examples and
perspectives presented in the guide
• seek partners with whom to read, discuss and experiment with the ideas presented in this guide;
teachers or coordinators may organize study groups, online discussion lists, reflection bulletin boards
or critical friends who are willing to give and receive constructive feedback
• keep a reflection log to track and come back to their own development and thinking
• engage in designing an interdisciplinary unit of instruction, beginning with an interdisciplinary unit
they already teach and would like to improve or with small-scale expansions of their disciplinary
teaching.

2 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme:
An interdisciplinary view

Overview
This chapter introduces the core elements of the MYP with an emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. It
outlines how the fundamental concepts, areas of interaction and curriculum framework are designed to
support interdisciplinary work.

Interdisciplinary learning in the MYP

The MYP is a course of study designed to meet the educational requirements of students aged between
11 and 16 years. The curriculum may be taught as an entity in itself, and is flexible enough to allow the
demands of national, regional or local legislation to be met.

Curriculum developers of the MYP share a commitment to prepare young people for the changing demands
of life in the 21st century. They understand the competencies required for students to thrive in today’s world
as well as in tomorrow’s, such as the capacity for lifelong learning, expert thinking, problem solving, effective
communication and collaborative work in diverse human groups. They also understand the opportunities
for growth and challenges that students encounter between ages 11 and 16.

MYP students are at an age when they are making the transition from early puberty to mid-adolescence:
this is a crucial period of personal, social, physical and intellectual development, of uncertainty and of
questioning. The MYP has been devised to guide students in their search for a sense of belonging in the
world around them. It also aims to help students to develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills they need
to participate actively and responsibly in a changing and increasingly interrelated world. The programme
seeks to support adolescents to become internationally minded people who, recognizing our common
humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better, more peaceful world.

An important feature of MYP curriculum and pedagogy is its commitment to students’ interdisciplinary
learning—that is, their ability to make meaningful connections across subjects in order to understand,
and act in, the world. By placing students at the centre of the learning process and building on a holistic
view of students and knowledge, the MYP seeks to cultivate students’ involvement in their own learning.
In this chapter, the central components of the MYP are characterized with their relation to interdisciplinary
learning outlined.

The IB learner profile

The programme is designed to cultivate internationally minded, independent learners who can make
meaningful connections across school subjects and in the world outside the classroom. It seeks to nurture
students’ capacity to engage in and employ multiple sources of expertise to solve problems, create
products, produce explanations and raise new questions about the world in which they live. In this regard,
the IB learner profile offers a dynamic portrait of the kind of students and citizens that the IB seeks to
develop, and serves as an educational compass for teachers in all programmes. The profile enables teachers
to make programme-relevant decisions about the dispositions and habits of mind to be nurtured through
disciplinary and interdisciplinary instruction.

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 3

Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

IB learner profile

The aim of all IB programmes is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing our
common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful
world.
IB learners strive to be:

Inquirers They develop their natural curiosity. They acquire the skills necessary to conduct
inquiry and research and show independence in learning. They actively enjoy
learning and this love of learning will be sustained throughout their lives.

Knowledgeable They explore concepts, ideas and issues that have local and global significance. In
so doing, they acquire in-depth knowledge and develop understanding across a
broad and balanced range of disciplines.

Thinkers They exercise initiative in applying thinking skills critically and creatively to
recognize and approach complex problems, and make reasoned, ethical
decisions.

Communicators They understand and express ideas and information confidently and creatively in
more than one language and in a variety of modes of communication. They work
effectively and willingly in collaboration with others.

Principled They act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and
respect for the dignity of the individual, groups and communities. They take
responsibility for their own actions and the consequences that accompany them.

Open-minded They understand and appreciate their own cultures and personal histories, and
are open to the perspectives, values and traditions of other individuals and
communities. They are accustomed to seeking and evaluating a range of points of
view, and are willing to grow from the experience.

Caring They show empathy, compassion and respect towards the needs and feelings of
others. They have a personal commitment to service, and act to make a positive
difference to the lives of others and to the environment.

Risk-takers They approach unfamiliar situations and uncertainty with courage and
forethought, and have the independence of spirit to explore new roles, ideas and
strategies. They are brave and articulate in defending their beliefs.

Balanced They understand the importance of intellectual, physical and emotional balance
to achieve personal well-being for themselves and others.

Reflective They give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience. They are
able to assess and understand their strengths and limitations in order to support
their learning and personal development.

4 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

Overview of programme model

To nurture the capacities and dispositions described in the learner profile in students, the MYP has devised
a dynamic programme model structured around three fundamental concepts: holistic learning, intercultural
awareness and communication. The diagram below represents the programme model. The five areas
of interaction connect the development of the individual learner (at the centre) with the educational
experience in all subject groups (at the outer points of the octagon). These interactive areas are common
to all disciplines, with each subject developing general and specific aspects of the areas. In this way, the
subject groups are linked by the areas of interaction, demonstrating the interdisciplinary potential of the
MYP. The five areas of interaction have no clear boundaries, but merge to form a context for learning that
contributes to the student’s experience of the curriculum. They give the MYP its distinctive core. In every
year of the programme, students are required to experience and explore approaches to learning (ATL),
community and service, health and social education, environments, human ingenuity (formerly homo faber).
These areas are common to all disciplines and are incorporated into the MYP so that students will become
increasingly aware of the connections between subject content and the real world.

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Figure 1
The eight subject groups represented in the MYP programme model provide a broad, traditional foundation
of knowledge. Students are encouraged to engage, question and evaluate information in the disciplines
embedded in the subject groups. The subject groups offer natural opportunities for students to address
relevant topics by bringing together multiple disciplinary perspectives.

In the MYP, the term “discipline” is used to refer to established areas of expertise including academic disciplines
such as history, physics or geography; the arts such as music, visual art, or drama; and established fields of
knowledge such as technology, design, architecture or medicine. While disciplinary teaching in the subject
groups takes place when teachers focus on history, biology, music or graphic design as individual subjects,
interdisciplinary teaching occurs when teachers invite students to combine concepts and modes of thinking
within and across subject groups. Throughout this guide the term “discipline” will be used interchangeably
with “subject.”

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 5

Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

Interdisciplinary learning in the MYP takes place quite naturally within subject groups. For example, in
the sciences students may learn about the local river’s ecosystem by exploring and integrating insights
in disciplines such as biology, physics and chemistry. In the humanities, they may examine a topic such as
migration, employing concepts and modes of thinking in history, economics and psychology.

The MYP also encourages teachers and students to make meaningful connections across subject groups.
For example, students may be invited to deepen their understanding of the French and American revolutions
(humanities) to write a poem (language A) and create a play that captures the visions and world views
of the times, inviting contemporary audiences to reflect (arts). Students may complement a study of the
ecosystems in the local river (sciences) with an economic analysis that looks at the long-term impact of
pollution on health (humanities) as well as the projected costs of environmental cleaning (mathematics).

Fundamental concepts of the MYP

Young people are confronted with a vast and often bewildering array of choices. The MYP is designed to
provide students with the values and opportunities that will enable them to develop sound judgment and
the capacity to learn and evaluate information critically. Three fundamental concepts give focus to teachers’
efforts in the MYP:

• holistic learning
• intercultural awareness
• communication.
These concepts form the basis for the MYP’s curriculum framework, which is shared by different types of
schools in all parts of the world.

Holistic learning
Holistic learning addresses the interdisciplinary foundations of the MYP directly. It links the subjects to
foster a wide scope of understanding—concepts, ideas, and modes of thinking that offer a global view of
situations and issues, are relevant to students and society, and can be employed by students in a variety of
meaningful contexts.

In the MYP students are expected to become aware of the relevance of their learning, and come to see
knowledge as an interrelated whole. They are expected to see the analogies and complementarities among
various disciplines or fields of study, but not to the detriment of learning within each of the disciplines,
which retain their own objectives and methodology.

As a core principle, holistic learning drives the MYP’s emphasis on interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
It capitalizes on students’ unique intellectual profiles, capacities and interests, and invites students to
engage in relevant topics for study, drawing on established forms of expertise. Perhaps most importantly,
holistic learning nurtures students’ disposition to move beyond learning multiple isolated facts and seek
understandings of consequence, conduct critical analysis of complex issues, and synthesize perspectives in
quality interdisciplinary work.

Intercultural awareness
Intercultural awareness is concerned with developing students’ attitudes, knowledge and skills as they
learn about their own and others’ cultures. By encouraging students to consider multiple perspectives,
intercultural awareness seeks to go beyond fostering tolerance to develop respect and empathy.

6 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

The MYP nurtures intercultural awareness by providing students with relevant experiences inside and
outside of the formal curriculum. A climate of intercultural respect is expected inside and outside MYP
classrooms. In addition, students’ intercultural awareness is informed by the systematic study of world
history, languages and cultures, as well as topics ranging from the impact of climate change on locations
and societies around the globe to the social and individual experiences of migration. Deep understanding
of such topics demands an interdisciplinary approach.

Communication
Communication is fundamental to learning, as it supports inquiry and understanding, and allows student
reflection and expression. The MYP places particular emphasis on language acquisition and allows students
to explore multiple forms of expression.

Throughout their studies, MYP students encounter, learn to recognize and employ the distinctive forms
of discourse that characterize subjects such as biology, history or technology. They also explore the
expressive power of various symbol systems and art forms. Students’ interdisciplinary work prepares them
to communicate across areas of subject expertise, as well as to select and integrate forms of communication
to achieve their goals and find answers to their inquiries.

The areas of interaction

The programme model of the MYP places the learner and the way the student learns at its centre, as the
student’s development is the basis of the whole educational process. The areas of interaction surrounding
the student in the model are the core elements of the MYP. They provide a framework for learning within
and across the subject groups. They allow connections among the subjects themselves, and between the
subjects and real-life issues.

Approaches to learning
How do I learn best?
How do I know?
How do I communicate my understanding?

Approaches to learning (ATL) is central to the programme, as it is concerned with developing the intellectual
discipline, attitudes, strategies and skills that will result in critical, coherent and independent thought and
the capacity for problem solving and decision making. It goes far beyond study skills. It involves students’
capacity to “learn how to learn” and develop an awareness of thought processes and their strategic
use. This area of interaction recognizes that true learning is more than the acquisition of knowledge: it
involves its thoughtful application, as well as critical thinking and problem solving, both individually and
collaboratively.

Interdisciplinary learning is uniquely suited to support students in their developing understanding of who
they are as learners and how learning takes place for multiple purposes across disciplines and subject areas.
Interdisciplinary learning invites a broad range of individual intellectual profiles and working styles that are
often associated with particular disciplinary modes of thinking. Furthermore, in interdisciplinary learning
students and teachers are asked to clarify the purpose of studying a particular topic; examine how particular
disciplines might contribute to a deep understanding of such a topic; and reflect on how various subject
areas engage students’ individual interests and talents. An important component of quality interdisciplinary
learning is the development of a disposition to compare how learning takes place in various subjects and
reflect about the very process of learning over time. In so doing, MYP students can begin to prepare for
the work that may be expected of them in, for example, the IB Diploma Programme’s theory of knowledge
course, or indeed in any future educational context.

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 7

Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

Community and service

How do we live in relation to each other?
How can I contribute to the community?
How can I help others?

The area of community and service starts in the classroom and extends beyond it, requiring students to
participate in the communities in which they live. The emphasis is on developing community awareness and
concern, a sense of responsibility, and the skills and attitudes needed to make an effective contribution to
society. Students are expected to become actively involved in service activities.

Occasionally, community and service initiatives may develop exclusively as a form of extra‑curricular activity,
but the most powerful community interventions capitalize on and integrate what students are learning in
one or more subject groups. In this respect, interdisciplinary learning nurtures students’ disposition towards
effective participation, local problem solving and responsible action. It does so by inviting them to draw
on multiple sources of expertise to find solutions, create objects or explain phenomena in ways that would
have been unlikely without the support of the disciplines or through single disciplinary means. Because
real practical problems can rarely be addressed through the context of single disciplines, interdisciplinary
approaches present unique opportunities to nurture students’ development in this area of interaction.

Human ingenuity
Why and how do we create?
What are the consequences?

Human ingenuity allows students to focus on the evolution, processes and products of human creativity.
It considers their impact on society and on the mind. Students learn to appreciate and to put into practice
the human capacity to influence, transform, enjoy and improve the quality of life. This area of interaction
encourages students to explore the relationships between subjects, aesthetics and ethics. Human ingenuity
offers extensive natural opportunities for quality interdisciplinary learning. Whether, for example, by
understanding the historical and economic forces that enabled the emergence of the steam engine in
England toward the end of the 18th century; by investigating the growth and disappearance of the great
civilizations of Angkor or Teotihuacán; by inquiring about the psyche of creators like Picasso and Matisse;
or understanding the life and science of Galileo or Newton, students working within this area of interaction
are invited to integrate multiple sources of information to explore and engage in human inventiveness. In
all cases human ingenuity stems from the purposeful and novel expansion and recombination of available
expertise. Aspects of effective human ingenuity study can prepare students effectively for the types of
thinking encountered in the IB Diploma Programme’s theory of knowledge course as well as for the range of
ethical questions raised in a number of IB Diploma Programme’s subject courses.

Environments
What are our environments?
What resources do we have or need?
What are my responsibilities?

Environments aims to make students aware of their interdependence with the environment so that they
accept their responsibility for maintaining an environment fit for the future. The context provided by this
area of interaction considers environments to mean the totality of conditions surrounding us. This area of
interaction focuses on the place of human beings within a wide range of environments including natural,
built and virtual. In their interactions, students will come to an appreciation and understanding of the effect
they have on their natural, built and virtual environments.

An informed engagement with the natural environment and a disposition toward sustainable development
demand that students become able to understand aspects of the natural world (for example, atmospheric

8 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

change, ecosystems, geological formations) that are typically studied by different branches of science
(climate science, biology, geology), as well as human interactions with the environment typically addressed
by humanities disciplines (history, economics, anthropology). In their study of the environment students
are asked to integrate these insights into coherent accounts of topics such as climate change mitigation,
pollution and recovery, species extinction and protection. Not uncommonly, an exploration of the
environment and an active commitment to maintaining a healthy environment invites students to capitalize
on the power of the arts to express and communicate. In all cases students are best positioned to engage
in their roles as young environmental stewards when they integrate learning effectively throughout their
courses of study.

The word “environment” can refer to a vast array of complex and often controversial “green” issues. These
issues, and the finding of solutions to them, are clearly important in the lives of all people. As students
will be increasingly confronted with complex and controversial global environmental issues, this area of
interaction provides opportunities for students to see these global issues in the light of local concerns, and
vice versa. However, these issues alone do not define this area.

Through this area of interaction students should develop an awareness and understanding of a range of
environments and their qualities. Students should also explore the nature of their environment and the
interactions between and interdependencies of various environments. As teachers plan to integrate this
area with their subject content, they should consider environments in terms of the learning expectations.

Health and social education

How do I think and act?
How am I changing?
How can I look after myself and others?

Health and social education prepares students for a physically and mentally healthy life, to be aware of
potential hazards and be able to make informed choices. It develops in students a sense of responsibility for
their own well-being and for the physical and social environment. This area encourages students to explore
themselves as they develop healthy relationships with others. Health and social education encompasses a
range of issues and how these issues affect individuals, human development and interactions. It includes an
appreciation of these effects in different cultural settings and at different times. It also provides students
with opportunities to inquire into physical, social and emotional health and intelligence, key aspects of
human development that can lead to a complete and balanced lifestyle.

Here too, insights stemming from psychology, sociology and biology can inform students about their
bodies, relationships and growth. A comprehensive view of who they are as biological and social beings
invites students to integrate such perspectives. Also in this area, the arts offer powerful spaces of self-
inquiry and expression.

The extent to which young people consider and act on social and health-related issues is influenced by
political, social and economic decisions at the community and national level, as well as by the actions and
support of schools, families and friends. As schools work to encourage students to make informed and
responsible choices, they could involve the whole community, particularly students, in the planning and
development of this area of interaction.

Students are increasingly in a position where they have to make choices that require critical thinking.
As teachers plan to integrate this area with their subject content, they should consider student learning
expectations of health and social education in terms of an awareness and understanding of contemporary
and historical social issues; reflection on and having opinions on a range of social issues; and making
considered and responsible choices on a range of social and health issues.

While the main defining features of each area of interaction can be outlined, they should in no way be viewed
as narrow categories. These broad-based areas of interaction overlap. All subject groups are touched by all

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 9

Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

areas of interaction in different and complementary ways. All teachers therefore share the responsibility of
integrating skills, ideas, themes and issues related to these areas within the subjects themselves or in special
projects. The areas of interaction aim to encourage new links between teachers, opportunities for teachers
to tackle topics and foster understandings of wide scope and to learn from one another. A new dynamic is
created as teachers work together as a more cohesive team and learn to consider the curriculum from the
point of view of the learner.

Connections

Chapter 5 provides a detailed description of how teachers may draw on the areas of interaction to craft
teaching topics for productive interdisciplinary exploration.

The subject groups

The MYP offers a curriculum framework that allows school-specific requirements to be met while maintaining
the mission and philosophy of the IB. In the programme model, the five areas of interaction surround the
learner and connect to eight subject groups. These are: language A, language B, humanities, sciences,
mathematics, arts, physical education, and technology. For each subject group the IB prescribes general
aims and particular objectives in ways that inform curriculum planning on site, but accommodates many
additional requirements of national, regional or school curriculums in schools worldwide. 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.

The objectives of each subject group embody understandings, modes of thinking and skills that are relevant
for students to make sense of the natural, cultural and social worlds they inhabit, and act knowledgeably
and responsibly in them. As subject group objectives suggest, quality understanding in a discipline or
an established area of expertise involves not only having adequate information about the core concepts,
theories, and findings in the domain, 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).

Each subject group embodies the perspectives of one, two or more traditional academic disciplines or
established areas of expertise. For example, in the humanities, students explore concepts such as time, place
and space, through the perspectives of disciplines such as history, geography, economics and psychology.
Learning in the sciences typically includes studies in biology, physics and chemistry. Technology may include
information technologies as well as new media. Language B often combines the study of communication,
literature and culture. The MYP model offers a solid foundation of knowledge in traditional subjects or
disciplines, and invites natural cross-fertilization within subject groups in addition to the fruitful exchanges
across subject groups.

Throughout the MYP, aims and objectives are broad enough to allow a variety of teaching and learning
approaches. Objectives provided by the IB for subjects in the MYP are defined as final objectives. The
precise choice and organization of content are left to schools in order to preserve flexibility. While teachers
will find it necessary to develop their own interim objectives and assessment practices in years 1–5, the
final objectives form the basis for the assessment criteria that are intended for use in the final assessment of

10 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

students’ work at the end of year 5. Whether or not schools request IB-validated grades for their students,
they are all required to organize learning and assessment in a way that is consistent with the prescribed
objectives.

Connections

Chapters 5 and 6 provide a detailed description of how teachers may draw on subject group aims and
objectives to rigorously ground interdisciplinary learning in disciplinary traditions.

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 or objectives shared
across subjects. Units of work may range in length and levels of complexity. Constructivist in spirit, units of
work include a sequence of learning experiences or schemes of work that must invite the student to engage
with content actively. 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. Schemes of work structure students’ overall
learning experiences over time in a unit of work. Sample schemes of work for all subject groups have been
written by practising teachers as a suggested means of achieving this. Teachers may choose to adopt the
samples offered, amend them to suit their own requirements, or write an alternative scheme of work.

In interdisciplinary instruction, units of work alternate between offering students 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. In quality interdisciplinary instructions,
students have ample opportunities to make such connections throughout each unit of work or a course.

Connections

Chapter 7 provides detailed guidelines and examples for the design of effective learning experiences in
interdisciplinary units.

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. Teachers must use the assessment
criteria to assess students’ work internally. All schools must use these criteria for final assessment.

When assessing interdisciplinary work teachers must select and employ criteria from two or more disciplines
or subjects and consider them in the larger context of students’ integrative work. When deciding on
assessment criteria for interdisciplinary work teachers are encouraged to consider four core dimensions
of student understanding: clarity of purpose, grounding in subjects or disciplines, productive integration
of disciplinary perspectives, and thoughtfulness. Each dimension is captured in question form below and
expanded on later in this guide.

• Does the work have a clear purpose that calls for an interdisciplinary approach?
• Is the work well grounded in objectives in two or more subjects?
• Does the work integrate subjects productively?
• Does the student exhibit a reflective stance regarding his or her integrative work?

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Chapter 1 The Middle Years Programme: An interdisciplinary view

Connections

Chapter 9 provides a detailed description of effective approaches and criteria to assess interdisciplinary
work. Assessed examples of student work illustrate assessment principles.

Reflection point

Consider your experience with interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP. You may draw on your own teaching
experience or on the experience of a colleague. In your opinion, what are the elements of the MYP that
most clearly support quality interdisciplinary teaching and learning? Explain why exactly you think this
is so.

12 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

Overview
Interdisciplinary learning is a central feature of the MYP curriculum and should be visible in teachers’
instructional designs, in student work and in the assessment criteria. To support teachers seeking to meet
the programme’s standards of interdisciplinary teaching and learning, this chapter addresses defined
interdisciplinary learning and understanding, offering illustrative examples of MYP students’ interdisciplinary
work.

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. Students demonstrate
interdisciplinary understanding of a particular topic when they can bring together concepts, methods,
or forms of communication from two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to explain a
phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product, or raise a new question in ways that would have been
unlikely through a single disciplinary means.

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.
Each quality of interdisciplinary understanding is defined and illustrated below with an example from a unit
entitled “The sound of music” in which students construct and perform with musical instruments.

Background to a unit of work entitled “The sound of music”

On a sunny afternoon, in the first period after lunch, 35 students were gathered in the library
practising their lines and tuning (if not fixing) their musical instruments. Teachers, other students,
the head of the school and a few parents looked on, hoping that the open rehearsal would work.
Unique about this concert was that the music and the African instruments themselves were created
by the students. As the show began, a timid strings section alternated with dominating percussion
variations, which in turn enlisted the winds in their rhythmic motifs. All the while the budding
instrument makers mixed concentration, nervousness and pride in their attentive stares at their
conductor and complicit smiles to their peers.

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Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

The students portrayed here are in year 2 of the MYP. They were invited by their physics and music
teachers to create an orchestra of traditional instruments and compose and perform a rhythmic
piece for their school. To do so, they had to study the physics of sound waves, understand how
instruments work to make sound and music, and learn to create a compelling musical experience
for their audience. The task could not be accomplished by focussing on music or physics alone—
integrating these perspectives is of the essence.

Interdisciplinary learning is purposeful

In quality interdisciplinary learning, the integration of disciplinary perspectives or subject areas is
purposeful. In other words, integrating disciplinary perspectives is not a goal in itself but a means to
deepen students’ understanding of their world and become more competent in it. Interdisciplinary learning
in the MYP seeks to:

• attend to the student learning expectations in the areas of interaction that escape single disciplinary
perspectives
• enrich student understanding of topics, objects or problems that they, their teachers, schools and
societies find compelling
• respond to a clear aim for which perspectives must be brought together: for example, to solve a
problem, create a product, build an explanation
• address a need : where the potential limitations of a single-disciplinary approach to a topic are
overcome by drawing on the resources of other disciplines.

Example from the unit of work entitled “The sound of music”

What purpose did teachers pursue? Why did understanding the sound of music matter?

• Understanding how instruments work to create compelling musical experiences serves as a

valuable purpose for interdisciplinary inquiry in the MYP.
• It sensitizes students to our human capacity to create compelling artistic experiences with
materials in our natural environment (human ingenuity).
• It enables students to appreciate instruments they encounter and the people who make and
play them (human ingenuity).
• It invites students to learn about design and problem solving, create future instruments of
their own and reflect on approaches to learning available to them.

Clarity regarding the purpose of interdisciplinary learning gives direction and meaning to students’ efforts.
It points to the problem or issue that students will examine, making its relevance visible. Having a clear
purpose for inquiry and work (solving a particular problem, explaining a phenomenon) enables teachers
and students to discern between more and less relevant disciplines and connections. When interdisciplinary
learning efforts do not have a clearly articulated purpose, contrived connections and fragmented learning
are more likely to occur.

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 Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

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. Interdisciplinary instruction does not replace disciplinary teaching; rather it builds
on it, selecting and reorganizing disciplinary learning goals and objectives in meaningful and connected
ways in the areas of interaction. Students exhibit quality interdisciplinary understandings when they:

• know, understand and apply knowledge, concepts, findings, tools, methods of inquiry, or forms of
communication in the selected disciplines—that is, as framed in subject group objectives
• employ such concepts and modes of thinking in ways that echo that of experts working in the
discipline—avoiding misconceptions or oversimplifications.

Example from the unit of work entitled “The sound of music”

To understand how musical instruments work students had to build the knowledge, understanding,
skills and attitudes of a physicist.

They learned:

• what constitutes a sound wave

• how sound changes depending on the wave’s longitude and amplitude, how sound travels
through different media
• how sound resonates with different materials.
They also learned how inquiry takes place in physics:

• generating hypotheses
• devising small-scale experiments to test them.
Understanding sound waves did not prepare these students to use sound in musically compelling
ways. In their music class, these students learned about composition and performance, that is, to
think as musicians.

They learned:

• how pitch can be used to create an appealing melody

• how volume creates dynamics and mood
• the role of motifs and variation in composition
• the power of using different kinds of instruments strategically to express intended moods.
In other words, essential to students’ interdisciplinary learning in the example of “The sound of
music” was the students’ adequate mastery of selected concepts and skills in the two disciplines
involved.

Disciplinary grounding of student work is an essential feature of the MYP interdisciplinary approach where
work across disciplines and subject areas builds on disciplinary learning.

When students fail to ground their work in the knowledge, skills and understandings presented in the
subject areas they fail to build quality interdisciplinary understanding—even if they show engagement and
motivation. A strong disciplinary grounding in students’ work does not mean that students must “fully master”
each discipline before integrating views. Rather, students are encouraged to master particular concepts and
modes of thinking in two or more disciplines that are relevant to meet the established purpose of their work.

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Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

Interdisciplinary learning is integrative

Although mastering selected concepts and skills in two or more disciplines is necessary, it is not sufficient
to produce quality interdisciplinary learning. Interdisciplinary learning, as conceived in the MYP, requires
that teachers and students integrate disciplinary perspectives, and that they do so deliberately and
productively. In quality interdisciplinary learning, disciplines are not merely juxtaposed around a “theme”,
neither are disciplinary connections made haphazardly. Rather, 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.

Example from the unit of work entitled “The sound of music”

In the music example, students integrated their understanding of sound waves and elements of
music in two fundamental ways.

1. Physics explains how musical instruments function. Students applied concepts such as wave
longitude, amplitude and resonance to explain exactly how percussion, wind and string
instruments produce sound. Doing so required them to think flexibly and accurately about
sound and to compare and contrast the mechanisms of sound production in different kinds of
musical instruments.
2. Music explores the expressive power of new sounds. Because their instruments produced
new types of sounds (materials and design gave rise to new timbres) students were asked to
reflect on the qualities of such sounds and explore their expressive potential in an aesthetically
appealing composition of their own.
Each integration yields a deeper or richer understanding of a topic deemed relevant: how musical
instruments produce sound and how sound can be used to create compelling musical experiences.

Integration is at the heart of interdisciplinary work. In multidisciplinary or thematic approaches to

learning, students examine a topic through distinct disciplinary perspectives but do not seek to make
connections across such perspectives. In the MYP, students are encouraged to bring together knowledge,
understanding, skills and attitudes learned in different disciplines or subject groups to deepen and enrich
their understanding.

An important source of concern about interdisciplinary teaching is what teachers and students experience
as “forced” or “contrived” connections between disciplines. Forced connections take place when integration
is considered as a goal in itself rather than a means to further understanding of a relevant topic or problem.

Further examples of interdisciplinary learning

Student interdisciplinary understandings vary greatly in scope and disciplinary combinations. To illustrate
the nature of interdisciplinary understanding further, this section introduces a second example of student
interdisciplinary work. The section following this includes additional examples, illustrating their connection
with the programme model.

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 Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

Overview of a unit of work entitled “Monsters”

The “Monsters” unit invited students in MYP year 4 to examine two contrasting views of human
nature. One view posits that humans are essentially kind, and that contextual and social pressures
lead humans to behave in selfish ways. The other view presents humans as primarily evil, waiting for
an opportunity to display greed and abuse power. Positions were examined through a close reading
of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in language A and language B
classes respectively. In their drama class, students learned about Brechtian theatre and the staging
and acting choices that invite audiences to reflect about societal tensions. In history, students learned
about the Milgram experiments and the Eugenics movement in the early 20th century. Echoing this
approach, science classes took advantage of the focus on human nature to raise ethical dilemmas
about our human search for scientific progress and technological development on the one hand and
the negative impact of progress on the environment on the other.

In one final project for this unit, students were asked to create and perform a play (Brechtian style)
that invited a reflection or presented a position about human nature. Each play was performed for
their music classmates and other visitors. One group of students framed their position on human
nature in the context of the popular reality shows that mix entertainment with manipulation,
humiliation and abuse. What follows is the opening poem for the play and an analysis of one
student’s interdisciplinary understanding.

Sample of student work—The D.E.M.O.N. Show

We are proud to present to the music class

As well as the honorable visiting team
A vision through the looking glass
At humanity at its densest cream

We wish to expose in your presence

The malicious demons that since the start
Took their eternal residence
In the depths of man’s fragile heart

We wish to prove to all you eager faces

That evil does not come in missions
It does not take its place in particular races
But is released when its carrier is exposed to certain conditions

See this man, this malicious mad creature

His lab coat as white as an old goat’s nipple
To explore human behaviour such as a teacher
He has locked up and tested a group of young people

What started off as a TV programme for people’s leisure

Where every participant’s goal was a money prize to be won
Has gradually become a spectacle for the public’s evil pleasure
As it witnesses their inner demons in freedom run

And all you present in this vast room

Will you leave or will you stay for more
To watch these subjects’ inevitable doom
Or associate yourselves to this evil that lies in our core?

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Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

Interdisciplinary understanding examined

How does this compelling poem reveal students’ interdisciplinary understanding?

Clear purpose
The poem invites the audience to reflect on the “demons” inhabiting “the depths of man’s fragile
heart” that are “released when its carrier is exposed to certain conditions”. By locating the analysis
in a common reality television show, the poem invites the young audience to act: “Will you leave or
will you stay for more / To watch these subjects’ inevitable doom / Or associate yourselves to this evil
that lies in our core?”

Disciplinary grounding
In the play, gesture, narration, and minimalist staging are effectively used in a classical Brechtian
tradition to remind the audience that they are witnessing a play and they have rational choices
to make. An exaggerated critical reference to science and the Milgram experiment studied in
humanities is embedded in the description of the scientist as a “malicious mad creature” prepared
to experiment with locked up young people. While the poem is suggestive, additional evidence of
disciplinary grounding stems from one student’s reflection journal excerpts.

• Language B: “William Golding shows, through the example of these schoolboys, how fragile
we can be to a change of environment and how easy it is for the evil inside us to be let loose,
how easy it is to express, as Ralph thought, the darkness of our human hearts.”
• Humanities: [explaining the reference to race misconceptions addressed by the poem] “I
believe that Hitler’s evil did not rise simply from his power, but was always present in his core
and all his cruel actions were calculated and taken in patient stages. This is made obvious by his
book Mein Kampf where he associates the Jews to the Marxists and any other possible reason
for Germany to be in its lamentable situation.”
• Brechtian theatre: “[Brechtian theatre reminds us that] man is in control of his own situation
and destiny. Moments of choice are to be pointed out, decisions to be made, all shown
throughout the process. Choice is centred on the main character and mainly focuses on actions
taken according to social factors. This choice must reflect on social injustices imposed upon
the character which is another distinct factor of Brechtian theatre: the suppressor over the
suppressed, the creator over the creation and the constructive over the destructive.”

Productive integrations
In the poem and the play, the disciplinary insights are “integrated” effectively to create a provocative
atmosphere of self-reflection and a critical stance toward sadistic voyeurism. The student intertwines
their references to literature, history and science seamlessly without breaking the poetic rhythm and
conceptual impetus of the work.

• Extracting concepts in literature to begin to explain the past: Reflecting on Lord of the Flies,
this student explains: “It is a normal habit in society, to create a monster that everyone hates,
thus the whole group unites to destroy it. Going back to history, this was the same case for
Germany, who used the Jews as the beast to be destroyed.”
• Integrating literature, history and drama to reflect about human nature: “All these
subjects [literature, history, drama] have in common two topic questions:
–– Are monsters man-made?
–– Who is responsible for the monsters we create?
This unit made us reflect on the monsters that arise in our society and on evil itself.”

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 Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

• “Through Lord of the Flies it is understood that evil is inside us all, we are born with it from the
start and most of us manage to conceal it inside our core. However, when exposed to certain
conditions, those inner demons inside us may be released, leading us to commit the most ghastly
atrocities. In the case of Frankenstein we get another view on monstrosity: we see that it is how a
society mistreats and excludes the creature that drives him to commit his monstrous acts.”
• “In the case of history, both questions listed above can be answered. The unfair treatment from
the Allies at the end of World War 1 created a bitter resentment in the heart of the Germans,
which explains their unfair treatment towards the Jewish. Yet, it is also obvious that a man such
as Hitler who took such pleasure in his despicable acts was a natural born monster.”

To sum up, the example outlined here offers a vivid picture of students’ interdisciplinary understanding and
suggest how multiple forms of evidence [poem, play, journals] reveal students’ increasingly intricate grasp
of a complex and relevant topic.

Reflection point

Answer the following questions using the student’s examples.

• What are the qualities of the student’s work that grab your attention?
• In your opinion, could a quality poem or play have been created without considering subjects such
as humanities, language A, language B and theatre?
• Does this student’s work remind you of any learning experience that you have designed (or could
design) for your students?

Relating interdisciplinary understanding to the

programme model
As the example above suggests, interdisciplinary work in the MYP typically spans subjects and areas of
interaction. The MYP model invites a variety of interdisciplinary combinations depending on the purpose
of students’ (and teachers’) efforts. To illustrate this point, a series of snapshots of students’ interdisciplinary
understanding are considered below in relation to the programme model.

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 19

Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

Unit topic: The Age of Enlightenment—when ideologies led to revolutions

Assignment: Students create an original poem that documents national identity and history. They
study literature to create an epic poem that is consistent with the literary conventions, personal
insights and historical narratives that define epic poetry; and history to understand reasons for,
events and outcomes of important revolutions.

Language A

Language B Humanities
ocial educati
a nd s on
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ea C
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om
•

mu

E
IB L ARN
ts
Environmen

E
ni t y

Understanding
ER
TH

and ser vice

Physical the Enlightenment

PROFIL

education Technology
as a revolution in
E thinking
• A

•
p pr

ty

ch
oa

ui

es en
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Sciences Mathematics

Arts

Figure 2

Unit topic: Cultural and environmental conditions that enabled ancient civilizations to
survive and thrive

Assignment: Students investigate ancient number systems (Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Incan) and
their uses to make hypotheses about why the number systems took the forms they did. They learn
elements in mathematics to understand how the ancient number systems worked, comparing them
to our current base ten system. They also study social structures, environmental resources, habits of
work and number use among different civilizations in humanities classes.

Language A

Language B Humanities

nd social educatio
lt ha n
•
ea C
H

om
•

mu

E
IB L ARN
ts
Environmen

E
ni t y

Understanding
ER
TH

and ser vice

Physical number systems

PROFIL

education Technology
in ancient
E civilizations
• A

•
p pr

ty

ch
oa

ui

es en
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g • Hum

Sciences Mathematics

Arts

Figure 3

20 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 2 Defining quality interdisciplinary learning

Unit topic: Making Ugandan jewelry to raise funds for a charity home

Assignment: Students create original pieces of jewelry that reflect traditional African aesthetics,
Ugandan heritage and identity and contribute to the development of a fundraising event at the
school. Students learn about the history and significance of symbols, colours and shapes in Ugandan
traditional jewelry. In technology they examine the physical properties and required technologies
that make manipulating metals and materials possible; they use visual art to produce distinctly
regional designs. Students also begin to develop a business plan for this fundraiser.

Language A

Language B Humanities

nd social educatio
lt ha n
•
ea C
H

om
•

mu

E
IB L ARN
ts
Environmen

E
ni t y
ER
TH

and ser vice

Physical
PROFIL

education Technology
E
• A

•
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ty

ch
oa

ui

es en
to ing
le a r n in an Unit on creating
g • Hum
Ugandan jewelry
to raise funds for a
Sciences Mathematics charity home

Arts

Figure 4

Reflection point

Consider a possible interdisciplinary unit of instruction. What might the unit be about? What might you
want students to understand in and across subjects? Explore how you would map the unit on to the MYP
framework.

Unit topic:
Assignment:
What students will need to learn:

Language A

Language B Humanities
social educatio
an d n
lth •
ea C
H

om
•

mu

E
IB L ARN
ts
Environmen

E
ni t y
ER
TH

and ser vice

Physical
PROFIL

education Technology
E
• A

•
ppr

ty

ch
oa

ui

es en
to ing
le a r n in an
g • Hum

Sciences Mathematics

Arts

Figure 5

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 21

Chapter 3 Why does interdisciplinary learning matter?

Overview
This chapter outlines the reasons that have led the MYP and experienced teachers to favour quality integrative
approaches in their teaching. Reasons range from a holistic view of students to genuine opportunities for
teachers’ professional development.

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.

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.

A holistic view of students recognizes diverse interests and talents, some of which might have remained
unseen in single disciplinary courses. In the MYP interdisciplinary learning is encouraged to harness such
interests and capabilities in order to nurture students’ deep understanding of relevant topics. 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.

I would hope every student would get turned on to the beauty of mathematical
systems, but some students don’t, and so I think a lot of students need another
avenue into the kind of thinking that I want to get across, and I think that
bringing in other disciplines allows that to happen. It turns their attention
to some areas where they want to learn about the stuff that they’ve kind of
been having trouble with. So, I get to reach some students that I hadn’t been
reaching before … with excitement and relevance.
Javier

I think interdisciplinary [teaching] … encourages different types of learning.

Although most of the kids I get are artists, some of them have other areas
of study that they do better in, that they’re more comfortable with. An
interdisciplinary approach gives them the opportunity to delve into things …
Some kids are able to write very coherently and other kids are able to show

22 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 3 Why does interdisciplinary learning matter?

understanding of factual information, concepts and issues better … [this class

enables them to] integrate that right directly into the artwork … I think that
there was more energy put into the work, more enthusiasm, more passion
about being able—almost like, it’s almost like they were finally allowed to make
a statement, you know, about something.
Paul

What my kids get from [interdisciplinary learning] is they become a community

of learners. They see what different people have to offer, and that’s always
important and always productive. I mean, kids can be really brutal to each
other, and so creating that sense of learning together, learning differently,
bringing different things to the table, finding different juxtapositions that
become catalysts that—while I may be a much stronger reader than the person
next to me, it’s because of something they saw differently than I did that I
can re-evaluate what I think or I can ask a different question and be inspired
intellectually by somebody else who thinks very differently from me.
Valerie

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.

When well designed, interdisciplinary instruction helps students understand their strengths and challenges
as learners. They gain confidence in their capacity to investigate areas of knowledge about which they know
little and develop relevant expertise. In doing so, interdisciplinary teaching strives to nurture students’ long-
term attitudes toward lifelong learning.

In the example “The sound of music”, students can address the failure of their instruments to make sound by
enlisting the expertise of the school’s physics teachers who can explain, for instance, the role of resonance
boxes in augmenting sound. Framing questions or problems, identifying available sources of expertise
and ensuring their own understanding prepares students as adaptable actors in our rapidly changing
information societies.

We, as co-teachers were stepping out of the process. We were coaching. We

were on the side kind of pushing or moving or adjusting, but they [the students]
were basically saying, “What does this mean? How do we figure this out?” One
group of kids took it upon themselves to write up on the board, brainstorm,
“What do we know and what do we need to figure out? Well, how do we figure
that out?” They owned the knowledge, they owned the problem in a way that I
don’t see kids doing often.
Michael

Highlighting an intellectually rigorous view of knowledge

Interdisciplinary learning invites students to appreciate the nature of knowledge in particular disciplines
and see the cohesion and the complementarity 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

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Chapter 3 Why does interdisciplinary learning matter?

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, much like theory of
knowledge teachers in the Diploma Programme. Teachers motivated by this possibility value students’
capacity to reflect about the nature of knowledge in ways that prepare them as knowledge managers. For
example, students may compare what constitutes evidence in art, history and biology as a way to enrich
their understanding of the nature of evidence. Other teachers may examine the role of symbolism in theatre,
music and visual arts seeking to inspire students’ original artistic productions.

You reach a wall in your own discipline, and then you’re just kind of grasping,
trying to figure—there’s so much out there, you know, what’s going to help you
kind of pull out of your discipline and kind of get that outer view. And I don’t
even know if I’ve chosen the best—I’ve chosen some—history, philosophy of
science, things like that, and I think that they did [help my students] to some
degree get that more macro, outer view.
Brian

The arts are in fluctuation now, I mean, in terms of contemporary thinking

of arts. And I think that arts education in schools is lagging behind, it is not
following contemporary trends [where boundaries across art forms are blurred].
In schools you do skill- or technique-based education. In drama … you do
monologues, and playwriting, and scripted plays, you know, Shakespeare …
That kind of thinking is completely outmoded. We’re teaching students the
processes of thinking across theatre, visual arts and music. We’re teaching them
an appreciation of the creative process … why does a piece of work have the
power it has … not just in technique … much more concept and thinking
based. These students aren’t just taught to do art: they’re taught to think why
they’re doing it, and how they’re doing it and where they’re doing it.
Matt

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—an MYP key commitment. 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. Interdisciplinary instruction becomes a necessary means to address problems of relevance in their
full complexity—problems that would have been intractable in disciplinary courses alone.

Complex topics or problems such as the impact of climate change on health are typically multifaceted.
Particular dimensions (for example, carbon heat trapping, greenhouse gas emissions, and tropical diseases
and prevention) are typically studied by different disciplines (chemistry, atmospheric sciences, and public
health). For teachers who seek to support students’ comprehensive understanding of the problem, drawing
on these various perspectives becomes a necessity.

[Using an interdisciplinary approach] is partly to dig a little deeper and get

much more interesting answers in terms of some of the problems that we’re
facing, and also it gives me the ability to address real-life problems. So, for
example, with the global climate change unit, using only science, I get to
address only alternative fuel sources, and a lot of times, those alternative fuel
sources are unrealistic without the context of economics or politics. For me,
it’s about encouraging depth of thinking for the students and also to address
real-life problems. That to me was a powerful realization, because I think …
students, you know, they have the opportunity to learn some really kind of

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 Chapter 3 Why does interdisciplinary learning matter?

fascinating things, but the way the information is presented is just sort of dry
workbook, “here’s the information,” so I thought that by doing this curriculum,
I could instill some emotion and some social relevancy into the curriculum that
might sort of challenge students, and maybe even outrage them sometimes,
which I think can be good, you know, push the buttons once in a while.
Javier

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. Still others appreciate the challenge of stretching
beyond their comfort zone to increase the richness of what they teach. Finally, teachers value the
collaborative nature of interdisciplinary work and the chance to build healthy relationships among adults in
their school communities. They also view interdisciplinary teaching as an opportunity to show students how
to collaborate effectively, listen intently, challenge arguments and offer meta-disciplinary views.

“The sound of music” project offered an opportunity for each teacher to expand their expertise. The music
teacher became intrigued by the science behind the musical arrangements she held dear. The science
teacher gained a new appreciation for the complexity of musical instruments. Students themselves
witnessed their teachers’ determination to learn beyond their disciplines, as teachers consulted with expert
musicians and physicists and challenged their own beliefs.

Well, I certainly have learned a lot, and I’ve challenged myself more with looking
at things from different angles as well. I mean, I teach history and English, and I
could have left out the psychology aspect and probably made things easier on
the kids but I think it’s just a wonderful thing for me, in the area of the humanities
especially, to just continue to learn and look at it this way and that way.
Michaela
Ultimately, interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP builds on a serious commitment to teachers’ capacity
to grow as thinkers, citizens and professionals. For many teachers, this is perhaps the most personally
meaningful motivation to teach across disciplinary lines:

My goal is to transform [the students]; to challenge them to think deeply; to

become human beings in the fullest sense of the term. I want them to be weary
of simple solutions. I am relentless. I ask them questions to move their thinking
one further step. I view ideas in the disciplines as arrows in a quiver, which I use
selectively and with precision to transform thoughts at each time. That makes
teaching meaningful to me as a person.
Judi

Reflection point

Take time to reflect about your own reasons for teaching in interdisciplinary ways in the MYP. First, you
may consider brainstorming multiple reasons that come to mind and then deciding which ones are most
relevant for you. Consider discussing these with your peers. It may be useful to use a chart such as the
one below.

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Chapter 3 Why does interdisciplinary learning matter?

Disciplinary teaching Interdisciplinary teaching

• •

• •

• •
Advantages

• •

• •

• •

• •

• •

• •

• •

• •

• •
Risks

• •

• •

• •

• •

Figure 6

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Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

Overview
This chapter addresses instructional designs. Specifically, it describes a series of approaches to quality
interdisciplinary teaching. Two questions are addressed and illustrated with examples from practice.

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.

How might teachers approach interdisciplinary

instruction in the MYP?
The MYP recognizes that teachers can devise a broad variety of quality interdisciplinary units of instruction.
Teaching designs vary regarding their purpose and content focus, the selection of disciplines involved,
grade level taught, as well as scope and forms of teacher collaboration required. Recognizing this diversity
is important to enable teachers to find comfortable opportunities for creative and rigorous interdisciplinary
explorations with their colleagues and students.

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. Interdisciplinary teaching may vary from small-
scale disciplinary extensions; to interdisciplinary “threads” in a course; to large scale interdisciplinary units
or projects.

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
neighbouring discipline can enrich their students’ understanding of the discipline they teach. For example,
a biology teacher may “borrow” select lessons in still-life drawing to further students’ capacity to observe
during fieldwork. 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.
These examples illustrate how courses that are primarily disciplinary can benefit from quality, modest forays
into neighbouring disciplines.

Contrastingly, other teachers may prefer to weave an interdisciplinary thread throughout their disciplinary
courses. For instance, a history teacher may revisit the question of how monuments, art works and
propaganda use visual symbols to tell a story about society, preparing students to create informed historical
monuments of their own by the end of the year. A biology teacher may include selected concepts in ethics or
moral philosophy to invite their students to reflect about our human responsibility towards the environment
and other species.

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. A unit on how to mitigate and adapt to climate change
demands insights from the natural sciences as well as economics, public health, and political science.

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Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

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 to address
manageable concepts outside their own training. In further instances, teachers engage in collaborative
planning and approach teaching either by co-teaching a single group of students or by sensibly linking
courses. While in a single teacher arrangement teachers can model integrative thinking for students
through their own example, a collaborative teaching approach enables students to witness differences and
complementarities between disciplinary perspectives embodied by each teacher.

Among the great variety of fruitful approaches to interdisciplinary teaching three common standards of
quality remain unchanged. Quality teaching must yield student work that:

• has a relevant learning or inquiry purpose

• is well grounded in disciplinary expertise in the subject groups
• integrates disciplinary perspectives productively.

What are the core questions and design principles

of quality interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP?
Core questions and design principles
Teaching designs (interdisciplinary or not) involve making thoughtful decisions about what to teach, what
exactly students should do to learn and how one might assess and support students’ progress. MYP: From
principles into practice (August 2008) offers a series of strategies for instructional design and curriculum
coordination that address these questions in practical terms. When teachers seek to foster students’ deep
interdisciplinary understanding, making these decisions invites particular considerations that will be
addressed in the remainder of this chapter.

Teachers planning an interdisciplinary unit or project must ask themselves five fundamental questions. For
each question the MYP offers a concrete strategy for quality instructional design. Questions and design
principles are first outlined and then introduced below.

1. How do we identify multifaceted unit questions?

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. What disciplinary concepts and modes of thinking in the MYP subjects will students need to develop
in order to address the question under study?
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—and serve as a
basis for assessment.
3. How will disciplinary insights be productively integrated to deepen student understanding of the
topic at hand?
In the MYP, teachers articulate the specific connections or integrative understandings across subjects
and subject groups that they seek to support among students. These understandings will also be
assessed.

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 Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

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. How will teachers and students know that students are building interdisciplinary understandings?
In designing interdisciplinary instruction, MYP teachers are encouraged to devise a targeted
assessment approach that integrates MYP objectives and criteria to assess clarity of purpose,
disciplinary grounding, integration, and reflectiveness in students’ interdisciplinary work.
When designing units of work of various scopes, the MYP interdisciplinary teaching model introduced
here invites teachers to move among its elements in any way they feel comfortable. We may also
emphasize different elements at different moments of a design because, in practice, the framework
elements are interrelated and mutually informing. 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. 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 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 the unit “The sound of music”, the key question “how do instruments
produce sound to create interesting pieces of music?” captures the multidimensional nature of the topic,
providing clarity of purpose as the class engages in the unit’s investigations. 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 meaningful and engaging
to students—they must connect with students’ prior knowledge, life circumstances, and interests in
developmentally appropriate ways. Similarly, powerful questions engage teachers’ own expertise, interests
and commitments. Perhaps most importantly, the MYP’s multifaceted unit questions are vividly relevant to
the societies in which we live—capturing important aspects of the world and human experience typically
framed in the areas of interaction.

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Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate a relevant multifaceted unit question?

In the unit, the topic was relevant to teachers, society and students alike. Rita, the teacher and an
accomplished musician in her own right, explained how intriguing she found the question of how
exactly her instruments produced sound. Physics, once a distant discipline, became suddenly a very
interesting one. She also valued students’ appreciation of traditional African instruments especially
as rapid globalization threatens to turn ancient cultural heritage into commodities. Astrid, who
contributed to teaching music for the unit, explained: “The students wanted to do something that
sounds good. I remember the case of this student who really wanted to know how to make a good
drum. ‘Look, look!’, he shouted, ‘I have made a drum and there is sound in it and there is even a heart
in it’”. Rita added: “The nice thing is that they stayed, the bell rang and they stayed, they wanted to
ask questions. ‘What scale is my voice?’ ‘Why does my instrument not work?’”

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.

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate a feasible multifaceted unit question?

The teachers, Marcie and Rita, felt confident that they had the expertise to address the topic, even if
later in the unit they realized the limits of their capacity to explain why a particular instrument was
not making the expected sound or how to create a graphic model of sound waves travelling inside
a resonance box. In both cases, however, they were able to enlist the help of more knowledgeable
individuals. First, Rita brought in a professional native musician and instrument maker who eventually
joined the group to help students create their rhythmic composition. Marcie then consulted with the
high school physics teacher on viable and age-appropriate representations of sound waves for her
students.

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 goes beyond naming a broad theme being studied such as
“musical instruments”. Rather, it gives students a sense of what aspects of the theme will be examined, why
such examination matters and why an interdisciplinary approach is warranted.

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate a clearly framed multifaceted unit question?

In the unit, the very description of the topic makes both “sound” and “music” as well as the connection
between them clear—“how do instruments produce sound to create interesting pieces of music?”

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 Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

Connections

Chapter 5 revisits and provides examples, practical tools and strategies to design multifaceted questions
in the context of the areas of interaction.

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 or established areas of expertise, “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. MYP
teachers must identify and select key disciplinary understandings specified in the subject-specific goals and
contents.

In the MYP disciplinary understandings are not limited to the knowledge base in a given subject. Rather,
students are invited to learn the methods for generating knowledge, how disciplinary knowledge can
be employed to help us understand and act in the world, and how knowledge is communicated in the
discipline (for example, scientific reports, critical essays). In an MYP unit design, disciplinary understandings
must be “robust” and “selective”.

Robust disciplinary understandings: In the MYP, teachers are encouraged to align disciplinary
understandings with the MYP subject-specific aims and objectives and their school and national subject-
specific content. 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.

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate robust disciplinary understandings?

Understanding of sound from a physics perspective implies a close examination of intrinsic elements
of sound waves (propagation, medium, amplitude and length), the extrinsic manifestation of the
sound wave (rarefaction and compression), and the incidence that a sound wave has on materials
and how these materials qualify the sound wave (vibration, resonance, echo).

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 weigh 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.
This selection often requires that teachers rearrange the contents stipulated in the school or national
curriculum.

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Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate selective disciplinary understandings?

As already explained, to understand how instruments make sound and how to use sound to create
aesthetic experiences, students were expected to master a few key selected concepts in physics
and in music. Other disciplines and perspectives, such us traditional decorative visual arts or the
history of African musical instruments were considered, but not included in this unit to ensure a
deep understanding of music and physics within the available time frame.

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 and meaningfully 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. There are multiple ways in which concepts and
modes of thinking in different disciplines connect, and one unit or course may draw on multiple forms of
integration.

In quality interdisciplinary designs, integrative understandings are more than superficial links among
disciplinary ideas. Rather, they deepen students’ understanding. MYP teachers must articulate the
connections across disciplines that they seek to nurture, and they must assess students’ developing capacity
to 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.

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate how to align understandings with
multifaceted unit questions?

Teachers expect students to become able to use what they know about the physics of “sound”
to produce an informed explanation of how their instruments work. For students, the instrument
itself became the point of integration. Conversely, exploring new kinds of sound produced by
their instruments could inspire students to push the boundaries of what counts as music in more
traditional terms. Both connections are key to the overall purpose of the unit.

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.

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 Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate students advancing their understanding?

The teachers, Rita and Marcie, moved beyond “helping students see connections between physics
and music”. They framed integrative understandings as follows.

“Students will be able to explain how musical instruments work by understanding the science of
sound. Indeed, they will use their understanding of physics to build their own instruments and
demonstrate elements of acoustics, resonance, pitch and vibration.

Students will expand, transform, and create ‘new’ music. Through the use of new (unfamiliar) sounds
they will expand their sensibilities about what is possible outside of canonical music.”

Connections

Chapters 6 and 7 illustrate how teachers can draw on MYP aims and objectives and school-based curricular
content to inform the selection and design of expected disciplinary and integrated understandings in an
interdisciplinary unit.

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. For example, the field trip may be part of a unit on endangered species
and students may be asked to identify evidence of predator–prey interactions during their trip to build
hypotheses about possible threats to the local ecosystem.

Performances of understanding allow students both to build and demonstrate their understanding in and
across subjects. They are based on the theory that understanding is not something we have—like a set
of facts we possess—but rather it is something we can do. Note that by using the term “performances”,
the MYP model does not emphasize “stage performances” such as plays or concerts. Rather, it refers to
opportunities to consider something related to the knowledge we already possess, whether such thinking
results in a group presentation, an essay, or a mental computation to respond to a question.

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.

Introductory performances: Introductory performances offer an accessible entry to—and preview of—
the larger multifaceted unit question and its potential complexity.

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Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

What introductory performances could be used in the unit on “The sound of music”?

Students can begin by attending a local concert that employs traditional African instruments. Their
task is to identify sounds they enjoy and attempt to explain how such sounds are produced by the
instruments they see being performed. During a class discussion afterwards, teachers may introduce
the multifaceted unit question that will guide inquiry throughout the unit and identify the areas
of expertise that the class will need to explore. Introductory performances offer opportunities for
diagnostic assessment, as students make their initial beliefs and knowledge visible. Furthermore,
these early performances play a key role in helping students understand the multifaceted nature of
their unit question and the purpose and relevance of the work to be accomplished.

Midway supported synthesis performances: Midway syntheses offer students structured support on a
manageable integration.

What midway syntheses could be used in the unit on “The sound of music”?

Rita and Marcie supported students in their effort to “translate” physical features of sound into music
creating a table similar to the one below.

Science Music

Wave amplitude Volume

The elements that determine the speed of sound: The elements that determine the speed of sound
in a music context:

• Elasticity • (Elasticity) Dryness and softness of the

• Density instrument’s material
• Temperature of medium. • Density of the instrument’s material
• Temperature of instrument.

Wave longitude (Frequency, for example, 440 Pitch (Musical note, for example the central A [la] in
vibrations per second) the traditional keyboard)

Figure 7

Also, midway in the unit, the students’ assignment in the physics class required them to manipulate
sound waves to see their impact on sound produced by musical materials and create their own visual
models about how sound worked in each case. For example, students placed a tuning fork in water
and watched the waves it generated. They also placed dry grains of rice on a drum and watched
pattern formations when it vibrated, capturing the relationship between sound and sound waves,
rarefaction and compression. Students’ preliminary models were revised through class discussions.

Final synthesis performances: These performances allow students to bring disciplines together in a way
that shows mastery and greater independence.

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 Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

What final synthesis performances could be used in the unit on “The sound of music”?

Moving beyond initial analogies and connections Marcie and Rita aspired to prepare students to
actually explain how instruments make sound. Visual representations of the sound waves produced
by the vibration of a string or a drum skin were of the essence as was an effective performance that
would illustrate richness in rhythms and qualities of sound made by various instruments.

Disciplinary tooling performances: Disciplinary tooling performances help students build adequate
foundations in the subjects. These performances enable teachers and students to turn their focus toward
deepening particular disciplinary understandings.

What disciplinary tooling performances could be used in the unit on “The sound of music”?

In this example, music lessons invite students to apply the concept of variation in composition to
create a musical piece of their own. In physics students develop hypotheses about how sound travels
through different media and devise small experiments to test them. Naturally, throughout a well-
designed unit, students alternate between disciplinary and synthetic performances.

Performances of understanding are carefully sequenced

Performances of understanding are sequenced to advance interdisciplinary understanding of the topic.
Whether teachers begin their planning with a very clear articulation of desired interdisciplinary learning
outcomes or with a good definition of an area for open exploration, 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.

Connections

Chapter 8 offers additional examples and guidelines to craft effective performances of understanding in
interdisciplinary MYP units.

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 further support student learning. For example, teachers are encouraged to employ strategies to gather
information about student learning that range from classroom observations to close reading of student
journals and joint analysis of their portfolios. 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

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Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

performances serve two functions: they build student understandings, 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. Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP places subject-
based criteria in the broader framework of targeted assessment. This assessment approach targets not only
students’ subject-specific knowledge, understanding, inquiry skills and communication capacity but also
their capacity to synthesize and reflect about the process of interdisciplinary learning.

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.

How does the unit on “The sound of music” demonstrate targeted assessment?

Building their instruments and performing their composition gave students a clear sense of purpose
for their work. Some students’ comments revealed the purpose and opportunities in their inquiry in
further detail.

You can engage with the music better if it is something you made.

When you understand how your instruments make sound you can
manipulate your instrument in new ways, you can experiment.
Explaining how instruments produce sound through visual models offered an insight into both a
disciplinary grounding as well as an integrative one, revealing acquired understandings as well as
misconceptions. For example, a student was able to explain how waves travel through air fluently
from a physics perspective. Yet when asked why an African guitar needed a resonance box, one
student mistakenly, though understandably, explained “because the box makes an echo and then
you hear the music better”.

A reflective stance about interdisciplinary work was revealed by another student in the group. He
explained that the challenge of the unit was to “hold all the pieces together” in his mind. He went on
to describe how, as a musical child, he had always enjoyed listening to music yet understanding how
sound is produced adds another layer to that appreciation, “I now enjoy music even more”.

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,

36 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

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.

A schematic summary of a unit of work

Examples of exemplary interdisciplinary work can be found across schools and regions. Examining them
through the perspective of the MYP approach to interdisciplinary teaching offers further illustration of the
ways in which the approach can inform and organize practice. A schematic summary of one unit is offered
here. The theme of the unit of work was “Exile”. In-depth examinations of this and other units appear in
chapters 5 to 9.

MULTIFACETED UNIT QUESTION

What is exile? Exploring its many forms, experiences and expressions

DISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDINGS

Visual arts Theatre Music

Students will understand how Students will understand the Students will understand how
sculptures and installations are origins and principle of Butoh musicians have challenged
used to convey personal and theatre, its meditational quality traditional conceptions of music.
social expressions of exile. and aesthetic, and how it
challenges traditional views of
theatrical performance.

PERFORMANCES OF UNDERSTANDING (Disciplinary tooling)

Visual arts Theatre Music

• Research lives and work • Research Butoh theatre • Research music of John
of Do-ho Suh and Kara tradition and technique as Cage, Henry Cowell (The
Walker who have been a “dance of darkness” and Banshee), Steve Reich
exiled or who have exiled the search for awareness. (clapping music).
themselves from society. • Artist’s notebook entry • Critique and perform a
• Artist’s notebook entry must inform, express and piece of contemporary
must inform, express and synthesize their findings. music.
synthesize their findings. • Explore and expand • Developmental workbook
• Critique and expand performance. entry must inform, express
artists’ work. and synthesize research.

INTEGRATIVE UNDERSTANDINGS

Through this unit students will understand the role of symbolism and self-reference in contemporary
theatre, music and visual arts.
They will move away from art in the traditional skills-based sense to a more conceptual understanding
through the topic of exile.
Students will gain a deeper and more personally meaningful understanding of exile drawing on their
own personal experiences and that of others. They will gain nuance in their understanding of exile by
re-representing and exploring it in multiple artistic media.

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 37

Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

PERFORMANCES OF UNDERSTANDING (Syntheses)

Introductory performance: Through class discussion students share multiple meanings and expressions
of “exile” (individual and social). They examine metaphors of exile and reasons about forces that cause it.
Midway synthesis: Students create a mood board that visually represents how their findings in visual
arts, theatre and music are integrated. They introduce their mood board to the class.
Midway synthesis: Students develop a draft proposal for their “happening”. The “happening” is to
include adequate symbol use and make references to the art forms examined.
Final synthesis: Students develop and perform an original “happening” that expresses what exile means
to them.

TARGETED ASSESSMENT

Multiple sources of evidence used: discussion, journal reflections, proposal, mood board, reflection.
Criteria focused on students’ (a) clarity about the purpose of their “happening” (what they are trying to
accomplish and why it matters); (b) ability to place their work in the context of contemporary movements
in the three forms of art (subject-specific criteria included); (c) effective integration of art forms to reveal
novel interpretations of exile; and (d) their capacity to reflect about the process of creation and the
achievements and limitations of their work.

Figure 8

Further examples of resources for planning

interdisciplinary teaching
MYP interdisciplinary teaching framework: A teacher’s guide

ELEMENTS OF
INTERDISCIPLINARY
GUIDING QUESTIONS
TEACHING
FRAMEWORK

Multifaceted topic/unit question: What topics or issues will this unit address through
an interdisciplinary design?

• Relevant • Is the topic/question of interest and importance to students, me and

society?
• Is the topic/question meaningful and engaging to students and me?
• Is the topic developmentally appropriate for students?

• Feasible • Are there teaching resources available?

• Is there sufficient time for a deep exploration of the topic?
• Is there appropriate expertise available?

• Clearly framed • Is the topic/question framed so that students understand the nature of our
interdisciplinary work in the unit?

38 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

Disciplinary understandings: What disciplinary concepts, tools and modes of thinking will students need to
understand the topic?

• Robust • Does the unit capture important concepts and modes of thinking in two or
more disciplines?

• Selective • Does the unit focus on the most important concepts and modes of thinking
in two or more disciplines given the topic under study?

Integrative understandings: What connections across disciplines will students need to make to understand?

• Tied to the purpose of • Do the integrative understandings add coherence to the design?
the unit

• Clearly described • Are the integrative understandings described in such a way that students
can understand them?

Performances of understanding: What will students do to learn?

• Foster clarity of • Do the performances help students appreciate the purpose of their inquiry?
purpose, disciplinary • Do the performances build disciplinary grounding?
grounding, productive
• Do the performances develop productive integrations across the
integrations and
disciplines?
thoughtfulness
• Do the performances reflect the learning of the students?

• Progressively advance • Do the introductory performances, disciplinary tooling performances, midway

interdisciplinary syntheses and synthetic final performances move progressively toward
understanding of the deeper interdisciplinary understanding?
topic

• Take advantage of • Does the unit provide a variety of opportunities for students to advance
rich experiences and understanding?
resources

Targeted assessment: How will we and students know that they are coming to understand
the topic in depth?

• Draws on a • Does the assessment consider all relevant aspects and indicators of student
representative selection understanding?
of student work

• Is formative and • Is the assessment designed to support students and inform instruction
summative along the way?

• Pays attention to • Does the assessment pay attention to clarity of purpose, disciplinary
clarity of purpose, grounding, productive integrations and thoughtfulness?
disciplinary
grounding, productive
integrations and
thoughtfulness

Figure 9

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 39

Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

The following diagram (figure 10) is a visual representation of the table in figure 8.

Multifaceted topics are…

Multifaceted topic/unit questions
What is exile? Exploring its many forms, experiences and expressions • relevant
• feasible
• clearly framed

Disciplinary understandings
Disciplinary Disciplinary Disciplinary
are…
understanding: understanding: understanding:
Visual arts Theatre Music • robust
• Students will • Students will • Students will • selective
understand how understand understand
sculptures and the origins and how musicians
installations are principle of have challenged
used to convey Butoh theatre, traditional
personal and its meditational conceptions of
social expressions quality and music.
of exile. aesthetic, and
how it challenges
traditional views
of theatrical
performance.

Integrative understandings
Integrative understanding 1 Integrative understanding 2
are…
Students will understand the role Students will gain a deeper and
of symbolism and self-reference in more personally meaningful • tied to the purpose of
contemporary theatre, music and understanding of exile drawing on
visual arts. They will move away their own personal experiences and the unit
from art in the traditional skills- that of others. They will gain nuance • clearly described
based sense to a more conceptual in their understanding of exile by
understanding through the topic of re-representing and exploring it in
exile. multiple artistic media.

Performances of
Introductory performance
Through class discussions students share multiple meanings and expressions of “exile” understanding…
(individual and social). They examine metaphors of exile and reasons about forces that • foster clarity of purpose,
cause it.
disciplinary grounding,
Midway synthesis performance
productive integrations
Students create a mood board that visually represents how their findings in visual arts,
theatre and music are integrated. They introduce their mood board to the class. and thoughtfulness
Midway synthesis performance • progressively advance
Students develop a draft proposal for their “happening”. The “happening” is to include interdisciplinary
adequate symbol use and make references to the art-forms examined.
understanding of the
Final synthesis performance
Students develop and perform an original “happening” that expresses what exile topic
means to them. • take advantage of rich
experiences and resources

Targeted assessment…
Targeted assessment
Multiple sources of evidence used: discussion, journal reflections, proposal, mood • draws on a representative
board, reflection. selection of student work
Criteria focused on students’
• is formative and
a. clarity about the purpose in their “happening” (what they are trying to accomplish
and why it matters) summative
b. ability to place their work in the context of contemporary movements in the three • pays attention to clarity
forms of art (subject-specific criteria included)
of purpose, disciplinary
c. effective integration of art forms to reveal novel interpretations of exile and
grounding, productive
d. their capacity to reflect about the process of creation and the achievements and
limitations of their work. integrations and
thoughtfulness

Figure 10

40 MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning

 Chapter 4 Interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP

The following checklist may be useful in designing units of work.

CHECKLIST FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHING

COMMENTS
Is my unit designed with the following fundamental concepts in mind?
Select those applicable.
• Holistic learning [ ]
• Intercultural awareness [ ]
• Communication [ ]
Is my unit designed to nurture interdisciplinary learning that is
• purposeful [ ]
• disciplined [ ]
• integrative [ ]
Have I designed the unit around a multifaceted unit question or topic that is
• relevant [ ]
• feasible [ ]
• clearly framed [ ]
Are the disciplinary understandings in my unit
• robust [ ]
• selective [ ]
In my unit, are the integrative understandings
• tied to the purpose of the unit [ ]
• clearly described [ ]
In my unit, are the performances of understanding designed to
• foster clarity of purpose, disciplinary grounding, productive integrations and
thoughtfulness [ ]
• progressively advance interdisciplinary understanding of the topic [ ]
• take advantage of rich experiences and resources [ ]
Have I planned targeted assessment that
• draws on a representative selection of student work [ ]
• is formative and summative [ ]
• pays attention to the clarity of purpose, disciplinary grounding, productive
integrations and thoughtfulness [ ]

Figure 11

Reflection point

In this chapter you have been introduced to the MYP model for interdisciplinary teaching. Based on this
first encounter, what do you view as the promises or the advantages in a model of this kind and what are
the puzzles or concerns that the model presents you with so far?
Make a list of each and use your reflection to guide your readings of chapters 5 to 9. Remember that you
can read the chapters in any order.

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 41

Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the
areas of interaction

Overview
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. A question such as “how can our local community make
sustainable use of our river’s ecosystem?” requires insights from economics, geography and biology. A
question such as “what constitutes an effective health campaign in our school?” will intertwine human
biology, language and graphic design. Multifaceted unit questions of this kind guide student learning and
inquiry, giving a clear sense of purpose to students’ work.

This chapter guides teachers interested in crafting effective topics for interdisciplinary teaching. Specifically,
it considers:

• What topics are worth teaching in interdisciplinary ways?

• What makes a multifaceted unit question suitable for interdisciplinary instruction?
• How can teachers design quality interdisciplinary units?

Connections

Chapter 6 introduces the challenges of building disciplinary understanding and offers strategies to do
so in interdisciplinary units. Additional guidance for designing learning experiences within each subject
group can be found in subject group guides.

What topics are worth teaching in interdisciplinary

ways?
Experienced MYP teachers recognize that not all topics are equally suited for quality interdisciplinary
examination. Indeed for many topics, (for example, understanding genetic inheritance) a single discipline
or subject approach may suffice and often be preferable. A serious treatment of such topics can nurture
students’ disciplinary capabilities, for example, their ability to generate and test hypotheses, or build
complex explanations of historical events. Because such understandings are not easily developed, carefully
designed learning experiences are essential to support students’ disciplinary growth.

Some topics, however, defy single disciplinary treatment. Understanding them demands that students
integrate two or more bodies of expertise. Because these topics address two or more dimensions of a
given topic they are called multifaceted. Understanding how the arts embody cultural traditions demands
that students learn elements of history, music, visual arts and perhaps anthropology. Understanding
how to mitigate climate change demands that students learn both about climate science and about
economic incentives or environmental ethics. To examine how teachers might craft multifaceted topics for
interdisciplinary teaching consider an example in which students study sikkus as cultural artifacts.

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 Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

An example: Sikkus in Latin American culture

Students in MYP year 3 are studying the sikku, a musical instrument originally produced by pre-
Columbian inhabitants of the Andes in South America. They treat it both as a wind instrument and
as a traditional cultural product. “The sikku survived over multiple centuries as part of the local
folklore”, explained Raul, one of the teachers. Today, however, it risks disappearing under the forces
of globalization. He went on to describe the purpose of the unit.

This unit is essentially about Latin American culture. It seeks to help

students become aware of, and appreciate their cultural heritage
through the arts. In this unit students learn that the arts embody
multiple expressions of a community and transcend the community
itself reflecting its essential values. The unit’s final goal is to create a
sustainable development project in low income communities to ensure
that children have access to instruments that enable them to continue
to play our regional music.
Raul
The unit gathered teachers in disciplines from music, visual arts and technology, to science,
geography and history. Learning about sound waves enables students to create sikkus out of
recyclable materials. Principles of scientific experimentation and technological design help them
determine appropriate tube lengths. Learning about pre-Columbian values and aesthetics leads
them to decorate their instruments with ancient motifs and perform traditional melodies. Perhaps
most importantly, documenting their work enabled them to teach children in a local underserved
school to make and play sikkus as a way of preserving their ancestral traditions.

This unit effectively focused students’ and faculty attention on three multifaceted unit questions for
inquiry. Each question addresses a particular aspect of the issue under study and represented itself
as an opportunity to integrate disciplinary perspectives. Each question enables teachers to locate
their disciplinary contributions on a shared conceptual map of the unit as a whole.

1. How can we create a sikku that can be played in a pentatonic scale?

The first question centres on the production of sikkus for which knowledge in physics, technology
and music are necessary. The question is informed by the aspirations of human ingenuity in exploring
the origins and development of sikkus over time.

2. In what ways does a sikku embody our Latin American cultural traditions?
This question placed the instrument in the larger context of Latin American culture and tradition,
drawing on history, geography, visual arts and music to enrich students’ understanding of the
cultural meanings embodied in the instrument.

3. How can we preserve our cultural traditions in a sustainable way at a time of rapid
globalization?
The last question invited students to apply what they have learned to the solution of the practical
challenge of preserving Latin American cultural roots in their community. It brought together music,
visual arts, technology, history and geography. This question and the one before seek to prepare
students for community and service.

Essential to multifaceted unit questions in the MYP interdisciplinary teaching approach is the fact that they
embody dimensions that are typically studied by experts in different disciplines or established fields of
knowledge. These questions require that students integrate disciplinary perspectives in order to create
more complex, thorough and accurate explanations, solutions or products. Most importantly, they establish
the learning agenda for a unit or course.

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 43

Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

Consider the following examples of multifaceted questions, the subjects they speak to and the area of
interaction contexts in which they can be placed:

Examples of multifaceted unit questions

Unit question Related subjects Related area of interaction

How have ancient civilizations Humanities (history, geography, Human ingenuity

used their environments and political science); sciences
• the processes involved
social organizations to develop, (environmental sciences); arts
in innovation, creation,
thrive and collapse? (visual arts)
development and change
• the individual desire to
create, develop or change
things
• how systems or products
develop and change over
time

Can an awareness campaign Sciences (biology); humanities Health and social education
addressing the problems of (psychology or sociology);
• ourselves in the wider
negative body image among language A and language B; arts
society—including
teenagers today be effective in (graphic design)
issues such as freedom,
our school?
government health
policies and globalization
• ourselves and others—
including issues such as
relationships, sex and
death

How do the communities living Humanities (anthropology, Community and service

by our local river relate to the geography, economics,
• different communities
river along its course? psychology); sciences (biology,
—including the various
chemistry)
forms of community,
the needs of different
communities, the issues
within the communities,
organizations within
communities

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 Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

What is the impact of economic Humanities (economics, Environments

globalization on the lives of rural sociology); sciences
• the roles our environments
communities in India, China or (environmental sciences);
play in the lives and well-
Mexico? language A and language B
being of humankind
(regional literature); arts (film)
• the effects of one
environment on another
• the effects of our actions,
attitudes and constructs,
such as sustainable
development and
conservation
• physical, social, political,
economic and cultural
dimensions

What are the expected Sciences (chemistry, Environments

consequences of climate change oceanography); humanities
• the nature and role of
on our environment? (geography, economics)
local and international
organizations responsible
for protecting our natural
environments
• how organizational
policies in one
environmental dimension
can affect other
environments
• our responsibilities to our
environments

Reflection point

Consider the following topics and outline the subject groups, disciplines and areas of interaction in
which they may be grounded.
• Why is it important to lower our city’s carbon footprint and what can individuals and the city do
about it?
• Historical monuments: making art about the past and for the future.
Now revisit your own curriculum and propose a small number of multifaceted unit questions that seem
to capture central topics in your teaching, or questions that may enable you to connect with another
subject in a fruitful way.

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Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

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, weighing the learning opportunities offered by
candidate topics against one another. For example, in the unit on sikkus in Latin American culture, Raul and
his colleagues may have considered the benefits of how various traditional instruments work (as Marcie
and Rita did in the previous example) versus focusing on one instrument and considering its link to cultural
traditions. They may have been influenced by a view of indigenous peoples in the past or in the present.

Teachers begin their crafting of a multifaceted unit question from different starting points. Regardless of
where the planning begins, 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, thorough, and accurate explanations, solutions or products.

As mentioned in chapter 4, in the MYP interdisciplinary teaching approach three core criteria determine the
quality of a multifaceted unit question: quality questions are relevant, feasible and clearly framed.

Quality questions are relevant

By placing candidate unit topics in the areas of interaction, MYP teachers can explore the potential significance
of topics for interdisciplinary study. Gauging 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. See illustrations later in this chapter.

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.

Because interdisciplinary units involve a significant learning effort, it is essential that MYP interdisciplinary
units of work can engage students’ interest and commitment to dedicated work. To do so, teachers are
encouraged to select questions that students can come to see as genuinely important to study in depth.
Consider how one teacher, Paul, describes a unit about arts and globalization.

In my arts class students were used to a very traditional way of art-making—

focused on basic art concepts, art elements and principles. All of a sudden
there’s still that, but they are also expected to read economics and anthropology
and investigate in these disciplines to inform their art on global inequalities.
“Telling global inequalities” was our topic and it meant that students would
make artwork about the gap between rich and poor across countries. They
had to compare material culture in their communities and that of adolescents
in Guatemala or Mexico. We began by talking about jeans and sneakers, their
sense of fashion. I had to meet them where they were.

But I also expected them to understand the problem of inequalities well to

then make sense of it in our discipline—the arts—to take all that information
and then have something to say about that. It was more than they were used to,
and I got a lot of comments in the beginning about … how [they felt] stifled.

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 Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

Over time as students had a chance to look at their lifestyles and look at other
young people like themselves they were more engaged and uncomfortable.
They started to understand that art is not only the things that we see in
museums, but it’s a way to really say, to let people know symbolically about
things … you know, a strong piece of artwork can, at the right time and right
place, change the way people think about things. They can make societal
change.
To sustain their own commitment to teaching interdisciplinary units, teachers are encouraged, whenever
possible, to select multifaceted unit questions that capture their own interests and expertise. Teachers
explain.

When I think about what to teach I think “what am I interested in—that I could
really dig into, that I can learn and grow from?” I look at our curriculum and
national standards with that question in mind; to reframe the concepts and skill
there.

[In selecting a good topic] there is always the obvious aspect of something that
moves you, something that you yourself would be willing to take an action step
on, do you have a passion for it?
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 art. When students can see how what they learn in the classroom is
an issue that is of importance in wider society, it gives their learning a greater sense of meaning. Using
the core question focused through the areas of interaction enables teachers to shed light on the possible
relevance of a topic to society. Consider two teachers’ perspectives:

The topic has to be relevant, and it has to be about the future direction of the
world. … The question I ask myself as an educator, why should my students
learn about this? Will this topic make them feel like an integral member of
society, an integral member of the future of the direction that a society is about
to take? If the answer is yes then the topic is relevant.

The topic of “Exile” has massive relevance to all of us as well as to every student
in the school. Whether they be from a non-Dutch environment or whether they
are Dutch born and bred, this is still alien environments, they are still exiling
themselves, socially or culturally exiling themselves from what they know. And
we all have a variety of experiences but amazing similarities that we can bring
together, and I think that creates energy that can be expressed in multiple art
forms.

Quality questions are feasible

Considerations of feasibility play an important role in how teachers select and define a given multifaceted
question for instruction. Teachers must ask the following questions.

• Can this topic or question be addressed in the time assigned to the unit in my curriculum?
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.

• Does it build on my expertise and that of available colleagues? Do I have enough material resources (in
the library, field trips, videos/DVDs, on the internet, among peers) to teach the topic as framed?
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.

• Can this topic be addressed by my students this year in developmentally appropriate ways?

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Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

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 accounting for what teachers often perceive as “non-negotiable
content” in their subject. Given the local curriculum mandates of the school and their genuine commitment
to quality disciplinary instruction, teachers are likely to have certain concepts and skills that must be
addressed. MYP teachers are encouraged to assess the degree to which this disciplinary content can be
naturally integrated into an interdisciplinary unit.

In the sikku unit, questions of feasibility emerged throughout the process of planning. Could a good portion
of the history course be realistically dedicated to teaching about pre-Columbian civilization? If the response
was positive the historical dimension of the project was to be encouraged. Would it be possible to use
contacts in a neighbouring school to bring the unit to the classrooms? If so the impact dimension of the
topic was to be maintained.

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, how human behaviour contributes to global
warming through carbon emissions, and how human behaviour can be impacted by economic incentives.
Equipped with these understandings, students have the tools to propose realistic solutions to limiting
carbon emissions, for example, tax breaks for driving fuel efficient cars.

In a world history class, a historical monuments project is an example of a product approach to framing a
topic. The unit is framed as an exploration in “how to grasp and present some of the most troubling aspects
of the history of the past 100 years”. The culmination of the course involved students in creating a model of
a monument, which memorialized an event where human rights were violated (for example, US lynching,
Rwandan genocide). Understanding these events called upon students to learn history, psychology and
sociology. Presenting them called for an understanding of film, sculpture, architecture and memorials.

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. What does this topic suggest about the importance of human creations? How might
learning about this topic invite students to develop a closer relationship with their environment?

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 Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

Multifaceted unit questions play a central role in focusing teachers’ and students’ attention on optimal
topics for interdisciplinary instruction. In the sikkus unit above, an emphasis on human ingenuity yielded
a multifaceted unit question about the sikku as a musical instrument. A community and service context
inspired Raul and his colleagues to focus on preserving a local musical tradition. 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.

An example: Ancient civilizations

Teaching ancient civilizations can be exciting. It has the potential to instill in students an appreciation
for history, people and cultures past. It can harness young people’s fascination with the very different
practices and lifestyles of humans in centuries past. Teachers in an MYP year 1 team recognized that
often when learning about ancient civilizations students are asked to amass large quantities of
facts from elements of architecture to food, from governance to landscape, from trade to sports
and art. They understood that a quality interdisciplinary unit on ancient civilizations required more
than inviting students to collect information about these dimensions in a Microsoft Powerpoint™
presentation. They asked why, essentially, should students learn about ancient civilizations at all.
They pondered “what is our fundamental educational purpose in this unit”?

An idea map
To design an interdisciplinary unit on ancient civilizations four teachers began by creating an idea
map about the topic. After a few minutes of brainstorming they turned their attention to the areas
of interaction to examine their map through the contexts provided by each area. What does our
map say about the role of the environment in ancient civilizations? What role did human ingenuity
play in the development and survival of these peoples? What health-related challenges did these
civilizations confront? What opportunities might this topic offer for students to deepen their capacity
to learn?

An iterative process of raising questions, discussing options and enriching the map with new
possibilities led to several meaningful questions about ancient civilizations. In most cases addressing
these questions required combining expertise from at least two subjects.

• How did ancient civilizations organize their governments, communities, spaces, values and
actions? (Community and service)
• How can our learning about human inventions and developments in ancient civilizations help
us understand today’s societies better? (Approaches to learning)
• What role did the natural environments play in the rise of civilizations and how did these
societies affect their environment? (Environments)
• What cultural and technological developments led ancient civilizations to survive, thrive and
sometimes collapse? (Human ingenuity)
After careful consideration, teachers selected the last two multifaceted questions as the main focus
of the unit. Teachers concluded that learning about cultural and technological developments would
enable students to come to appreciate past humans’ ingenuity, as well as the struggles to survive
under various environmental conditions. They also thought that examining human–environment
interactions in ancient civilizations would shed light on our relationship with the environment today.
Clearly multifaceted, the unit questions required input from history, arts, technology, architecture,
engineering and elements of environmental science.

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Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

An example of teachers’ maps and the possible emphases considered appears below.

Topic: How did humans in

the past use the environment
architecture
to survive and thrive?
famous
reasons for buildings
structures
location
types of amenities
Africa Japan sites weapons
Americas
China types of
Greece transport
Aztec
Middle East CITIES physical/environ
Rome REGIONS TECHNOLOGY or landforms

water sources
clothing quality
food NATURAL of soil
DAILY LIFE
social interactions RESOURCES flora and
and activities fauna

types of gods
ANCIENT
RELIGION
CIVILIZATIONS
beliefs and
practices
ways of
worship types of
SOCIAL
ECONOMY trade
INSTITUTIONS
family structures GOVERNMENT currency

industries
arts and crafts
justice
customs
political system
and rituals cultural fishing
ideology
beliefs and crafts
system of type of
types of farming
practices writing rule
punishment
standards education
types of
of morality laws
social roles
and status

Topic: How did humans in

the past organize themselves
in ways that enabled them
to survive and thrive?

Figure 12

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 Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

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).

Once in its implementation phase, areas of interaction and multifaceted unit questions help teachers and
students maintain their inquiry focus and make new connections. For example, in the ancient civilizations
unit teachers considered how in some cases, such as Mesopotamia, technological development such as
ingenious systems for irrigation came with the high cost of soil degradation. Teachers particularly valued
the opportunity presented by the last question to learn from the experience of ancient civilizations as
we reflect about contemporary climate change. In their technology class students were invited to trace
contemporary echoes of ancient inventions (for example, from the Colosseum to the modern stadium),
examine the cultural function of these buildings and create a future version of such objects or insights that
reflects the values and priorities of today’s societies. Several students collaborated in a proposal for a green
stadium powered by alternative energy.

To summarize, MYP teachers are encouraged to engage students in the areas of interaction during the
early unit planning phase and during the unit implementation in multiple ways. Productive use of the
areas of interaction as a conceptual tool for thinking about content should yield 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 or reflection about the larger issues and capacities that the areas of interaction represent.

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. When considered in
interdisciplinary terms such questions provide a fruitful base from which to generate multifaceted topics or
unit questions for inquiry. Consider, for example, the following renditions of the key questions from each
area of interaction. While these questions are still too general to guide fruitfully a particular unit of work,
they may inform interdisciplinary dialogue among teachers, productively opening a fertile space in which to
craft multifaceted topics.

Examples of key questions for areas of interaction

Approaches to learning
How do I learn best from people who have different expertise?
What aspects of a given problem are worth studying and why?
How do I use understandings from different disciplines/subject areas?
How do I communicate my understanding using languages and content from two or more disciplines/subject
areas?

Community and service

How do we live in relation to each other as living organisms and cultural beings?
How can I use what I know about the arts, science or humanities to contribute to the community?
How can I draw on multiple sources of expertise to find solutions to help others?

Human ingenuity
How and why do we create, given the social, cultural and economic factors that shape our lives?
What are the ethical, social or political consequences of particular human creations (in science, mathematics, or
the arts)?

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Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

Environments
What are the physical, biological and cultural worlds like in which we live?
What resources do we have or need and how do our needs for different kinds of resources complement or conflict
with one another?
How can I draw on multiple areas of expertise to understand and act on my responsibilities toward the environment?

Health and social education

How do I think and act as a biological, social and cultural being and how do these aspects of myself inform others?
How am I changing in various dimensions of who I am?
How can understanding the historical or environmental context in which I live help me look after myself and others?

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.

An example: Egypt

As a schoolwide theme, students aged 11 are studying Egypt. In history they learn about Egyptian
lifestyle and theocracy. In art they examine Egyptian paintings and create their own motifs. In
geography they study the patterns of flooding in the Nile. In mathematics they learn to estimate the
surface and volume of pyramids and other shapes. In theatre students put together a show based on
Cleopatra’s biography.

The hallway displays in the school suggest a schoolwide effort to provide students with a more
integrated learning experience across subjects. However, the substantive integration of content
is less than optimal. Why should students learn to estimate the surface of shapes including the
pyramid to understand ancient Egypt? What is the significance of the flooding patterns in the Nile?
To move beyond superficial links across subjects teachers must clarify their inquiry goals through
the articulation of clear multifaceted unit questions. For example, teachers may ask “how do we
know that the ancient Egyptians advanced a great civilization and what kind of society did they need
to have to reach their peak?”

A question of this kind integrates an analysis of the pyramids and Egyptian art meaningfully. A real-size
calculation of the surface of the pyramids may be used to estimate the number of individuals, indeed
generations, needed to construct them. Students can then examine the type of social structure and
government that would have been necessary to accomplish the task. Similarly, Egyptian drawings
would not simply add enjoyment to student learning but serve as sources of evidence to identify
markers of social structure and interactions.

A second multifaceted unit question within the same theme might emphasize “how did the
Egyptians’ natural environment contribute to their great cultural production?” Here the long-studied
and predictable patterns of flooding of the banks of the Nile may inform students’ further analysis of
social structure and accumulated wealth. In these examples, learning in the subjects comes together
purposefully to address clearly formulated questions that would not be satisfactorily answered
through single disciplinary approaches.

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 Chapter 5 Crafting multifaceted unit questions in the areas of interaction

The problem with field trips

Like thematic units, field trips hold the promise of integrative learning. Excursions into cities, parks and
mountains genuinely engage students in real-life experiences that can be transformative and present
opportunities for deep learning. Teachers capitalize on such opportunities when they structure 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?

Reflection point

Consider the following themes commonly used in schools around the world. How might they be
transformed into potent multifaceted unit questions?
• My community
• Time
• Water
• The news
• Values
• Ancient civilizations
Think about a field trip for your course. How might the field trip invite interdisciplinary learning and what
multifaceted unit question might guide students’ inquiry during the trip?

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 53

Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?

Overview
This chapter outlines how successful interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP is informed by teaching in the
disciplines. Specifically this chapter examines two questions.

• What constitutes quality learning in a discipline or subject?

• How can teachers select and craft disciplinary understandings?
Quality disciplinary understanding in the MYP is characterized. It indicates how disciplines differ from
factual information and explains why disciplinary understanding is often difficult to acquire. Using an
interdisciplinary unit on the Pak Sha O river in Hong Kong as an example, this chapter offers an overview of
the MYP aims and objectives and points out two criteria that teachers must keep in mind in order to ensure
a quality disciplinary grounding of interdisciplinary work.

What constitutes quality learning in a discipline or

subject?
Whether they teach history or biology, mathematics or visual arts, MYP teachers strive to nourish
students’ deep understanding of key ideas, theories, and modes of thinking in their subjects or disciplines.
Teachers recognize that understanding a concept in depth is more than merely knowing about it. MYP
students are encouraged to use such concepts effectively in new contexts and situations demonstrating
deep understanding. Understanding is a capacity. It involves being able to employ concepts, skills and
information to produce explanations, offer interpretations, create products, or solve problems in workable
ways. Disciplinary understanding, in turn, involves students’ ability to employ concepts and modes of
thinking developed by experts in domains such as geography, biology, physics, mathematics, language or
the visual arts. To nurture it, MYP teachers must understand what disciplinary understanding is and why it is
difficult for students to acquire.

All disciplines embody distinct ways of thinking about the world. Scientists hold theories about the natural
world that guide their particular observations: they make hypotheses, design experiments to test them,
revise their views in light of their findings and make fresh observations. Artists, on the other hand, are less
constrained by empirical demands. They seek to shed new light on the object of their attention, depict it with
masterful technique, stretch and provoke themselves and their audiences through deliberate ambiguities in
their work. Becoming a better artist does not make students better historians, scientists or mathematicians,
or vice versa.

Of course, it is unreasonable to expect MYP students aged between 11 and 16 to become expert scientists,
historians and artists. Rather, a quality MYP education in the subject areas should ensure that students
become deeply acquainted with the fundamental perspectives on the world that each subject group offers.
Teachers prepare to nurture disciplinary understandings by reflecting about their disciplines themselves.
Why do I teach science, history or the arts? What about these disciplines matters most for my students to
learn? Perhaps most importantly, what constitutes deep understanding in my subject or discipline?

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 Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?

Disciplinary understanding defined

A discipline like biology or geography is clearly not a list of items to be “covered” during a given class period
three times a week. Instead, disciplines are best described as dynamic networks of concepts, theories and
examples, produced through the use of agreed methods and techniques to answer relevant questions about
particular aspects of the world. By inviting students to use the perspective of the biologist, the geographer,
the historian, the scientist, the artist or the poet to make sense of the world around them, MYP teachers
open the door to the most important cognitive achievements of our era—achievements that students may
come to share only through dedicated and carefully designed instruction. In the MYP model disciplines are
grouped in eight subject groups. The subject aims and objectives offer teachers an overview of important
understandings to be nurtured in each subject group.

Building on such aims and objectives experienced teachers seek to nurture four key capacities among
young people. They involve understanding:

1. the purpose of disciplinary inquiry

2. an essential knowledge base
3. disciplinary inquiry methods
4. forms of communication.
These capacities are described below and illustrated with examples of aims and objectives in humanities,
science and arts.

1. Understanding the purpose of disciplinary inquiry

Commonly, students ask a question that all teachers ought to be able to address genuinely: “Why do we
have to learn this?” Responses such as “because it is important that you know this”, or “because it is part of
the course syllabus, test or state mandates” or even “because you will need it next year” miss the point if
what we seek is students’ true involvement in disciplinary understanding. Addressing the question of why
a particular disciplinary topic is to be learned invites a broader reflection about the nature of disciplinary
inquiry. Why do historians, scientists and artists dedicate their lives to their quests? How do our societies use
(or dispute) the findings of biology and history or the works of visual arts and dance? Why does disciplinary
understanding matter?

Disciplinary knowledge stems from our human need to understand and predict, express a point of view,
create products and tools, and/or solve complex problems. Disciplines inform the contexts in which students
live. Supply-and-demand principles determine the products that line the shelves of supermarkets. In recent
years, a renewed interest in the study of industrial revolution has been sparked by our experience of the
digital revolution—the rapid growth of computing and communication capacities transforming the planet.
“Biological interdependence” shapes the life of animals and plants at the local park and in the rainforest.
Environmental artworks call society’s attention to the importance of preserving our ecosystems. Therefore,
by inviting students to see how disciplinary knowledge informs human pursuits and everyday life—by
nurturing their “disciplined mind”—teachers are preparing them to be more informed and discerning
participants in their world.

The MYP aims and objectives highlight this aspect of learning. In the humanities students are expected to
develop decision-making skills and inform their actions with knowledge. In science students examine the
role of science in society and the purposes that drive us to inquire. Scientific understanding includes our
responsibility to the living and non-living environment and the capacity to apply science to solve local and
global problems, or discussing how science and its applications interact with social, economic, political,
environmental, cultural and ethical factors. In the arts too students are encouraged to appreciate the arts as
a form of expression and critique as a means to reflect, comment upon and transform our world.

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Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?

To reflect on the purpose of disciplinary inquiry with their students, teachers may ask:

• Why does this disciplinary topic, concept or theory matter?

• How can we apply what we learn about this concept, topic or theory?
• Why do individuals dedicate their lives to study in this discipline?

2. Understanding an essential knowledge base

Each discipline embodies innumerable concepts, examples and ideas. Educators are challenged to select
those that are most significant for students to learn. An essential knowledge base embodies concepts and
relations that are central to the discipline, and applicable in multiple contexts. For example, in a unit on the
Industrial Revolution, students must understand social and economic forces that set the stage for industrial
advancements in 18th century Britain: widespread Protestant ethics, growing entrepreneurial spirit among
artisans and labourers, accumulated capital, largely accessible raw materials and markets, and technological
innovation. In a unit on ecosystems, biology students must understand how living organisms relate to their
physical environment in a particular place, examine the cycling of nutrients and the factors that enable
or disrupt the balance of an ecosystem. Understanding of this kind enables students to link particular
incidents of the Industrial Revolution or observation during a field trip with more general interpretations.
In other words, a rich knowledge base enables students not only to “know” but also to “make sense” of the
information they receive.

An essential knowledge base is central to the MYP aims and objectives in each subject group. In the
humanities students are expected to know and use humanities terminology in context and demonstrate
understanding of elements of history, geography, economics and sociology in their descriptions and
explanations of our social and cultural world. Students are expected to think deeply about matters of time,
space, change, systems and the global sphere, moving flexibly between big ideas and relevant examples. In
the sciences too, students are challenged to recognize and recall scientific information, explain and apply it
to solve problems in familiar and unfamiliar situations. In the arts, students are encouraged to demonstrate
knowledge and understanding of the theoretical basis of the art forms studied, as well as a variety of styles,
developments and ideas that have shaped the arts across time and cultures.

To reflect on the knowledge base in a discipline with their students teachers may ask the following.

• What are the big ideas, key concepts, or theories that students must learn in this discipline?
• What are examples, cases and findings that illustrate the big ideas in this discipline?
• Are there important connections among ideas in the discipline?

3. Understanding inquiry methods

In contrast to naive beliefs or elementary information, disciplinary knowledge emerges from a careful process
of inquiry and vetting of claims. The disciplined mind considers forms of evidence, criteria for validation, and
techniques that render trustworthy our knowledge of the past, nature, society or works of art. In the arts
students develop habits of visualization, observation, critique, technical mastery and perseverance in the
study of a subject. In history students exhibit their understanding of inquiry methods when they compare
competing accounts to assess their acceptability, when they are wary of simple explanations, when they
consider the sources used, and when they attend to how actors’ perspectives are selected and portrayed. In
science students learn that experiments require carefully designed controls and that the coexistence of two
phenomena does not mean that one is causing the other. By beginning to learn about the ways in which
experts do their work, students come to humanize the disciplines.

In the MYP aims and objectives students are strongly encouraged to learn humanistic and scientific inquiry
skills. In the humanities students learn to plan, carry out and present investigations; identify key questions
and issues; observe, select and record relevant information; evaluate the values and limitations of sources;
engage in fieldwork in order to complement an investigation. In science too, they are taught to define
a problem or research question to be tested by a scientific investigation; collect and record data using

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 Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?

appropriate units of measurement; organize and transform data into numerical and diagrammatic forms
(mathematical calculations, tables, graphs and charts). In the arts students engage in artistic inquiry; they
plan and organize effectively to define and set goals, solve problems, experiment and explore through
spontaneous and structured activities.

To reflect about the methods of a discipline with their students teachers may ask the following.

• What are the methods that students must learn to understand how knowledge is constructed in a
discipline?
• What tools and instruments are helpful to use in the discipline?
• How can we best explain, describe or express our interpretation of an event or phenomenon?
• How can we discern between trustworthy and less trustworthy claims in the discipline?

4. Understanding forms of communication

Finally, disciplines communicate their expertise in preferred forms and genres. Historians see narratives
as the best fit for their work while scientists opt for data-heavy research reports. To become proficient
communicators, MYP students are encouraged to understand these differences. In science students are
encouraged to write (and recognize) a well-crafted scientific report where clear testable hypotheses,
methodology, results and discussion are made public for readers to weigh up. They are invited to use a
range of scientific languages. In history, they appreciate vivid and well-footnoted narratives as well as well-
curated museum exhibits, monuments and documentary films. Humanities students are also expected
to organize information in a logically sequenced, clear and concise manner, to use appropriate language,
style and visual representation, as well as referencing and a bibliography to clearly document sources of
information, using appropriate conventions. In the arts students are invited to use multiple media to explore
aesthetic options in depth.

To reflect about the modes of communication of a discipline with their students, teachers may ask the
following.

• What are the languages and symbols that we can use to share what we learn in this discipline?
• What are the main genres in which we can communicate what we know in this discipline (essays,
scientific reports, poster presentations, videos)?
• How do we take into account our audience and context when we communicate with others about
what we know?
In summary, MYP teachers are required to draw on the MYP subject aims and objectives as well as their local
school curriculum to select the concepts and modes of thinking that matter most to teach in their subject.
By encouraging teachers to do this the MYP model fosters not only students’ ability to master particular
concepts, theories and examples that are central to these disciplines but also to employ disciplinary
methods, apply disciplinary insights and communicate effectively with others. Experienced MYP teachers
know that for students disciplinary understanding is not always simple to construct. Often, it involves
transforming intuitive or naive views of the world with which students arrive in our classrooms.

The challenge of building disciplinary understanding

Building disciplinary understanding is a challenging task for students. Even the most experienced disciplinary
teachers describe their dismay when, by the end of what they thought was an outstanding unit, students’ initial
beliefs and misconceptions seem to have remained untouched. Why is this so? Psychologists explain that, early
in life, students develop intuitive beliefs about the world that are sometimes at odds with disciplinary ideas.

Before entering the elementary school students develop intuitive ideas about how nature works, how
people think, what is beautiful and what is not, and how narratives unfold. Many of these ideas, extensively
documented by developmental psychologists, are powerful precursors of sophisticated disciplinary

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Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?

understandings. For example, by the age of 5, children understand that narratives have beginnings, turning
points, and ends and that the succession of events in them must “make sense” for the story to work.
Historians also organize their accounts of the past in the form of narratives. They must establish when their
stories will begin, and when they will end, and select turning points and actors’ perspectives that will make
their accounts intelligible.

Unfortunately not all initial ideas are equally auspicious. Young children also tend to believe that stories are
always about “the good guys versus the bad guys”—a belief that leads to easy stereotyping of historical
actors and oversimplifications of their experience. Young students are inclined to believe that events are
always the result of intentional actions—especially in the case of leaders. They find it more difficult to
understand the unintended consequences of actions in the past. Most strikingly, students often project
contemporary values and world views onto the minds of actors in the past, a misconception known as
“presentism” that is difficult to correct even with good instruction.

In science, students often hold the belief that experiments are successful when their results match the one in
the textbook. Students confuse “theories” with unfounded beliefs (as opposed to well-founded conceptual
systems) or believe that hypotheses are claims to be proved right (as opposed to tested). Even after years of
schooling, youngsters hold mistaken beliefs about how the solar system works, how electricity functions,
how evolutionary changes come about. In mathematics, students are often inclined to detach numbers
from their meanings, filling in equations mechanically. In the arts, they find it difficult to understand that
a “good” painting does not have to be “beautiful” but could be provocative or suggestive, inviting deep
aesthetic exploration. Because the task of addressing and transforming students’ early misconceptions may
seem daunting, the MYP curriculum design offers a repertoire of clear aims and objectives to guide teaching
in the subjects and support even the youngest children to develop more informed understandings.

Reflection point

Consider the following statements produced by teachers in different schools. In what ways do they
reflect the concept of “disciplines” similar to the one presented above? Which one seems closer to your
own sense of your subject?

In teaching history, the biggest obstacle is always time. Teaching history

itself is not that difficult. I have a list of people and important events that I
need to cover. I expect students to know these by the end of the year.

I teach history because I want students to understand how events in the

past help us understand who we are and where we come from. I want my
students to become able to think about the past and how we come to know
it critically. I want them to think about the options that people had then
which are different from the ones we have today.

How can teachers select and craft disciplinary

understandings?
Clearly, when designing interdisciplinary units of instruction teachers must decide which disciplines will
best address the multifaceted topic under study. Quality interdisciplinary learning requires deep disciplinary
grounding. Designing interdisciplinary units presents teachers with an important challenge: how much
expertise in a discipline will their students need to develop in order to accomplish the unit’s overarching
goal? Indeed some teachers wonder if it is necessary for students to master the disciplines fully before they
can integrate them in any meaningful way. Questions of this kind are important because they reveal teachers’
commitment to quality work. Interdisciplinary learning builds on disciplinary expertise—it does not replace it.
To illustrate the MYP approach to interdisciplinary teaching, consider the following unit on river studies.

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 Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?

The Pak Sha O river unit

This unit is designed to help MYP year 4 students aged 14–15 understand water centres and examine
the balance of the ecosystem of a watershed in order to make reasonable recommendations for its
sustainable development. Three multifaceted unit questions guide student inquiry in this project.

• Does the Pak Sha O river’s profile of water flow, depth and abiotic factors affect aquatic
organisms present in the river along its course?
• 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?
To address these questions students must master a rich knowledge base in geography including
classic river profiles and features such as velocity gradient and channel shape. They must become
able to compare the particular features of the Pak Sha O river with the classic profiles typically
present in textbooks. In science students will need to understand the significance of estuaries and
mangroves in the local ecosystem. They will need to learn how to detect and interpret indicators
of environmental stress and pollution. The questions invite students to conduct empirical inquiries
that involve hypothesis testing, data collection, graphing, mapping and observation in geography,
biology and sociology. Given a rich problem space like this one, how are teachers to decide how to
focus their students’ attention for deep learning? How can teachers determine what students will
need to know in order to address the questions at hand?

The MYP interdisciplinary teaching approach stipulates two core criteria to craft an adequate disciplinary
grounding for a unit of work. Firstly, disciplinary understanding must be strategically selected. Teachers
must identify which disciplines as well as which particular insights within each discipline will best contribute
to students’ understanding of the multifaceted topic. Secondly, disciplinary understandings must be
robust. That is, they must accurately represent the knowledge base, concepts and modes of thinking in a
discipline. Taken together, these criteria enhance the effectiveness and intellectual integrity of students’
interdisciplinary learning in the MYP.

Strategically selected disciplinary understandings

In interdisciplinary units teachers must select which disciplines will be included and which will not. To do
this they weigh the particular ways in which each discipline may contribute to student understanding of
a multifaceted topic. Furthermore, teachers must select which insights from each discipline (particular
concepts, theories, examples, methods, or techniques) will be borrowed. The lack of strategic selection
often results in an overwhelming number of options and disciplinary combinations and superficial learning.
As the previous chapter suggests, a well-chosen multidisciplinary topic often acts as a guidepost to select
which disciplines matter most. Essentially it is the substance of a topic that must drive the selection of
perspectives that truly matter.

In our rivers unit, teachers focused primarily on geography and biology. In addition they borrowed insights
from the growing field of ecotourism, which enabled them to integrate the unit further. Geography was
chosen because it enabled students to understand changing natural and urban environments in depth,
because it provided necessary inquiry tools to measure changes in the landscape, the river’s shape and
expected abiotic characteristics. Biology was used by students to assess the conditions of living micro- and
macro-organisms. For example, students were able to identify the presence of micro-organisms that vary
in their sensitivity to pollution, and they were able to interpret observations in mangroves as adaptations
to pollutants. Clearly teachers saw the advantage of using history and economics to enrich students’

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Chapter 6 What disciplinary tools will students need?

understanding: a history of human interactions with the natural environment, as well as economic concepts
such as the tragedy of the commons and cooperative action, were considered but excluded from the unit
as teachers opted for greater depth in fewer well-established domains of knowledge. Because these were
disciplines they knew well they made the unit feasible.

Once the two core disciplines were identified a further selection became necessary. Not all concepts in
geography and biology matter to study river sheds. Teachers had to identify the core knowledge, methods,
applications and forms of communication that were central to an understanding of the human–environment
relations in the Pak Sha O river to ensure that students became able to think flexibly with them. They
identified specific disciplinary understandings that would ensure adequate disciplinary grounding of
students’ work.

Geography
• Students will understand what constitutes a classic river profile and how particular rivers may follow
or deviate from the norm (characterizing the upper, middle and lower course of the river; considering
features such as gradient, velocity, dominant erosion, valley shape as well as the concentration of
abiotic factors in it).
• Students will understand how to use the geographer’s tools to study land changes along a river basin
(testing hypothesis, gathering data and interpreting evidence, evaluating results).
• Students will understand how to use software to analyse and display quantitative data graphically (bar
graphs, distributions, sectional graphs) and communicate their findings in a scientific report.

Biology
• Students will understand that micro-invertebrates living in the water have different levels of tolerance
for water pollution and can help us to determine the water quality along the river.
• Students will understand the nature and significance of mangroves and sandy shores in the local
ecosystems.
• Students will understand how to conduct and report a naturalistic study of micro- and macro-
organisms along the river (advancing and testing hypotheses, gathering, analysing data).

Ecotourism
• Students will understand six core principles of ecotourism as travel to natural destinations that
minimizes impact, builds environmental awareness and provides direct financial benefits for local
conservation and empowerment for local people.

Robust disciplinary understandings

The second criterion that teachers are encouraged to use to craft the disciplinary foundations of an
interdisciplinary unit focuses on the degree to which disciplinary understanding reflects the concepts and
modes of thinking of a discipline in an authentic way. For instance, in the Pak Sha O river unit, disciplinary
understanding invites students to build a rich and flexible knowledge web about rivers generally and
the Pak Sha O river in particular. They learn about geographic inquiry, hypothesis testing, data collection,
systematic analysis and presentation. They also learn to observe how organisms like mangroves adapt to a
high salinity, low oxygen, low water context. Each concept or mode of inquiry echoes that of experts in the
field. In the MYP, teachers are encouraged to ask themselves whether they are inviting students to engage
genuinely in historical, geographical or biological inquiry, or to master concepts that are deemed accepted
and important in the disciplines that they teach. The MYP subject aims and objectives provide a helpful and
broad repertoire of disciplinary understandings from which they can choose.

When designing interdisciplinary units teachers are encouraged to pay close attention to the particular
insights they would like students to gain from a discipline beyond their own. For example, in a unit focused
on the adaptive differences between imported and native species of plants in the local environment, a

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biology teacher discovered that his students did not observe nature in detailed ways. He invited the arts
teachers to teach students particular drawing skills. In describing what he expected students to understand
in the arts he points out the following.

Drawing requires attention to the most minute details and as students draw,
they need to closely observe how the specimen is formed. A photograph shows
form but not all the minutiae an observer may record in a drawing. In these
few arts lessons, students became able to draw negative space, perspective,
shadowing. Most importantly they learned to stay with a specimen for an
extended time. Qualitative information in nature can, therefore, be collected
in the form of a drawing, which acts as a vehicle for further observation,
interpretation, and discussion.
Understanding that is not robust in the sense portrayed here is often naive or pseudo-disciplinary. For
example, experienced MYP teachers realize that when students conduct experiments in the science lab
“seeking results that will be just like those presented in the textbook” they are building an erroneous
view of how experiments enable scientists to advance new knowledge. They realize that when students
“count how many sources” support each of two conflicting historical interpretations, they are learning
pseudo-history. When students plug numbers in equations mechanically without a clear sense of what
these numbers mean they are not engaging in mathematics but in pseudo-mathematics. In sum, robust
disciplinary understanding contrasts with pseudo-disciplinary learning in that it presents students with
understandings that reflect expert thinking in a genuine and developmentally appropriate way. MYP
teachers are encouraged to nurture students’ inquiring mind as well as the skills necessary to investigate
the topics under study. Teachers are encouraged to provide a flexible knowledge base that students can
apply to make sense of the world and act in their communities with discernment. Teachers seek to prepare
students to communicate effectively in multiple modalities. By inviting students to think like historians,
biologists, artists in developmentally appropriate ways MYP teachers begin to nurture the disciplined mind.

Reflection point

• Examine the disciplinary understandings considered in this unit. In what ways does each one
contribute to advancing students’ understanding of the three guiding questions guiding the Pak
Sha O river unit?
• Consider the discipline you teach. What would you say are the most important disciplinary
understandings that you expect to nurture among your students this year?
• Consider a different subject that might enrich or complement student learning in your own
subject (as the biology and art teaching described above). What concepts, inquiry skills,
applications or forms of communication in this domain might be interesting to include in your
unit?

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Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

Overview
Successful interdisciplinary learning experiences integrate insights from two or more subjects and yield
what we term “integrative understandings” or understandings that bring together concepts and modes of
thinking typically studied in different disciplines to explain a phenomenon, make a product or ask questions
that would not have been possible from the perspective of one discipline alone.

In this chapter we describe integrative understandings as a key achievement in interdisciplinary learning

and we offer guidance as to how to nurture this understanding among students.

Why does attention to integration matter?

In the MYP, interdisciplinary teaching requires that teachers nurture students’ capacity to make deep and
productive connections across school subjects. Experienced MYP teachers understand that supporting
students to build interdisciplinary understandings requires more than merely asking them to “make
connections”. Rather, it demands that teachers (and their students) are clear about what kinds of connections
they would like to pursue and why such connections matter given the topic under study. It is one thing to
say that teachers in various subjects are collaborating in an interdisciplinary unit. It is quite another thing to
be able to show how participating disciplines are being integrated.

If we just say that disciplines are interacting without an explanation, on some level, about where and how
they are interacting (and what specifically students gain from that interaction), we reduce interdisciplinary
learning to the proverbial “black box”—something important is going on in there, but we cannot see or
talk about it. When teachers do not examine how disciplines will connect, they are less prepared to support
students in their efforts to make connections themselves. Because such connections are not always easy
to establish, a “black box” approach to interdisciplinary teaching risks becoming superficial. Therefore,
supporting students in their capacity to integrate disciplinary insights requires that we open the black box
of integration—that we gain a rich sense of how knowledge from one discipline can complement, expand
or give new meaning to the insights gained through another one.

An example: Epic revolutions

“Epic revolutions” is a unit on the French and American revolutions designed for students of 14–15
years old. The unit investigates the causes, processes and consequences of revolutionary change
in these societies and the role that the ideas of the Enlightenment and an atmosphere of political
exaltation played in bringing about such change. This unit integrates history, English, Serbian and
the visual arts. Essentially, the unit posed the following question: How do revolutions and their
associated mood of political exaltation come about and transform societies?

Working with their history teacher, students developed a rich knowledge base about the
circumstances, causes and consequences of these revolutions. They studied the views of Locke,
Rousseau, Montesquieu and Voltaire to understand the motivations for both revolutions. They
learned about changes in the political, social, and economic systems as well as the new forms of
government—federalism and the Napoleonic codes—resulting from them. Students also learned
about the post-revolutionary period, to understand the long-lasting effects of difficult transitions.

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 Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

In Serbian and English, students examined epic poetry. They learned about the history of epic
poetry and became acquainted with classic epic poems as well as traditional poems produced
by local Serbian writers. They learned to identify and employ poetic devices, such as hyperbole,
personification and allusion. They created epic poems of their own in the voice of revolutionary
heroes George Washington and Georges Jacques Danton, and performed their poems for the school.
As one teacher described, students came to understand “the significance of the oral tradition, and
the fact that epics are used to try to explain the inexplicable as well as to entertain, to motivate,
and to develop strong feelings of identity either associated with certain personal qualities or with a
nationality”.

In the visual arts, the class studied artworks by Goya and Delacroix made at the turn of the 19th
century. Teachers chose “conflict” and “the birth of new ideas” as topics for visual exploration.
Students experimented with expressions of these themes in three-dimensional human figures and
collaborated to create a series of tableaux.

Units like the one outlined above are not uncommon among best teaching practices in the MYP. As
characterized so far, the unit seems reasonably integrated. Students are expected to encounter the topic of
revolutions in multiple contexts. To support students in making meaningful connections, however, a more
careful analysis is in order. There are two key questions.

• How exactly do disciplines come together in this unit?

• In what ways does integrating disciplines contribute to a deeper, more nuanced and complex
understanding of “Epic revolutions”?
In the “Epic revolutions” example, each subject makes an important contribution. History offers rich, well-
documented accounts of the French and American revolutions, including the perspective of particular
individuals involved in larger societal changes. Epic poetry (in Serbian and English) invites students to
understand revolutionary mood and the personal experiences associated with rapid political change. The
visual arts, in turn, provide opportunities to reflect about larger themes such as conflict, national identity and
heroism. Disciplines intersect in three distinct forms throughout the unit deepening student understanding
of the topic in each case.

• Students understand how epic poems reveal individuals’ experiences and the cultural mood of
revolutionary times.
• Students make sense of key developments and perspectives on the revolutions by describing them in
poetic form.
• Students understand how to capture a significant aspect of the American and French revolutions in a
compelling visual metaphor.
We call these connections “integrative understandings”. They serve as expected outcomes for the unit.

Students understand how epic poems reveal individuals’

experiences and the cultural mood of revolutionary times
How do disciplines come together?
Though historically, epic poetry has its roots in the classical work of Homer, a body of neo-epic writings
emerged during and after the French Revolution capturing the mood of the times. As teachers in this unit
explain, epic poems characteristically narrate the heroic actions of individuals while capturing the values,
mood and uncertainties of the societies in which these individuals lived. Studying epic poems enables students
to understand the ways in which past narrators made sense of key experiences. It shows how narrators
disseminated their accounts while feeding into a passionate nationalist and revolutionary spirit. Epic writings
are historical documents in their own right; they reveal political and aesthetic values of the times.

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Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

How does understanding epic poems advance students’ understanding of revolutions

and vice versa?
A study of epic poetry and writing associated with the French and American revolutions enriches a purely
historical view of these periods by opening a window into the more personal experiences and expressions
of leading individuals. In turn history prepares students to make sense of the content presented in poetic
writing. Without an understanding of history the events narrated in a poem would make little sense.

Students make sense of key developments and perspectives on the

revolutions by describing them in poetic form
How do disciplines come together?
Epic poetry is related to the history of revolutions in yet another important way. Epic poems tend to
emphasize themes of loyalty, heroism, order and liberty—which are central to an informed reflection about
revolutions. In this sense they provide a suitable genre to interpret this particular period in the past. Poems
were required to be historically accurate and conform to the epic genre. To create such poems, students
had to review accounts of the lives of individuals like Danton and Washington carefully and interpret their
perspectives on events surrounding them.

Consider for instance the opening stanzas written by a student in this unit. Marginal annotations are included
to illustrate how disciplines are being employed—they are not part of the student work.

The Dawn of France

An epic poem usually THE DAWN OF FRANCE Historically, Georges-
begins by directly stating Jacques Danton was a
the theme or subject French revolutionary
They call me Georges-Jacques Danton, son of Jacques
matter of the epic. In leader, who played
this case, the student And my tale has both sadness and glory a pivotal role in the
introduces Danton and May gods and spirits help me in the task overthrow of the French
his role in French history. To tell my story of what I went through monarchy and the
establishment of the first
As is the convention in And how I aided the revolution
French Republic.
epic poetry, the student
starts the narrative It was the year seventeen ninety three Danton had been sent
in media res, ie in the on a mission to Belgium
And during the month of January
middle of the action in late 1792, and only
rather than at the I made the long journey back from Belgium returned to France in time
beginning, as is usually To vote whether or not to execute for the vote. He voted for
the case with historical The monarch which has ruled us for so long the death of the King
renderings of events.
“King Louis,” I decided, “you must die.” On January 15, 1793,
The subject matter of And others, it seemed, viewed it the same way Louis XVI’s trial in the
epic poetry is usually For when the votes were counted it was clear Convention culminated
serious, and contains in a vote for his death
For most of my fellows voted to end
events and deeds that without reprieve.
are significant in a The monarchy and the life of the king
culture or country. In As the king walked towards the guillotine
the complete original I remember what happened earlier
epic poem, the student
addressed the overthrow
of the French monarchy,
the establishment of
the French Republic
and historical actors like
Danton and Robespierre.
Figure 13

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 Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

How does creating a poem about the revolution advance students’ understanding?
Writing and performing the poem demanded that students revisited their learning in history and identified
telling episodes that could be narrated from their particular actor’s viewpoint using accurate information at
each step. Students had to develop not only literary but also historical habits of mind—they had to assess
the significance of particular events and create a meaningful sequence. A narrative poem of this kind invited
students to gain ownership over the period by producing their own selections of episodes from the period
and articulating them in a story that makes sense. More still, it enabled students to hypothesize about the
personal experience of particular actors, bringing their reading of history to life.

Students understand how to capture a significant aspect of the

American and French revolutions in a compelling visual metaphor
How do disciplines come together?
History and the visual arts also intertwined productively in this unit, as students were encouraged to revisit
their growing understanding of revolutions to distill an essential quality of the period in a visual metaphor.
Reflection led some students to appreciate the human cost of societal change—their insights informed
their poems and artwork directly. One student’s thoughts appear below.

Analysing the phrase “revolutions devour their own children” I came to the
general idea that, from my point of view, revolutions are indeed necessary in
order to force a society to function. However this cannot justify the fact that
throughout history many innocent people died as a result of shifts in political
and social systems. In the French Revolution innocents and ordinary people
were hacked to death mainly during Robespierre’s reign of terror. In America
the victims were the colonists and farmers who did not even revolt in the first
place. At the start of the Industrial Revolution the child labourers were most
definitely victims of England’s unstable political and legal system. These are
examples of how sometimes bad systems forced people into either seizing
power or, in the cases of the weaker ones, ending their lives. As soon as I saw
the connections between systems and revolutions in history I was able to get
ready to analyse certain historical points and put them into my work [epic
poem and art work].
Students’ chosen metaphors of conflict and loss about the period informed the creation of human figure
sculptures and tableaux. Some students chose to portray the intimate moment of a mother holding her
dying son (see “mother and son” below). The piece refers literally to individuals lost in revolutionary times
and metaphorically to the recognition on the part of a symbolic “mother revolution” of the lives lost in her
name.

“Mother and her dying son“ by Tea, Luka, Stefan, Voja and Stanko

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Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

How does this connection advance students’ understanding?

Important learning opportunities emerge as students seek to synthesize qualities of these revolutions
aesthetically into a memorable work of art. First, like the poems above, the visual arts project invites students
to grapple with historical significance—to decide what about this particular period in the past is worth
attending to. Typically, in memorializing the past in a work of art, students face the challenge of identifying a
metaphor or a concept such as “[revolutionary] mother and son” that clearly captures something important
about that portion of the past and will drive their artistic creation. Strong metaphors are informed by
students’ understanding of the period. When successful, students can point to multiple ways in which the
metaphor “works” to capture past experiences and events. Finally, in crafting such metaphors students
raise new questions about the past. Why was liberty represented as a female figure? What did it mean to
people at the time? Where did the idea of a “mother revolution” come from? In what ways was it a symbol of
romantic ideals? Understandably teachers and students may find themselves initially unprepared to address
these less predictable questions. Time for further inquiry may or may not be available. And yet, both the
overall inquisitive spirit that students demonstrate by raising these questions as well as the very nature of
the questions raised suggest that students are beginning to think in highly sophisticated ways. Such ways
contrast sharply with rote memorization of causes, dates and actors more commonly associated with factual
teaching and learning of history.

To summarize, in MYP classrooms, powerful interdisciplinary learning occurs to the extent that students
are able to explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, make a product or raise new questions in ways that
would not be achievable by means of a single discipline. In the example above, understanding revolutions
and the epic-romantic experiences they embodied required that students gained solid knowledge of key
events, circumstances and actors and that they understood these actors’ point of view. Most challenging for
students was that they were encouraged to think with the acquired information to decide how such actors
might have reported their experiences (in the poem) and reflect about the overall lessons of the period as
we see it from the present (the sculptures).

Reflection point

Consider your experience with interdisciplinary teaching in the MYP. You may draw on your own teaching
experience or on the experience of a colleague of yours to address the following questions.
• In your opinion, how have subject-specific concepts and modes of thinking been brought
together in this unit of work?
• In what ways has the integration of disciplinary perspectives contributed to student
understanding?
• What recommendations would you make to enhance the clarity of disciplinary connections?
• What learning opportunities emerge in this unit?

Developing integrative understandings

As the example of the “Epic revolutions” unit demonstrates, supporting students to build integrative
understandings requires more than claiming that a unit is “interdisciplinary” and alerting students to “find
connections”. Rather, it requires that teachers have clarity about the kinds of connections they would like
students to make and the learning opportunities they embody. To illustrate this point let us consider a less
than optimal example. In a unit on genetic inheritance students are invited to create a work of art that is
inspired by this natural phenomenon that they have studied. Without a clear image of the learning purpose of
the activity, students may resort to copying images of Mendel or make schematic sketches of parents and their
offspring. Students may be engaged in the activity. However, without a supported reflection about which
aspects of genetic inheritance are worth portraying and why, without a consideration of the best possible
visual medium to represent genetic inheritance, the opportunities for deep integrative learning are missed.

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Two criteria are key for developing high-quality integrative understandings.

• Integration must advance student understanding of the unit’s multifaceted topic.

• Integration must be clearly described.

Integration must advance student understanding of the unit’s

multifaceted topic
Integrative understanding is most powerful when it clearly addresses the purpose of the interdisciplinary
inquiry undertaken. In particular, integration of disciplines should deliver on the aspirations for understanding
framed within the chosen multifaceted topic. In the example above, teachers expected students to gain a
deep understanding of why and how the French and American revolutions unfolded and the ways they
affected their societies. Teachers wanted students to focus particularly on the epic mood that characterizes
revolutionary actions in many cases, a mood that explains in part the violence associated with revolutionary
changes. Because this unit took place in Serbia, teachers were careful to consider local developments and
epic writers which contributed to bringing home the concept of revolutions and their costs. The integrative
understanding proposed visibly addresses these learning priorities adding coherence to the unit design.

Integration must be clearly described

In designing an interdisciplinary unit of instruction teachers should seek to identify one, two, or perhaps
three core integrative understandings that they will target. In quality interdisciplinary teaching designs,
integrative understandings stand next to disciplinary understandings as targeted learning goals. Integrative
understandings should be readily communicable to teachers themselves, their colleagues and their students.
Multiple strategies for describing the sought-after connections are available.

Describing the overall integrative approach: An interdisciplinary integration can be described in terms
of the way we expect that disciplines, at a basic level, will come together in a given teaching design. For
example, teachers may introduce the revolutions unit as designed to “help students understand the French
and American revolutions in depth, with a particular emphasis on the extraordinary and difficult experiences
of actors who took part in the events and the meaning that these revolutions hold for us today”. To reach
such understanding students will “learn about the history of the period and translate what they learn into a
poem and a work of art”. Such a description emphasizes the artistic synthesis proposed in the unit.

Describing particular disciplinary roles: A second strategy to make the targeted integrations clear is
to share the specific contributions of each discipline to students’ overall understanding of the topic. For
instance, in “Epic revolutions” teachers may explain that the work students do in the history class will help
them understand why and how things happened the way they did in each revolution. In the language
A and language B classes in turn epic poems will illuminate the particular experience, values and modes
of expression of past actors. The arts class will invite students to step back from what they have learned
about revolutions and reflect about the significance of this period for us today. Teachers may also consider
discussing with students what would happen if any one discipline were to be absent. For example, lack
of historical understanding would render poems ungrounded; excluding the arts would preclude an
opportunity to generate a final personal synthesis of what revolutions mean for society.

Showing exemplars: If explaining the “logic” of how disciplines complement one another to advance
understanding proves difficult or rather unnatural, teachers may opt for orienting students toward
integrative performances on the part of experts (whether they be previous years’ students, real-world
practitioners, or scholars who produce integrative works). For example, teachers may invite students to

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Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

contrast the accounts of the French Revolution offered in their textbook with excerpts from Thomas Carlyle’s
epic prose. The added value of poetry in understanding the “spirit” of the past will become visible for
students in the process. Consider Carlyle’s writing on the American Revolution overseas.

Observe, however, beyond the Atlantic, has not the new day verily dawned!
Democracy, as we said, is born; storm-grits, is struggling for life and victory.
A sympathetic France rejoices over the Rights of Man; in all saloons, it is said,
What a spectacle!!
From Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, A History. p. 44.
Using integrative concepts as anchors: Finally, one way to think about how to make disciplinary
connections clear for students is to examine key complex concepts or phrases that embody the unit’s
enterprise. We call these compound concepts and they intuitively bring together distinct dimensions of an
issue that are typically studied by different disciplines. Consider the notion of “epic revolutions” that serves
as the title for the unit above. Here “epic” speaks directly to poetry and perhaps the arts, while “revolutions”
are best studied in history. “Epic revolutions” suggests, rightfully, that the unit will engage students in a
close examination of the epic qualities (experienced and expressed) of revolutionary times. By analysing the
title of the unit in depth, and perhaps inviting students to raise questions about each of these dimensions,
teachers can create a preliminary map of the content of the unit, the role various disciplines may play, and
their overarching inquiry purpose.

To conclude, an important clarification is in order. Occasionally teachers may prefer not to “name” the
disciplines involved in an interdisciplinary design. They may consider that naming each discipline and
explaining their nature makes the interdisciplinary teaching unnecessarily more complex and might
distract students from learning about the topic itself. Among teachers of younger students this position
is understandable and acceptable. However, whether or not they opt for naming disciplines explicitly, all
MYP teachers should reach clarity for themselves, their colleagues, and their students about the kind of
connections they seek to nurture and their relevance towards student understanding of the topics at hand.
They may say: “In this unit, you will write epic poems about the French Revolution to help your readers
understand what it might have been like for Danton to witness the revolution at the time.” When students
understand the kinds of connections expected in a unit of work they gain clarity about their learning
purpose and can become more active inquirers.

Forms of integration
Among the most striking qualities of interdisciplinary teaching is the sheer variety of ways in which teachers
can bring disciplines together meaningfully. As we see in this guide, the term “interdisciplinary” applies
legitimately to a unit on musical instruments, a project on environmental preservation, a study of the French
and American revolutions or a personal project on film and poverty.

Understanding particular ways in which disciplines can relate to one another has several advantages
in planning a unit of instruction. It enables teachers not only to communicate their integrative goals to
colleagues and students but also to ensure that the learning opportunities embedded in each kind of
integration are not overlooked. Once teachers can distinguish between potential forms of relationship
among disciplines, they can also anticipate the kinds of activities or performances of understanding that
might best support them. In this section, we explore six distinct ways in which disciplines can relate to each
other. They are labelled:

• artistic synthesis
• personal resonance
• crossover tool

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 Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

• complex explanation
• contextualization
• technological/practical solution.
As their names suggest, each form of synthesis is characterized by a particular understanding purpose.

Artistic synthesis
As our example above illustrates, students engage in an artistic synthesis when they are encouraged to
create an aesthetic interpretation of a non-artistic topic or issue, for example, climate change, revolutions,
genocide. Artistic synthesis deepens students’ understanding because it invites them to grapple with
the issues in a new way. Students are asked to translate their knowledge of the topic into a provocative
symbolism—into a symbolic work that anticipates how viewers will be invited to make sense of such topics.
Successful artistic syntheses must meet aesthetic standards in the medium employed as well as standards
of accuracy and relevance towards the topic. In the example above, students may be encouraged to do
more than represent “suffering” in a sculpture about the French Revolution. Teachers may challenge them
to stay closer to their subject of study—that is, in order to find evidence for, name and portray the particular
kind of suffering that took place in that context at the time. The sculpture on the “mother revolution” and
her dying son does so effectively. In essence, when the learning opportunities of integration are taken into
consideration artistic synthesis is more than asking students to “draw a picture of the French Revolution”.

Personal resonance
“Personal resonance” refers to the act of exploring a concept such as “liberty”, “respect”, “a good life”,
by examining how it has been interpreted in works stemming from multiple domains. The purpose of
a resonance-like integration is not to produce an exact definition of the concept under study but a well
informed, nuanced and personally meaningful one.

Consider the following example of a unit integrating multiple art forms. This unit focused on the meanings
of “exile”. Students explored artists’ work alluding to “exile” in theatre, music and the visual arts. They were
encouraged to make connections examining how artists’ views echoed or contradicted each other and,
fundamentally, how these artists’ views relate to students’ personal experiences. At each turn, the concept of
exile, which students had initially associated solely with the experience of individuals leaving their countries
of origin, gained new metaphoric and personal meanings. Multiple interpretations emerged: “exile from
ourselves”; “exile from our friends”; “chosen exile”; “forced exile”; “exile from the world around us”; “our
exile”; “others’ exile”; “our role in exiling others”. Enriched by multiple possibilities, students built a personal
stance on the meaning of “exile”, which they represented in writing, in a visual mood board, in music and,
eventually, in a “happening” or installation echoing practices in contemporary art.

Essential to resonance is the role of the self as the centre for understanding the meaning of things.
Accordingly, resonance is most prominent in the arts and literature, where personal experience and
consideration of multiple meanings play a central role.

Crossover tool
Students engage in “crossover tooling” when they learn a skill or concept that can be typically found in
two or more disciplines and apply it across subjects. For example, careful observation is central to data
collection in biology as well as to life drawing in the arts. Reasoning with evidence is as central to history
as it is to physics and mathematics even though the nature of the evidence considered in each case varies.
In a science unit on biological drawing, a teacher invites students to learn and apply the observational
techniques of the artist to engage in more careful observation of organisms. A series of lessons are offered
in the use of artistic techniques to depict negative space and attend to contour. In so doing students begin
to apply rigorous approaches from the visual arts to their study of organisms in the biology class.

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In this example the techniques of the visual arts are used as tools by the scientist. This crossover use is
possible because the approach to close observation of the artist in rendering the world in aesthetically
sophisticated ways is similar to that of the natural scientist in producing biologically accurate, visual studies
of organisms. In fact, the capacity for close observation crosses a variety of disciplines, and the arts-based
techniques of observation are potentially available as tools to study topics in a range of disciplines. Other
disciplinary tools, concepts and skills, like statistical modelling, or systems thinking, are likewise available for
“lending”. Students demonstrate integrative understanding based on crossover tooling when they become
able to apply one discipline’s tools, concepts or techniques in an appropriately similar context in another
discipline.

Complex explanation
Quite often, units of instruction are designed to help students understand why and how a complex event
or phenomenon occurs. Teachers and students may ask: Why is the climate changing and what can we do
about it? Why did individuals behave the way they did in the past? Why is heart disease more prominent
among some human populations than others? Addressing questions of this kind demands that one draws
on expertise stemming from more than one subject matter. Such comprehensive accounts illustrate a form
of disciplinary integration that is best described as “complex explanation”.

Consider for instance students’ investigation of the Pak Sha O river basin introduced in the previous chapter.
A central goal of this unit was to explain whether human activity was affecting the local ecosystem. As in
most environmental studies, a satisfactory account required the coordinated input of biology, chemistry,
geography and economics. Biology was needed to characterize the presence of micro-organisms at different
stages of the river and assess the health of mangroves on the shore. Chemistry and geography worked
together to characterize the shape of the river basin and the abiotic factors affecting living organisms.
Elements of economics enabled students to understand the kind of human activity taking place in the area
and how such activities might be viably transformed. Ultimately the unit asked students to build a complex
web of relationships among factors affecting the ecological balance in the area. Students demonstrate their
integrative understanding of the river when they exhibit a capacity to explain how such factors interact.
In this approach to integration oversimplified accounts are rejected in favour of those that relate different
factors and outcomes arising from the various disciplines considered. Understanding the conditions of the
Pak Sha O river basin is no longer a straightforward matter of measuring water quality alone, rather the river
is viewed as a complex phenomenon in which natural, biotic and abiotic conditions are affected by human
activity. Essentially, when building complex explanations, students take account of topics where multiple
factors (typically studied by biologists, economists, geographers and chemists) interact.

Contextualization
In contextualization, students situate a particular concept, issue, or problem arising in one discipline in a
larger historical, cultural or philosophical framework that sheds new meaning on the issue at hand. Among
experts, contextualization takes place, for example, when historians describe how the contexts in which
they lived contributed to Gregor Mendel’s discovery of patterns of genetic inheritance or Pablo Picasso’s
creation of Guernica. Similarly MYP students integrate disciplines in meaningful ways when they examine
the historical, cultural or philosophical context of the topic they are studying.

Consider for instance the unit described earlier to help students to become familiar with the pre-Columbian
musical instrument, the sikku. Teachers in the unit expected that students would not only be able to
explain how sikkus produce music in a pentatonic scale (much like the unit on “The sound of music” in our
introductory chapters) but also how sikkus embodied a long-standing world view and tradition in Latin
American culture. For example, students analysed the decorative artwork that is typically painted on sikkus.
The symmetric zoomorphic shapes employed could only be understood when students had a chance to
learn about the Incan civilization where these images originated. Students needed to understand these
people’s relationship to particular species in their natural surroundings.

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 Chapter 7 How will disciplines come together?

Essentially, when successful, the integration of two or more subjects enables students to reach an
understanding that they would not have achieved through single disciplinary means. Focusing on
integration involves being able to identify how, exactly, the concepts, methods, tools and genres of the
disciplines are coming together productively. It invites teachers to ask important questions about what they
teach. How are history, literature and the arts related to one another in a study of the French and American
revolutions? What insights are gained through the combination of perspectives that could not be achieved
by considering, for example, history, literature or the arts in isolation? Why does bringing these particular
disciplines together in a study of revolutions make sense? When experienced teachers share their views of
how disciplines come together in a unit, this enables students themselves to understand the purpose and
nature of their learning enterprise.

Technological/practical solution
Techological/practical solution refers to a student’s ablity to bring together multiple disciplines with a very
concrete and practical goal in mind: to create a product, find a solution, develop an intervention. When
working within this approach, students begin with a very clear idea of the outcome in mind and they back
fill to seek to reach such outcome. Their success is measured by the degree to which the outcome “worked”
in a practical sense. For example, Sofia and her classmates applied their understanding of the relationship
between sound wave longitude and tube length in their sikku to create an instrument able to play in a given
pentatonic scale.

Reflection point

Which of the forms of integration introduced above seem most familiar to you? As a thought experiment
consider how each one of the forms of integration above might apply to your own teaching in your
subject matter. Specifically, describe how teaching in your subject matter can be expanded, or improved
by applying each form of integration above. For example, if you are teaching a unit on genetic inheritance
in your biology class, an artistic synthesis may lead you to collaborate with the arts teacher in your school
to explore with students how key elements of this phenomenon (for example, the role of chance in
genetic inheritance) could be expressed compellingly in a work of art. Decide which form(s) of integration
are the best fit for your course.

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Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

Overview
This chapter recommends sequences of experiences or schemes of work to support quality interdisciplinary
learning. A constructivist performance-based view of understanding is emphasized.

The preceding three chapters addressed largely the question of what to teach in quality interdisciplinary
classrooms.

Focus shifts to the assignments or learning experiences that teachers can design for students to build the
desired understandings. Specifically the following questions are asked.

• How do students build deep interdisciplinary understandings?

• How can teachers design quality performances of understanding in interdisciplinary classrooms?

How do students build deep interdisciplinary

understanding?
A vignette: Numbers past and present

The classroom breeds excitement and concentration. Sitting in groups, MYP year 1 students are
writing multi-decimal numbers and solving operations. Unique about the task is that they are doing
so with ancient numerical systems while decoding how each system “works”. Two girls discuss where
to place knots on an Incan kippu. Other students ponder whether beads can “change how much they
count for” depending on where they stand in a Chinese abacus. Others discover that the Babylonian
numerical system does not allow them to count to 4,000.
As the number system codes are “cracked” students explain their assigned systems to the larger
group. Did they use their fingers and toes to count in base 20 systems? One student ventures, did
they really need to have very high numbers, like in the millions, if all they were counting was cattle?
“The good thing about using kippus made with strings is that you can travel with them kind of easily!”
Students’ exploration is part of a larger unit on ancient civilizations, their cultural achievements and
their influences on today’s life.
This illustrates the power of deep learning in MYP classrooms. As their teachers put it, the purpose of
this activity is to encourage students to understand that (a) number systems are constructed cultural
tools; (b) previous systems served particular purposes effectively in their context (for example,
in transaction records); and (c) that our number systems today evolved from previous systems. In
this experience, students are asked to do more than memorize given principles or solve routine
algorithms. They are invited to think with information about each number system to explain how
they work, hypothesize about the societies that produced them and apply them in basic operations.
For these students, deep learning takes place as they engage in this carefully designed assignment.
“The kids did not have the idea of bases at first,” the teacher explains, “but after working through
the cases they realized the difference between a base 10 and 20. The big idea is that there is a huge
connection between different number systems; they are all logical systems. They also learn that
some of these systems would not be effective today but it’s not necessarily that they are worse.
Rather, the present day system meets our needs.”

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 Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

Imagine trying to learn to use a new computer graphics program solely by reading and recalling operating
instructions. Clearly, reading would enhance the information base you have of how the programme is used
but it would hardly prepare you to use it effectively to process graphics. Understanding how to use a new
computer program requires that that we have multiple opportunities to actually use it, experiment with its
options, reflect and try again, aided by the information we obtain and moving toward increasingly open-
ended and complex tasks. Understanding is our capacity to think and act flexibly and adequately with
knowledge. Understanding how number systems work involves more than having information about them
in our minds—it requires that we become able to use information about the number systems, for example,
to explain how they work, examine their strength and limitations, apply them in various computational
problems.

In the MYP, students’ learning is typically nurtured at multiple levels. Students are encouraged to build a rich
knowledge base of a given topic, and demonstrate deep understanding and flexible application of concepts
and ideas, analyses and syntheses. In this guide we use the term “understanding” generally to refer to the
capacity to use concepts, theories, principles, and findings, whether such use involves practical problem
solving, analysis, synthesis or critique. Thus understanding ancient Mayan civilization involves more than
locating it in what is now Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize or recalling that it thrived between
the 3rd and 9th centuries. Rather, students demonstrate understanding of ancient Mayan civilizations
when, for example, they can organize the information they have acquired in light of the fundamental needs
that civilizations have in order to thrive and survive. When asked about the reasons why Mayans might
have settled in the region they did, these students may spontaneously refer to the Mayans’ need for food,
drink, shelter and health and point out the fertile river banks along which small-scale self-organized Mayan
cities emerged. They may highlight the ease of communication among cities that enabled the exchange of
goods and reason that demographic growth may have paralleled material and cultural production. When
confronted with the surprising fact that the ancient city of Copan, once a thriving site of Mayan civilization,
did not exhibit new monuments or temples built in the 18th century these students demonstrate deep
understanding when they hypothesize multiple viable explanations about why the city collapsed despite its
wealth: war, overuse of environmental resources, internal political strife.

Much like understanding how to use a new computer program, building understanding of Mayan civilizations
requires that students find multiple opportunities to work with the information given. Activities or schemes
of work foster deep understanding when they ask students to engage a given content to produce an
explanation, design a graph, solve a problem or create a product. In this guide, such understanding-centred
activities are called “understanding performances” because they build and demonstrate understanding
at once. Two core features distinguish quality understanding performances from more generic activities,
schemes of work or student assignments.

• They are visibly aligned with the learning goals of a unit.

• They require that students think with and apply information in new ways.
Our number systems example above illustrates these points clearly: the assignment was designed to enable
students to identify defining patterns of ancient number systems—to “figure out how they work” based
on a few given clues. They were then to evaluate pros and cons of the number system under study, and to
contextualize their thinking by examining the multiple uses that people in antiquity made of computation.
In so doing, the performance met two of the stated learning goals for this portion of the unit: to understand
the constructed nature of numbers and how previous number systems satisfied contextual needs. The
performance is also effective in that it does not limit student learning to the memorization of key given
features of number systems, rather it engages students in supported discovery of such features and careful
thinking about their implications. Reading about the number systems and memorizing rules may be an
activity but it is not an understanding performance, because understanding performances demand that
students use the information in novel situations—rather than merely recite it back.

The following chart includes a list of activities and compares them to corresponding understanding
performances visibly designed to advance and demonstrate student understanding.

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Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

From classroom activities to performances of understanding

Classroom activities Performances of understanding

General student actions for learning Actions that lead students to work through
the specific concepts and skills that a unit is
designed to teach

In a unit on environment degradation, students In a unit on environment degradation, students

read an article about environmental degradation extract the main indicators of environmental
or watch a film clip to familiarize themselves with degradation in a given article or film clip and
the issue. indicate whether such indicators are visible in their
local environment.

In a unit on the Holocaust, students read Elie In a unit on the Holocaust, students read Elie
Wiesel’s Night and then work in groups to Wiesel’s Night and then work in groups to closely
dramatize a section that they found interesting. study an extract from the text. Each group reworks
it into a dramatic performance to appeal to a
different segment of society who may have a
different take on the Holocaust. They then conduct
a dialogue with the audience to discuss choices
they made in their reworking of the extract.

In a unit on architectural creations, students In a unit on architectural creations, students

conduct research on different wonders of the conduct research into how and why a particular
world and present their findings in a Microsoft wonder of the world was built, and hypothesize
Powerpoint™ slideshow. on the significance of the wonder on the society
that built it. They then plan a ”wonder” that they
would build in their own country, complete with
explanations on why they would build such a
creation and how doing so would reflect on and
impact their society.

In a unit on ancient Egypt, students find In a unit on the ancient civilization of Egypt,
information about the pyramids. students study the number system used by the
ancient Egyptians and hypothesize how they
would have used it to calculate the amount of
resources required for the pyramids. In doing so,
they consider issues such as the geographical
region of Egypt (where the stone would come
from), the social structure of the society (who the
workers were), the beliefs and practices of the
society (why would the community support the
construction), etc.

In a unit on migration, students read about local In a unit on immigration, students research the
migrants. immigration policies of different countries and the
experiences of immigrants in order to create their
own policy on immigration for their country.

Figure 14

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 Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

Reflection point

Select five activities that you often use. Analyse whether these activities are understanding performances
or simply activities by gauging the degree to which they satisfy the two criteria above. If they do not
meet the understanding performance criteria, how would you transform the activity so that they do?

How can teachers design quality performances of

understanding in interdisciplinary classrooms?
Performances of understanding are the essential building blocks of deep learning. Regardless of subject
or discipline, designing such learning experiences involves rigorous and creative thinking on the part of
teachers. In the MYP teachers design performances of understanding that enable students both to build and
demonstrate their growing understanding, which allows teachers to monitor and support their students’
learning.

Connections

In the MYP: From principles into practice guide, performances of understanding are described as
“assessment” tasks. In this guide we examine the task design and their assessment separately. We look at
task design in this chapter and criteria for assessment in the next. It is worth, however, keeping in mind
that assessment does not require the design of yet another set of activities specially geared for evaluation.
Rather, ongoing assessment implies looking at student work, comments, thinking and task performances
carefully to gauge their growing understanding. When assessing student work teachers apply evaluation
criteria to the understanding performances designed for a unit. Such criteria are addressed in depth in
chapter 9.

To design performances of understanding teachers must ask the following.

• What are the particular concepts, skills, ideas that I would like my students to understand through this
activity?
• What might I invite students to do with such information so that they grapple with it and give meaning
to it?
• Is the activity or task I design truly demanding that students think with the information given in a new
way?
• Will the activity make their developing understanding visible, and therefore enable me to offer feedback?

Further explanation of performances of

understanding
A defining characteristic of performances of understanding in interdisciplinary units is that they foster
interdisciplinary understanding. Thus particular attention must be paid to the design of performances of
understanding that will help students to appreciate the purpose of their inquiry and learning, build a robust
grounding in the disciplines or subjects involved, develop productive integrations across disciplines, and
reflect about their learning.

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Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

As seen in chapter 4, in interdisciplinary units or courses, integrative performances of understanding are

placed from the beginning of the unit, when introductory performances enable students to preview the
topics to be explored, throughout as midway synthesis and final synthesis. This sequence of integrative
efforts in a unit is informed along the way by performances designed to help students learn selected
concepts and modes of thinking in the disciplines or subject matters involved, that is, disciplinary tooling
performances.

Integrative performances
Introductory performances give students a preview of the larger topic in its complexity. Rather than
requiring the application of new knowledge, effective introductory performances invite students to apply
their initial theories, knowledge or intuitions about a topic, making a diagnostic assessment possible.

Midway synthesis performances are designed to help students see connections among multiple aspects
of a topic or problem typically studied by different disciplines. Placed early or mid way in a unit these
performances support students to make such connections.

Final synthesis performances enable students to build and demonstrate their most comprehensive
understanding of the topic. These performances (a final paper, a presentation, a simulation, a portfolio) are
designed to make students’ interdisciplinary understanding of the topic visible.

Disciplinary performances
Disciplinary tooling performances focus narrowly on grounding students in the ideas and modes of
thinking of a particular discipline. They tool students for the more complex interdisciplinary work by ensuring
they understand core selected concepts in the disciplines involved. In such disciplinary performances
students examine and apply the targeted concepts, skills or attitudes in a unit, receiving informative
feedback from teachers.

Examples of performances of understanding

Selected examples of understanding performances of a unit on ancient civilizations are considered and
analysed below.

An example: Teaching ancient civilizations

Teachers in this MYP year 1 course had three goals in mind for their unit on ancient civilizations. The
unit seeks to integrate history, geography, language A, arts and mathematics to examine ancient
civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica and Greece and Rome. Three fundamental goals
drive this unit. Students studied early civilizations to understand:

• why these civilizations rose, thrived and collapsed

• how factors such as physical geography, social organization, culture, external relationships and
the use of natural resources influenced this process
• how we can do research about the lives of people who lived centuries ago.
In this unit, students examined one civilization, Egypt, together in depth in class. Working in groups
they were guided to investigate the characteristics, rise and fall of other civilizations as well. Special
attention was placed on supporting students in the steps of the research process.

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Introductory performance: Raising questions about ancient civilizations

Students begin the unit with a challenge: they are put in the role of Egyptologists who found an
engraved stone. Their task is to list possible uses and meanings of the stone. The image they are
asked to examine is that of the Rosetta Stone found by French soldiers in 1799, which provided a clue
to understanding ancient Egyptian writing. Students brainstorm: “It’s about the laws of what’s right
and what’s wrong.” “Maybe everybody had one of these in their house—like a prayer or something.”
“You could also use it as a weapon if someone came to rob you.” “I think writing was not very common
a long time ago so if they knew how to write these people must have been very advanced for their
time.” The teacher asks questions to prompt students into further discussion: What would you need
to know about the people who lived back then to make sense of the Rosetta Stone? Why are these
great civilizations no longer around? Might our civilization also disappear one day, what might be
left behind?

Following a video documentary of an excavation, students work in groups to identify what they
would like to know about the Egyptians to understand why this civilization emerged, thrived
and collapsed. A chart structures students’ questions into five areas: “place/environment”; “social
organization (class, jobs, government)”; “culture (art, mathematics, sciences and religion)”; “products
and commerce”; “neighbouring societies”.

Integrative performances
A marker of quality interdisciplinary teaching design is the degree to which it offers students ample
opportunities to make meaningful connections across disciplines building toward a final synthesis or project
that embodies the ultimate understanding.

Introductory performances: Building preliminary explanations

Introductory performances provide an initial intuitive and synthetic overview of the topic to be studied.
They can occasionally be considered preliminary syntheses. Three features characterize quality introductory
performances for an interdisciplinary unit. They help students:

• understand the purpose and relevance of their learning

• appreciate the multifaceted nature of the problem under study
• make their intuitive ideas about the topic visible as a diagnostic assessment of students’ interests,
beliefs and misconceptions.
Understanding purpose and relevance: The initial discussion is designed to help students appreciate that
civilizations (past and present) rise and decline and that understanding how this happens matters for our
future well-being. “We may not be able to predict the future of our civilization,” the teacher explains, “but
we can meet it in informed ways if we understand similar human experiences in the past”. In addition, the
brainstorm helps students identify their own sense of what matters most, and to begin to personalize their
inquiry.

Appreciating the multifaceted nature of the topic: By structuring the brainstorm along five core
dimensions, students appreciate that understanding civilizations involves considering multiple perspectives
and levels of analysis. Such perspectives range from the physical and environmental context to the rituals
and traditions that hold a society together. In so doing, the structured brainstorm prepares students for
an inquiry in which understanding both local ecosystems and artistic expression will be necessary. The
brainstorm opens their minds to the possibility that geography, history and arts as well as other disciplines
will be needed offering an introductory invitation to the areas to be studied and their potential connections.
Furthermore, the documentary on archaeological work offers a preview of another key aspect of the unit—
the nature of research about the past.

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Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

Making students’ initial beliefs visible: Finally, these introductory performances shed light on students’
intuitive beliefs about the topic. The questions do not assume prior knowledge of civilizations and all answers
are welcome. Students’ responses enable teachers to detect powerful ideas such as the notion that civilizations
were marked by their capacity to use symbols and notational systems to convey ideas. They also enable them to
detect misconceptions such as students’ proclivity to project present values onto the past. Because nurturing
deep understanding involves transforming several of these beliefs, identifying them early on matters.

Essentially, good introductory performances offer an overall preview of learning—an intuitive and playful
introduction to a multidimensional space where students begin to see “the whole picture” of what they are
about to learn even if they do not yet understand it fully. Introductory performances do not assume prior
knowledge nor do they expect correct answers. They are exploratory and engaging with the topic and with
an interdisciplinary approach.

Midway synthesis performances: Making well-supported connections across domains

Having engaged in introductory performances during the first days of the unit, students are invited and
carefully supported to explore and make connections between subjects as the unit progresses.

A relevant component of the ancient civilizations unit involved teaching students to conduct library research
about a civilization of their choice. In groups students gathered information about the core characteristics
of their civilization along five topics: “physical place/natural environment”; “social organization (class, jobs,
government)”; “culture (art, mathematics, sciences and religion)”; “products and commerce”; “neighbouring
societies”. Students were supported to develop information gathering skills—recognizing that books in
different disciplines may offer different perspectives on their civilization; taking careful notes; citing sources;
creating a research folder. Each group was asked to draw on their findings to address carefully designed
integrative performances of understanding.

Linking environment and societies: Using the information gathered, students work as a group to examine
and explain the ways in which the physical environment, flora and fauna of the region contributed to their
assigned civilization’s rise and/or to its collapse (geography, history).

Linking art and culture to society: Students are asked to select one interesting cultural product of their
chosen civilization (pyramids, Colosseum, religious rituals, number systems, artworks, democracy), and to
describe the cultural product carefully, explaining how it worked (for example, use of profile figures and
story-like compositions in Egyptian art, decimal system in Roman numbers). Students are asked to describe
how this cultural product might have contributed to bringing the society together or to creating division
and conflict (art/history; mathematics/history).

Creating and sharing larger explanations: A few lessons into the unit on ancient civilizations students
are invited to hypothesize why the great civilizations about which they were beginning to read might have
arisen and why they were no longer around. What makes civilizations rise and then disappear? In small
groups students consider multiple possible causes (war, droughts, conquest) and create a causal map about
why civilizations rise and one on why they collapse. As a class students compare multiple maps to generate
two whole-class theories on rise and collapse represented on two large posters. As new information emerges
from students’ research in the unit, students add detail to their maps.

A discussion follows. What aspects of ancient civilizations are most important to understand why ancient
civilizations rose and collapsed? Who are the people who know most about these various issues (for example,
geographers, historians, medical doctors)? Do you think that all civilizations emerged and collapsed for the
same reasons?

Final synthesis performance: Bringing insights from different disciplines together to

address the central question of the unit
Final synthesis performances enable students to demonstrate a sense of a clear purpose for learning; they
treat the topic in its multiple dimensions, they employ knowledge and modes of thinking in the disciplines
accurately and they make relevant and insightful connections.

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As a final synthesis for the unit students are asked to write a paper explaining the rise and decline of their
researched civilization. Their study of Egypt has enabled them to understand that the physical environment,
culture and religion, trade and external relations had an impact on a civilization’s early settlements, its
growth and collapse. For their final paper students are asked to weigh the impact of each characteristic on
the rise of the civilizations they studied, and their eventual decline. In preparation for their final paper each
group presents their arguments to the class using Microsoft Powerpoint™ slides.

How do integrative performances work?

Integrative performances are designed to help students make connections across dimensions of a problem
typically studied by different disciplines. In quality interdisciplinary units such connections are not placed
at the end of the unit but take place throughout with increasing complexity and student autonomy. A few
qualities characterize exemplary performances.

Integrative performances help students identify relevant dimensions of the problem and make
connections among them: In this example, preliminary disciplinary connections are proposed: for example,
the fertile land of the Nile may have contributed to the rise of Egypt because when people were well fed and
they had to wait for their crops to ripen they had time to create more sophisticated tools, produce works
of art, participate in rituals. It prepares students to construct complex interdisciplinary explanations, the
ultimate goal of the unit.

Integrative performances support students in making small- and large-scale connections that yield
a new understanding: In this example, students make well-supported connections between geography
and history or between art and history as they advance an argument about the role of the environment
or a cultural product on a society’s life. Students practice making small-scale meaningful connections
between history and other disciplines toward an overall explanation of why their civilization developed and
collapsed.

Final synthesis performances enable students to build and demonstrate students’ comprehensive
understanding: In this example, student papers integrate their assessment of a civilization’s emergence and
collapse considering how the physical environment may have enabled agricultural forms of organization as
well as more and less sustainable forms of land use. They also examine the human resources and demands
of grand architectural works and their impact on the political organization of the civilization under study.

Disciplinary performances
Quality disciplinary performances in an interdisciplinary unit focus on particular disciplinary concepts,
ideas or modes of thinking that are deemed central to understanding the larger topic at hand. Disciplinary
performances are placed along the unit introducing specific concepts in isolation and in relation to the
overall unit goals as needed. They invite students to do the following.

Apply/think with available information: As in all understanding performances, students are asked to
do more than gather and recall information. They are expected to use such information in new contexts,
for example, to advance a hypothesis or make an argument about social organization in the Old Kingdom.
In quality disciplinary tooling performances, information seeking, library research and note-taking are
extended through the use of such information in a new context (for example, analysis and argument
building).

Target core concepts and modes of thinking in the discipline: Quality disciplinary performances tend
to focus on key disciplinary concepts and modes of thinking. In the examples above, the concept of river
basin dynamics and map interpretations are central to the discipline of geography. Conversely concepts
like social structure, forms of government and power in past societies, are key to understanding history,
as is the interpretation of primary and secondary sources. When students have a chance to build deep
understandings of such central disciplinary concepts, they are also more likely to apply them beyond the
particular topic under study, for example, in their analysis of other ancient civilizations.

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Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

Visibly inform the topic under study: Finally, because interdisciplinary units are informed by selected
concepts and skills in each discipline, it matters that students’ disciplinary performances contribute directly to
student understanding of the topic. In this example, understanding patterns of flooding of the Nile will inform
students’ understanding of why a civilization emerged in northwest Africa more than 5,000 years ago.

How do disciplinary tooling performances work?

Performances should appear where appropriate in a unit, when teachers turn their focus to deeper
understanding of particular discipline-specific learning. Consider the examples below.

Example 1: Grounding understanding in geography—maps and the Nile River Basin

Understanding the rise and fall of ancient Egypt requires an understanding of the Nile as a physical,
political and cultural force in Egyptian life. Disciplinary tooling performances focus on each of these
dimensions, enabling students to learn key concepts in geography, history and art. For example, to
understand the Nile as a part of the physical geography of ancient Egypt students must learn how
the river banks evolved over the centuries enlarging the fertile surfaces for agricultural use after
4,500 BC. Students also need to learn about the regular annual flooding of the Nile, which made
agricultural production reliable and abundant. How might teachers design learning experiences that
enable students to build such understandings?

One teacher explains: “The book didn’t have a good tool for us to introduce an area. For example,
there is no ancient Mesopotamia or Ancient Egypt map, just maps of the whole world. We wanted
the kids to identify where ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were but we also wanted for them to look
at different maps and make connections and arguments using the maps.”

In this unit students are asked to do more than collect and record basic information about the Nile.
Performances of understanding here include the following.

• Students are invited to use such information to examine the Nile River Basin dynamics—a fundamental
concept in geography.
• Some students are asked to create and compare maps of the river at various levels of inundation
throughout the year.
• Others are challenged to include flooding management systems developed by the people of the Nile.
• Students are invited to study and discuss how water flows affected fertility of the land and how the
Egyptians organized their yearly agricultural activities around the Nile. Flooding increased agricultural
yields while drainage and silt accumulation contributed to the expansion of fertile floodplains and
delta lands.
• Working in groups students use their images and selected background readings to support their
arguments about how the Nile contributed to the rise and success of a fundamentally agricultural
Egyptian civilization.

Example 2: Grounding understanding in history—sources and historical imagination

Teachers in this unit seek to help students understand the characteristics of ancient civilizations, the
cultural practices, social organizations and cosmologies that held them together or were sources of
internal conflict. For example, through a Microsoft Powerpoint™ presentation a teacher introduces
the Pyramids of Giza as a monumental expression of ancient Egyptian cosmology, commenting on

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how Egyptian society was organized. The teacher asks what it takes for a society to create these
magnificent works. What kind of leaders must this society have had? Why and how might people
organize their work to create these architectural milestones? If you were the government of this
society how would you get enough people to work hard? In an informal discussion students share
their opinions, based on the information provided by the teacher.

To examine these questions further students are given a variety of selected resources, references and
websites. Their task is to gather information about the Egyptians’ social organization, government,
religion, education, and art and culture in order to inform a short paper on the characteristics of
this ancient civilization that held it together and those that yielded conflict and stress. For instance
students reflect on the power of a centralized national bureaucracy during the Old Kingdom and the
social costs of slavery.

One teacher explained “to improve the quality of the research writing of students we try first to
improve the quality of the information they have, and secondly the way they structure their essays.
By using a research organizer, students are creating a clear structure of where to put information on
various aspects of the civilization—it becomes clearer to them which piece of information belongs
where. They are not then looking at information on religion, if it does not pertain to an aspect they
are researching. This is already teaching them the skill of making choices about what information to
include, to prevent an overload of information.”

Several performances of understanding are designed to support student research and thinking.

• Summary sheets present historical information and guidance as to how to capture main ideas in
paragraph and bullet point form.
• Sourcing tasks invite students to identify the source of a document and guide them to assess its
reliability.
• A historical imagination task invites students to point out how people in the past might have
interpreted expressions and situations differently.
• A classification task leads students to group together characteristics that they think will add to social
cohesion and those that might impede it.

Conclusion
Designing understanding performances is the most creative aspect of curriculum and instructional design
in the MYP. Research in student learning has shown that when students simply accumulate new information
in their minds they may be able to retain it for a test or an exam but be unable to recall such information
when a new situation emerges that requires them to bring their knowledge to bear. To nurture deep
understanding MYP teachers are asked to engage students’ prior knowledge about the topics that they
teach and have students work with the new concepts and skills being taught in multiple ways, for example,
considering analogies, using them in building explanations, supporting a personal position.

Crafting performances of understanding demands that teachers are clear about what exactly we would
like students to come to understand and that they weigh multiple competing options of what students
might be asked to do to build such understandings. Developing performances of understanding in an
interdisciplinary unit also requires that teachers think carefully about which performances will work best as
introductions to a unit, which ones as disciplinary grounding, which as integrative.

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Chapter 8 What will students do to learn?

The design below aims to support teachers in this creative task.

Aligning AOIs, understanding goals and understanding performances

Context provided by AOI: Introductory performances Do my introductory performances

• • give students a preview of the larger topic in
Understanding goals: its complexity?

• • invite students to apply their initial theories,

knowledge or intuitions about the topic, and
•
allow me to make a diagnostic assessment?
•
• invite students to appreciate the multiple
dimensions of the problem under study?
• invite students to appreciate why
understanding the topic matters?

Understanding goals: Disciplinary performances Do my disciplinary performances

• • ground my students in the ideas and modes
• of thinking of ?

• • prepare students for the more complex

interdisciplinary work by ensuring that
they understand the core selected concepts
in ?

Understanding goals: Midway synthesis performances • Do my midway synthesis performances

• help students see the connections among
multiple aspects of the topic?
•
• Are my midway synthesis performances
•
placed strategically to support students in
making these connections?

Understanding goals: Final synthesis performances Do my final synthesis performances

• • help students build and demonstrate their most
• comprehensive understanding of the topic?

• • make the students’ interdisciplinary

understanding of the topic visible?
• enable students to demonstrate a clear sense
of purpose for learning?
• enable students to treat the topic in its
multiple dimensions?
• enable students to employ knowledge and
modes of thinking in the disciplines accurately?
• enable students to make relevant and
insightful connections?

Figure 15

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Overview
This chapter introduces core principles and practical guidelines to assess student interdisciplinary work in
the MYP. Three questions are examined.

• What are the qualities of good assessment practices in the MYP?

• What constitutes adequate evidence of students’ interdisciplinary understanding?
• What challenges do teachers confront when assessing interdisciplinary work?

What are the qualities of good assessment practices

in the MYP?
Crafting quality assessments requires careful attention to the strategies through which information about
student learning is to be gathered, the criteria by which progress will be measured and the kind of feedback
that will best advance student understanding. A few key practical guidelines can prove of great help to
teachers interested in rigorous assessment of their students’ learning.

Assessment is carefully planned: In planning a course or unit of work teachers develop an assessment
strategy that is inseparable from their teaching strategy. For example, they define a final project, decide
which activities to include, or how to sequence them over time, keeping in mind how such activities will
advance and demonstrate student understanding.

Assessment is formative and summative: In addition to the final assessment that typically follows a unit
of work, teachers begin to assess on day one and continue to assess over time. For example, early in a unit
teachers may invite students to solve a problem or brainstorm ideas about the unit’s topic in ways that make
students’ initial understandings visible. Throughout the unit activities are designed to develop these early
understandings and demonstrate growth.

Assessment is aligned with MYP aims and objectives and areas of interaction: In planning and
conducting their units, teachers use MYP aims, objectives and areas of interaction as guideposts. These
inform not only the selection of what to teach but also the criteria by which related assessment can be
conducted ensuring coherence to the teaching design.

Assessment is based on evidence of student work: In the MYP assessment builds on close analysis of
student work. Teachers select relevant pieces of student work for assessment and are able to point out
students’ accomplishments or misunderstandings in their products or performances.

Assessment offers informative feedback: Viewed as an opportunity to support further learning,

assessment does not seek to expose students in their mistakes but to help students recognize, and have
evidence of, their accomplishments and misconceptions as well as strategies to improve their work.

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What constitutes adequate evidence of students’

interdisciplinary understanding?
The general guidelines above address primarily how teachers can assess student work. These guidelines
apply to subject-specific and interdisciplinary assessment alike. When students engage in interdisciplinary
learning they have an opportunity to draw on multiple subject areas and to integrate their perspectives. As
a result, when teachers wonder how exactly interdisciplinary work is to be assessed, they ponder about key
qualities that distinguish exemplary from less accomplished interdisciplinary work.

Consider these two examples of student work.

The multiple faces of “exile”

Students in MYP year 5 were required to work across drama, music and the visual arts to create
a “happening” in the school on the theme of “exile”. The unit was developed collaboratively by
teachers in the arts department. Students worked in groups that consisted of members from each
discipline. The project lasted 12 weeks with time divided to allow students to conduct research on
art forms and artists in the three areas, to advance an interpretation of “exile” and to develop their
“happening”. The final project consisted of a series of public “happenings” involving image, sound
and performance.

The “happening” created by Celestine, Devon, Ella and Mariella is entitled “Exiling ourselves from
the world through the media”. Invitees to the “happening” walk quietly into the room curious about
the experiences that students in theatre, music and visual arts have prepared for them. The room is
dimly lit. Two clearly defined spaces are separated by strings tied from floor to ceiling. Dominating
this virtual wall is a large TV screen made out of paper. One side of this transparent wall features a
warm dining room scene where two students are enjoying a lively conversation surrounded by the
soothing Brazilian bossa nova sound of Vinicius de Moraes. The conversation flows naturally from
pasta recipes, to comments about last weekend’s outing and an old friend’s personal life.

Actors are oblivious to the audience moving in their space—a detached and stale environment
makes the audience feel separated from the “happening” itself. On one wall a column of large
numbers appears in red: 27,000; 800 in three months, 6 million.

A warm dining room scene where two students are enjoying a lively conversation, ignoring the column of
large numbers in red on the wall behind them.

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In the morgue, a blue-coloured body, covered by a white sheet with printed red words, lays stiff on the
examination table.

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The forensic specialist prepares her instruments for the autopsy. Behind her, the two spaces of the
performance are shown in jarring juxtaposition.

A glance to the other side of the virtual wall reveals the scene of a morgue. A blue-coloured body
covered by a white sheet with printed red words lays stiff on the examination table while a forensic
specialist wearing a white lab coat is getting her instruments ready for the posthumous exam.
Attached to the body’s toe is a label with a number. Slowly the audience moves to the morgue side
of the room, as if through the television screen, through a hole cut by the forensic specialist in the
paper TV. Once behind the media screen the audience walks quietly around the body and watches
with stupor while, in the background, Vinicius de Moraes’ enchantment with the girl from Ipanema
becomes physically unsettling.

A doorbell rings in the dining room. A message is delivered to the host, “the autopsy will now begin”,
the specialist clarifies, “I must request that you leave”. Unsettled, puzzled, challenged to put it all
together in their minds; the audience leaves the “happening” and moves into the school hallway
where they remain moved and silent for a while.

Understanding sikkus and ourselves

Concluding an MYP year 3 unit on Andean cultures, Sofia’s final report offers an extensive account of
her exploration of Andean musical and cultural heritage and the importance of preserving it in our
rapidly globalizing times. Sofia outlines the dual problem that drives the work of her class as follows:
“School #33 (a neighbouring school of limited resources) has no musical instruments. At the same
time, Andean cultural artifacts and traditions are increasingly lost in contemporary societies.”

To address these problems, Sofia reports, she and her class built a series of sikkus (a traditional
Andean flute) with recycled materials. The sikkus were carefully designed with an understanding of
sound waves and pitch intervals; they were made of recycled materials and illustrated with traditional
Andean art motifs. Sophia views this initiative as a low-cost small-scale sustainable development

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programme that will at once help children and preserve the Andean cultural tradition. Most
compellingly, Sofia examines the roots of musical instruments like the sikku and the charango in
ancient Andean civilizations, showing how the traditional religious meaning attributed to such
instruments in the past has given way to the sometimes misguided, profit-driven meanings of our
century.

Drawing on her research for this unit, Sofia concludes that it is only recently that “autochthonous
music has been socially accepted as a form of cultural expression in our city. This is a new phase in
a process that goes from discrimination, racism and intolerance to acceptance, admiration, respect
and inclusion of all inhabitants in our cities, their practices and cultural expressions.”

Performances and reports like the ones described above illustrate the multiple ways in which students bring
together what they have learned in two or more courses in a given unit and how they are making sense
of the information and skills acquired. The exile unit integrates student learning in subjects or disciplines
within a subject group, the arts. The sikkus unit integrates understanding across multiple subject groups:
sciences (physics), humanities (history and geography) and arts (music and visual arts).

Teachers in charge of assessing and supporting student learning must look at these productions carefully,
seeking evidence of understanding and opportunities for further growth. Important questions are raised by
teachers when they begin to do so. Is student interdisciplinary work to be assessed in the same way as their
subject-specific work? Are there additional challenges to learning across disciplines that we should attend
to? How can we assess students’ capacity to produce work in which the whole is visibly more than “the sum
of its disciplinary parts”?

To address the specific demands associated with assessing interdisciplinary work we introduce here
an assessment approach that teachers are encouraged to use to inform their practice. Grounded in the
definition of interdisciplinary learning introduced in previous chapters, this approach guides teachers’
attention to four dimensions of the work embodied in the following questions.

• Purpose: What is the purpose of this work? How clear, interdisciplinary, and focused through the areas
of interaction is it?
• Grounding: Is the student drawing on the subjects’ knowledge and modes of thinking (concepts,
skills, attitudes) accurately and appropriately?
• Integration: Are the subjects in this work integrated in ways that deepen students’ understanding?
• Thoughtfulness: Is the student thoughtful about his or her work and the challenges and opportunities
of making connections across subjects?
The recommended assessment approach builds on the subject criteria stipulated by the MYP and expands
beyond them by inviting teachers to examine interdisciplinary student work holistically in a systematic
way. Each dimension is examined below illustrating how it illuminates the’ “happening” on exile and Sofia’s
report above.

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Purpose: What is the purpose of this work, and how clear,

interdisciplinary, and focused through the areas of interaction is it?
This is the suggested starting point for assessing students’ interdisciplinary work. MYP teachers will find
it helpful to begin their assessment by identifying the purpose of a piece of work or interdisciplinary
exploration. Student interdisciplinary work varies greatly in purpose. Some aim to describe or explain a
phenomenon or event in their full complexity. Others seek to solve a complex problem. Others aim to offer
new interpretations, expressing thoughts aesthetically. Still others seek to create products or call for action
and change. Understanding the purpose of a student’s work matters because such purpose drives the
crafting of the work and sets standards for its assessment. When teachers and students have clarity about
the purpose of their learning and inquiry they can more readily determine what disciplines can be used to
meet their goals, which disciplines should dominate, how disciplines could be best combined and how to
decide when the work is “done” and its purpose accomplished.

Three core steps are in order as teachers examine the purpose of a student’s interdisciplinary work.

• Describe: What is the purpose of the work?

• Assess: Is the purpose of the work clear (whether explicit or implicit)?
–– Does the purpose invite/require an interdisciplinary approach?
–– Is the work clearly focused through an MYP area of interaction?
• Guide: How can we support the student to gain clarity about the purpose of his or her interdisciplinary
work and its relationship with the areas of interaction?
For example, the unit on Andean cultures invited students to create musical instruments and understand
their historical and cultural context in order to preserve the Andean cultural heritage. The purpose was clear
and multifaceted and could not be successfully achieved through the perspective of music, history or physics
alone. Rather, multiple perspectives were necessarily combined. Sofia’s statement about the two problems
her work seeks to address provides evidence of her clear goals. Sofia’s project speaks directly to human
ingenuity as an area of interaction, enabling her to appreciate human ingenuity and our longstanding search
for means of expression from ancient civilizations until today. Her work also speaks to community and service
in her attempt to act to preserve the Andean tradition among disadvantaged children. Sofia explains.

Children in school #33 lack musical instruments and native cultural traditions
are being lost with globalization. To address this problem I will create a sikku
out of recycled materials and teach children in a neighbouring school how to
make one and play it as well, in order to preserve traditional Andean culture in
our society today.
In the particular case of “exile and the media” students sought to call their audience’s attention to the ways
in which frequent news about numbers of deaths around the globe has rendered us apathetic to the reality
of human suffering associated with each death. In their work they employ multiple art forms as a means
to ensure a rich exploration, not as an end in itself. In other words, students do not describe their work as
an effort to integrate theatre, music and the visual arts. Rather, they see themselves drawing on these art
forms to pursue a larger purpose: to examine how the saturation of media in post-industrial societies is
leading to a new form of exile and disconnection and to invite their audiences to reflect about that as well.
Most commonly the general purpose of students’ work—for example, “to explore multiple meanings of
exile”—is determined by the teacher. In many cases, including this exile unit, teachers also give students
sufficient latitude to define or refine for themselves the particular purpose of the work. Consider how
students themselves characterize the aims of their “happening”. Consider how effectively students’ aims
align with an understanding of human ingenuity and their role of raising awareness about human rights
violations in their communities.

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We wanted to talk about modern tragedy that’s happening all over the world,
so not necessarily in the Middle East or just anywhere. We want somehow
to demonstrate how it wasn’t real to us. We thought that … how the idea of
statistics was a barrier, the fact that we hear “30 people have died today in
Baghdad” means so little to us nowadays. We’ll hear it every day and go back
to eating dinner and just turn the TV off. It’s not really real to us. And when you
walk through the TV and you actually see what’s really happening, I think that’s
the impact that hits you a lot even though his face is covered. Also, at the end
when she adds the one number on the door, it like shows you that story behind
that one person, and so you think when you see here like 30 people dead, you
know there’s a story behind every one of them.

We were aiming to create something where people would walk in and see
what we’re doing—bringing together elements from all over the place—and
walk out different, with this image implanted in their mind.
Exploring media-induced forms of “exile”, students judged, was a worthy enterprise—one that required
that they draw on multiple art forms, to give dense layers of meaning to their “happening”. In doing so, they
borrowed broadly from the courses they had taken.

We studied a number of different artists like John Cage and Bruce Nauman.
Bruce Nauman had many ideas like us. He was saying like he was inspired by
the irritation of how people can just ignore what they don’t like. So the effect
that we wanted to give people was that they couldn’t just run away. So it was
in their face—that was like being in the morgue. It was like actually being in
reality but covered up.

The different artists showed us different ideas of what we could go into and so
we already knew what was out there. So we could combine their ideas, which
made us think of our own. It seemed as if our idea was original but actually it
was all synthesized. We borrowed from a variety of places.
In its final production, the purpose of the students’ “happening” seemed clear, requiring no additional
revisions or further guidance. Throughout the process of developing their interpretation of “exile”, students
considered various focuses for their work and found that the task of reinterpreting exile was challenging.
Committed to doing “something that related to home life and to mass violations of human rights”, students
struggled to name the form of exile that the distance between these two worlds represented. They were
able to define the purpose of their work when they realized that phrases such as “exiled by media overload”,
“numbed by the death tolls on TV” became an adequate framing for their work.

Appreciating the purpose of student interdisciplinary work is sometimes counterintuitive for teachers. Firstly,
because most typically they, not their students, are establishing the purpose of students’ investigations.
Secondly, because such purposes are often presented in terms of learning goals rather than in terms of
the kinds of knowledge-based pursuits in which human beings engage in authentic contexts: explaining
a phenomenon, creating an instrument, solving a social problem, developing a personal position about a
complex social or environmental issue. In schools student work is typically (and rightfully) framed in terms
such as, “students will understand core features defining contemporary art”; “students will demonstrate
their understanding of the creative cycle”. Appreciating the purpose of interdisciplinary pieces of work like
the ones presented above involves gaining a sense of how students themselves give meaning and direction
to their efforts—how they link what they do in school with the world in which they live, adding authentic
meaning to their learning.

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Reflection point

Think of an interdisciplinary unit that you or a colleague has taught previously. Reflect on the following
questions.
• What learning goals were established for the unit, and how can they be transformed into authentic
purposes for inquiry? In reflecting about this ask yourself why young people should develop such
understanding in our contemporary societies.
• Who established the learning goals or purpose of the project? If you did, how would you then
encourage students to develop compelling shared purposes for their inquiry? If your students
were the ones who established the learning purposes, how would you help them to articulate,
clarify and pursue these purposes?

Disciplinary grounding: Are students drawing on the subjects’

knowledge and modes of thinking (concepts, skills, attitudes)
accurately and appropriately?
This criterion is concerned with how accurately and effectively students have drawn from relevant subjects
or disciplines involved in their work. Teachers may ask: does the work exhibit evidence of students’
developing mastery of the core concepts, skills, attitudes outlined in the subjects? Are there misconceptions,
oversimplifications, or major oversights?

Here too, three core steps and guiding questions are in order.

• Describe: Which disciplines inform this work in general?

• Assess: Are subjects or disciplines selected in ways that fit the purpose of the piece or are they
included in a forced manner? Is there evidence of the student developing mastery of key objectives in
the subjects selected—that is, are knowledge, skills, methods, languages, values, used in accurate, rich
and effective ways?
• Guide: How can we further support students in their efforts to improve their understanding of core
relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes in the chosen subjects?
Assessing the disciplinary grounding of students’ work requires teachers to focus on the particular subjects
involved in their units of work. For example, in examining the exile happening teachers may ask: Are
students employing the knowledge base and modes of thinking that they learned in their visual arts, drama
and music classes? Drawing on the arts subject criteria teachers may ask the following.

• Do students demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the art form studied in relation to the
societal, cultural, historical and personal contexts? (Criterion A)
• Do they demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the elements of the art form studied?
(Criterion A)
• Can they develop an idea, theme or personal interpretation to a point of realization, expressing and
communicating their artistic intentions, applying skills, techniques and processes? (Criterion B)
Because not one but three distinct art forms are included in this unit, teachers do well in examining students’
work from a theatrical, visual and musical perspective. Consider for example how a music teacher describes
the sikku unit’s musical goals.

During the project, we did a lot of this investigation of materials, so they know
what are instruments and what are things that aren’t instruments and to get
them to expand their notion of what can be an instrument. We investigate
silence, or non event, phasing and the way a lot of contemporary artists have
used phasing to mean different things. And we also investigated the connection

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between the music, musicians and expressing political or social ideas. And
that’s the sort of thing that joins us all, the type of artists we use, why those
artists, operating on the edge, or redrawing the lines around.
Evidence of disciplinary grounding abounds in the students’ exile “happening”. For instance, students
explored the tension between “home” and distant realities elsewhere inspired by Do-Ho Suh’s work where
the co-existence of multiple realities in the confines of the familiar home is explored. Do-Ho Suh’s sculptures
continually question the identity of the individual in today’s increasingly transnational, global society. They
call our attention to the connections between “here” and “there”—a connection (and disconnection) that
students explored successfully in this piece. They examined Bruce Nauman’s use of numbers to represent
dehumanization. In describing her initial visual design for the scene one student explains.

This is Bruce Nauman, and everything instead of being linear, everything

is coming from different directions. There’s upside down, right side up,
everything’s highlighted in different colors and set up differently. Instead of
having key lines just written normally, it’s in huge colors, and in your face,
which is exactly what Bruce Nauman does. He gets right in your face with
things that you don’t normally see. Just by looking at these, you already have
an idea, without reading it, you get the mood, the feeling of it and that teaches
you more than anything.
The performance was also visibly informed by students’ learning of drama. They exhibited clear stage
presence and focus of the mind “on here and now” typical of the Butoh theatre approach examined in this
unit. Butoh theatre teaches students the importance of “being in the moment and not thinking about the
audience”. This is a powerful way to get students to think about performance space, quite contrary to more
“traditional” drama classes where students learn to act out a play on stage for an audience. Butoh finds
beauty in the grotesque, emphasizing the distortions and contortions of the body and mind in the search for
a state of being, of presence. Students viewed the use of a blue dead body as building on such tradition—
combining minimalist and meditative states of mind with the grotesque numbering and impending autopsy
of the body. Butoh explores the beauty of our existential struggles and celebrates the painful yet essential
journey towards awareness. In this sense students came to view the theme of personal and social exile as
essential to this work. One student explains.

We learnt a lot from Butoh theatre. Every group had a list of artists that they
could choose, and nearly everyone chose Butoh to look at because it’s so
different and can teach you so much about what a happening is, like you’re
not doing it for other people, you’re doing it for yourself. You have to explore
boundaries and go beyond what is expected. And it can be beautiful or it can
be disturbing, happy or sad. It can be everything, all at the same time. A large
part of Butoh is also playing with time, perspective and space. And that was
key in our happening, because we wanted to twist around the audience, where
they were standing, how they were, what kind of time period. Everything. We
all played with that.
Finally, the performance made intelligent use of music. In this unit, students explored the work of musicians
and composers who challenged traditional definitions of music such as John Cage (“4’ 33””), Henry Cowell
(“The Banshee”) and Steve Reich (clapping music). Borrowing on this inclination, students made a provocative
use of Vinicius de Moraes’ bucolic “Girl from Ipanema” by juxtaposing it with the drama of a human body
(numbered 3358) ready for autopsy.

With the music workshop, she (the teacher) talked about how people could
play music not for other people, so it doesn’t have to sound pretty to be
music … We had two pieces [of music]: one was very relaxed, it was “Girl from
Ipanema”. It was at first really nice here in the living room but then obviously
when you cross over it’s still playing and you have that music but you’re looking
at death. It’s eerie. And then it was a really eerie song where the lyrics are really
important [for the next part]. It’s very slow, saying “welcome to the soldier’s
side, there’s no one here but me, people all grow up to die, there’s no one here
but me”. It’s really eerie.

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In assessing the disciplinary grounding of students’ interdisciplinary work MYP teachers refer to the criteria
detailed for each subject. When multiple disciplines within a subject group are being integrated in an
interdisciplinary study like the one portrayed here, teachers may find themselves employing the same
criteria to slightly different domains. For example, understanding the work of contemporary visual artists
like Kara Walker or Do-Ho Su demands that students learn to place these artists in the broader framework
of contemporary visual arts, appreciating their techniques and aesthetics. In turn, understanding the
work of Butoh theatre performers involves understanding the actor’s relationship to his or her body and
mind. Despite differences in content, however, teachers in this unit identified important commonalities
across these art forms that served as productive bridges for integration—the third criterion by which these
students’ work is to be assessed.

Like these students’ “happenings”, Sofia’s final report required a collaborative assessment on the part of
her multiple teachers for this unit. However, in this case, collaborating teachers brought perspectives from
multiple subject groups. For example, criteria A and D in the arts shed light on Sofia’s accurate understanding
of musical language, as well as her high level of interest and personal commitment to her work. Sofia takes
initiative. She explains flexibly what constitutes a musical scale and places her instruments in the larger
context of the Andean tradition. Sofia’s analysis and experimentation with pre-Columbian art motifs and
meanings also merited a high level with regards to knowledge and understanding and application of artistic
skills, including the zoomorphic images that were characteristic of that time.

Sofia’s physics teacher considered the adequacy of her understanding of sound waves as well as the ways in
which she designed experiments to test the sound made by tubes of particular lengths.

Assessing Sofia’s work collaboratively enabled these teachers to learn about each other’s subjects and begin
to find productive connections across their fields.

Reflection point

Using the same interdisciplinary unit you considered before, discuss the following questions
• Are there other disciplines that could have been integrated in the unit? What made you decide to
integrate the ones selected? What were the knowledge and modes of thinking that you wanted
your students to master in the course of the unit?
• By what means, both formal and informal, did you help students to develop mastery of the key
objectives of the unit? If you felt that they were not meeting your expectations, how could you use
assessment to guide them towards more productive inquiry?

Integration: Are the disciplines or subjects in this work integrated in

ways that enhance students’ understanding?
As described in previous chapters, a hallmark of quality interdisciplinary understanding is the students’
capacity not only to employ multiple disciplines but to integrate them in ways that yield a deeper,
more nuanced and informed understanding of the problem they are studying. Quality assessment of
interdisciplinary work requires that teachers pay close attention to the integrative nature of students’
understanding. To do so they must describe how they view disciplines coming together in a body of student
work, assess the degree to which such integration is productively advancing students’ understanding and
guide students’ work further as the work requires. As before, three questions are in order.

• Describe: What are the key points of integration proposed in the work—that is, where are disciplinary
perspectives clearly brought together in a phrase, metaphor, interpretation, or explanation?
• Assess: Are the integrations enabling students to advance their understanding effectively—for example,
to produce more comprehensive descriptions, richer explanations, more creative and new interpretations,
deeper explorations or effective solutions that benefit from the combination of perspectives?
• Guide: How can we further support students in their efforts to integrate available disciplinary insights to
advance their understanding (if applicable)?

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In chapter 7 we outlined a variety of ways in which disciplinary perspectives can be combined to deepen
student understanding. The “Happenings” unit enables students to develop a personal interpretation
of the notion of exile that is informed by multiple art forms. Students also showed a growing ability to
understand commonalities and differences in the ways in which aesthetic symbols are used across the arts
in provocative and creative ways.

Personal resonance
Personal resonance refers to the process by which students advance an increasingly nuanced and personally
meaningful understanding of a topic such as exile, by placing the topic in the context of multiple disciplinary
traditions. For example, students placed their comfortable images of “home” against the work of Do-Ho Suh,
which revealed the comfort as a form of immoral detachment from the larger world. They then examined this
contradiction in the context of musical transgressions such as John Cage’s playing of silence. Students’ nuanced
understanding of exile was reached through a virtual dialogue among perspectives that they have experienced
in the unit. As one teacher explained, the arts were chosen in order to personalize students’ experiences
and understanding and to create a powerful piece in which students will not forget the “monuments of the
happenings”. Matt, the theatre teacher, talks about the “power of the arts” to enable self expression.

The thing that we really want to focus on in this project is the whole cycle,
the whole creative cycle, the phases of the process. … Maybe deeper than
the processes, they find that they need the arts to express what they want to
express, and they find they’ve got the access.

Crossover tool
Through this unit students were invited to move away from art in the traditional sense and look at
contemporary trends in art. In doing so, students transformed their intuitive skills-based understanding
of the disciplines to a more conceptual understanding through the topic of exile. Students were asked to
explore symbolism in the arts. They learned that music does not have to be the sound a piano makes when
one plays it. The teachers noted that this was a difficult concept for students and teachers as both are used
to a more skills-based learning environment. However, it is an important tool for students to have because
once they are able to understand what it means to be symbolic they will be able to transfer this knowledge
to other domains of their life.

Ours looked a little bit more segmented but they are all connected. We had
a camera that was for Diane Arbus and had pictures, examples of her work
throughout it, and it kind of melded into a score, a musical score. We actually
took and cut out the treble cleft from the page because it was John Cage and
he does all this work where the audience actually creates the music. He literally
sits at the piano for four minutes like this [shows fingers poised above the keys]
and just sits there! And the noise of the audience is his piece. So the audience
becomes the artist. And the poster looks different every time it’s moved,
because of what’s behind it.

A lot of them [the students] start thinking, “Oh! But I gave up drama! Oh, I gave
up music!” But seeing their productions, they’ve all linked up the arts and their
productions wouldn’t be right if they were missing one of it. It’s not like, “Oh,
I’ll stick some music in here because I’m good at music”. They recognized the
commonalities in each field.

I think the complementarities arise when they’re really comfortable with the
arts that they’re working with. For them to start looking at complementarities,
they really have to understand the differences ... We talked a lot during our
meetings about what it is really that makes our disciplines different, and it was
difficult! It wasn’t easy … And the segments of like drama you do, monologues,
and you do playwriting, and you do scripted plays, you know, Shakespeare …
That kind of thinking is completely outmoded. That kind of thinking is like a
skill-based education in the arts, like we’re going to teach students skills instead

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of processes of thinking, like we’re going to teach a student how to do a scale

in music, as opposed to teaching them an appreciation of the creative process.
Why it makes the noise it makes, why does a piece of work have the power it
has, not just in technique … a much more concept, thinking based.

Technological/practical solution
Techological/practical solution refers to our capacity to integrate information from multiple subjects
to fashion a new technology, instrument, product or practical intervention. When working within this
approach, integrations are assessed by whether or not they “worked” in a practical sense. For example, to
produce a sikku that works and honours Andean cultural heritage demanded that Sofia and her classmates
understood how the longitude of sound waves is shaped by the length of a recycled paper tube, which
in turn determines the pitch of her instrument. They had to understand how to manipulate tube length
experimentally to produce an instrument that played in a pentatonic scale.

In teaching students in school #33 how to design sikkus of their own Sofia and her peers also engage
in a practical solution. They integrated their understanding of sikkus and how to build them with their
growing understanding of development aid options (learned in their geography class). This enabled them
to design an intervention that would be viable (employing recyclable materials) and effective in preserving
Andean tradition in contemporary local populations. Both understanding of music and physics as well as
understanding of forms of aid were essential for a successful delivery of this project. Sofia explains.

Ours is a sustainable project, one that builds on adequate technology to

provide long term technical aid. We will teach the children how to make a sikku
and our objective is that this skill will be passed from generation to generation
of students in the school. Our project is also low cost and seeks to have impact
on the local community—specifically on school #33.

Contextualization
Sofia and her friends had an opportunity to contextualize their understanding of sikkus. Their understanding
of the music played with these instruments was enriched by understanding the historical and cultural
contexts and the perspective of historical actors who imbued their instruments with divine powers in the
past, ambivalence in the more recent past and a renewed appreciation in the present. Sofia explains.

The term “sikku” has its origins in Aymara language and means a tube that
produces sound. Sikkus are important in today’s cultures because they
commemorate our past. Sikku music can be heard today as folk bands play
sikkus quite regularly. However, they do not do so to worship gods or lead
rituals as our ancestors did, but for enjoyment in carnivals and for tourism.
Assessing students’ capacity to integrate what they learn is perhaps the most challenging step in assessing
interdisciplinary work. This is in part because teachers are not used to looking closely at how perspectives
connect. Often, in looking for integrations like the ones characterized above, teachers may realize that they
have conceived their units as multidisciplinary ones—where students learn about particular topics through
multiple perspectives but no serious attempts are made at meaningfully connecting these views. Missing
evidence of integration calls upon teachers to revise their designs so that they can foster and support
students to integrate. As the examples above suggest, developing the habit of assessing how students
integrate subjects in their work involves becoming used to examining how exactly disciplines come together
as well as how the combination enriches students’ understanding.

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Reflection point

Consider your subject group with regards to the following questions.

• What are the common big ideas, skills or habits of mind that are shared by multiple disciplines (for
example, sciences, social sciences, art forms) in your subject group? How are these ideas and skills
similar or different across disciplines in your subject group? What advantages and disadvantages
do you see in teaching these ideas and disciplines together?
• Create a visual map of the subject groups in your school placing your own subject at the centre.
What might students learn (if anything) in each neighbouring subject group that would help them
deepen their understanding of your subject in meaningful—not forced—ways?

Thoughtfulness: Is the student thoughtful about his or her work

and the challenges and opportunities of making connections across
subjects?
Interdisciplinary performances of understanding invite students to engage thoughtfully with their topics
of study and to consider different ways of approaching problems and issues. When assessing student
work teachers are encouraged to consider the degree to which students are reflective about their
accomplishments and the limitations of their work, whether they understand the learning challenges and
possibilities of bringing disciplinary insights together to meet their purposes. As before, teachers must ask
three questions.

• Describe: Does the work indicate that the student has reflected about the learning challenges and
possibilities of bringing disciplinary insights together to address his or her purposes?
• Assess: Do the student’s reflections about the process and outcome of the work reveal understanding
of key aspects of doing interdisciplinary work—for example, the possibilities opened by integrative
work, the insights gained along the way, the challenges of bringing disciplines together, the tension of
satisfying conflicting standards?
• Guide: How can we further support the student to understand the demands of interdisciplinary work
(if applicable)?
In the MYP teachers are encouraged to invite students to reflect about their own learning on a regular basis.
Interdisciplinary projects provide important opportunities for them to do so. Students can reflect about how
their problems or topics of study are framed, about the relevance of learning what they are asked to learn,
about their own struggles to make a connection. Developing such metacognitive approaches to learning
prepares students for the type of lifelong learning that is increasingly necessary in contemporary life. In the
examples considered in this chapter, students demonstrate their thoughtfulness in multiple ways.

Sofia evaluated her community project highlighting some of the learning challenges that presented
themselves and showing a healthy appreciation and skepticism about the success, immediate and long
term, of her class’s intervention.

This was no doubt an exciting project. I learned a lot about Andean cultures
and their art and music. I even learned how to estimate the length of the sikku
tubes. I made my own sikku and it worked.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect was to visit school # 33. I was
uncomfortable at first, feeling that the children were not motivated and didn’t
care about the instrument we were about to show them. Later as we explained
the ideas further, they seemed more engaged. Finding out if our project will
work is a matter of time.

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In the “happening” project on the other hand, students reflect on the personal meaning of their learning,
how they changed their minds about the nature of exile and their own roles as citizens in a visibly violent
world.

I think I learnt a lot about myself, like I must admit that I sometimes do watch
television and then the news comes on and I turn it off because I don’t want to
watch it, you know, and I feel like I’m hearing the same thing again and again.
But now I do watch. I watch more of the news and you know like if you hear
“dozen dead, car bomb” then you know that there’s a story behind every single
one of these people, and that’s what we tried to convey, that there’s a family,
that that’s just one of the people, and there are thousands of people who died
in Iraq, for example. And now I think I know more about my own personal exile
from the media, and I know how I can overcome that.

Reflection point

Thinking back on the interdisciplinary units that you have taught in the past, consider the following.
• What kind of reflection pieces have you set for your students? What are the questions that you
have asked to encourage them to reflect on their learning?
• How would you move students from a superficial reflection on their work to a more metacognitive
approach to the key aspects of doing interdisciplinary work?

What challenges do teachers confront when

assessing interdisciplinary learning?
A productive use of targeted assessment demands careful adaptation of the four proposed elements to the
particular courses and disciplinary combinations involved. MYP teachers are encouraged to develop a more
detailed characterization of the qualities of interdisciplinary work that they seek to foster. What exactly will
the purpose of student inquiry be? What specifically are the disciplinary insights to be developed? In what
ways should understanding be advanced? What insights will students gain about the process of doing
interdisciplinary work?

Teachers may vary in how specific they prefer to be in their assessment of interdisciplinary work. Some opt
for precision. They ask: “Where is there evidence of disciplinary integration?” and “Is there evidence that
the student has understood the purpose of the work?” They then identify corresponding quality indicators
in interdisciplinary work and focus on them when assessing work. Others prefer to use the criteria more
holistically to get an overall sense of the quality of a student performance. Whether precise or more holistic,
the assessment of student work must be grounded in samples of work that offer evidence of interdisciplinary
understanding. It must be ongoing and informative to students. Whenever possible, interdisciplinary
assessment should be collaborative as well as using multiple teachers’ expertise on a particular student’s
work. These practical challenges are illustrated below with examples from the “exile” unit above.

Drawing on a representative selection of student work

It is difficult for a single piece of work to embody all three of the criteria; in most cases teachers found it necessary
to assess a range of performances (see the previous chapter). Interdisciplinary work is shaped by the genre
in which it is created; the genre also affects which qualities are made more visible in a particular context, for
example, an academic paper invites explicit thoughtfulness or critical awareness but a short story does not,
and works of art that invite multiple interpretations do not lend themselves well to explanations of disciplinary
foundations and how and why different disciplines have been brought together. Teachers are encouraged to
consider which aspects of student understanding they wish to focus on in a particular performance for instruction
and feedback, and what range of performances they are going to require of students, for instance, artistic pieces
were accompanied by a reflective statement that unpacked the influences that went into the work of art.

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In our example, the arts department described the “exile” unit as a learning process for the students, which
began on the first day of the unit. From the very beginning, students were given a journal and asked to make
at least one journal entry on the unit every day. This record of the students’ learning process became an
invaluable piece for assessing students’ learning about the disciplines. During student interviews, students
discussed their learning process by examining their journals and noting the difference between their entries
at the start of the unit compared to their entries closer to the end.

Students’ understanding of integrating disciplines was assessed and challenged in student–teacher

interviews. These interviews were an intrinsic part of formalizing the process of understanding. For example,
students were interviewed about the mood boards they had created and described how the disciplines
blended together to create their mood board. These interviews allowed teachers to home in on students’
ideas and thoughts and challenge their thinking on integration. Furthermore, students’ reflection interviews
after their “happening” were important to evaluate whether students had a clear purpose, whether their
purpose was well grounded in the disciplines, whether they were able to bring these disciplines together
and whether they were reflective about the unit.

Ongoing and informative assessment

As in all good teaching, the assessment of student work does not just happen at the end of a course; students
are given ongoing feedback about how their understanding is developing and constructive advice about
how to develop their understanding further. In other words, this approach to assessment is not just about
evaluating students’ understanding; it is also about supporting and promoting it.

Experienced teachers find various opportunities to give students feedback during the course of their
interdisciplinary units. Some of this feedback is formal and planned, for example, written comments on
papers or project proposals, evaluations of class presentations, and art critique sessions in which students
give structured feedback to their peers about their work. At other times, feedback is informal, occurring
spontaneously during class discussion or one-on-one interactions with students. Feedback is not just given
by the teacher to the students; there are also opportunities for students to assess each other’s work as well
as to reflect on their own work, sometimes in the form of journals or reflective pieces.

Depending on the disciplines involved and the structure of the unit, some teachers find it appropriate to
assess their students’ disciplinary understanding before engaging them in integrative performances.

Among experienced teachers, assessment is clearly outlined for the students. Teachers develop task-
specific clarifications for student work and students are able to check levels of performance against these
rubrics in order to improve achievement. Furthermore, there are many opportunities for informal formative
assessment. In the case of the unit on exile students were required to give two group presentations on their
work. Artist logs ensured students’ thinking and development were clearly charted. Furthermore, students
were interviewed by the arts teachers about their happening as it unfolded. Interviews provided a good
profile of how each individual contributed to the group and how the group was functioning as a whole.
Workbooks were handed in at key intervals so that teachers could assess student progress over time.

Assessment revealed not only students’ accomplishments but also their learning challenges. By working
across the arts students experienced difficulties operating outside of the areas of art in which they felt
confident. Each student had elected only one art subject to study in MYP year 4 therefore some found it
challenging to be working in the other art disciplines. For example, visual artists expressed a discomfort
with stage-, performance-based activities. To support students, teachers chose introductory pieces for their
workshops that would help students ease back into the discipline. For example, Matt chose Butoh theatre,
which introduced students to thinking about being in the moment and about the performance space. This
was a good beginning point in order to get visual artists more comfortable with the space around them:

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These students aren’t just taught to do it, they’re taught to think why they’re
doing it, and how they’re doing it and where they’re doing it. You know, the
whole idea of moving an artwork … moving an artwork from one room to
another completely changes the context … When you move a performance,
whether it be music or drama, outside, it becomes something completely
different. When you move it into a hole in the ground, it becomes completely
different. It’s not the same piece of drama. It’s about the context. The students
here are incredibly confident in their ideas, and how they present their ideas
because they’re encouraged and given the tools to see outside the box.
There’s no confining space for what we do; the space changes, the skills are
transferable. They can take them back to their arts individually, or they can be
connected.
Furthermore, by creating groups of students from different disciplinary backgrounds, each student was able
to take the lead for his/her discipline and supported others in the group who did not feel as confident. By
the end of the unit, students were more confident in other disciplines. For example, Devon, a drama student,
talks about the transformation in his journal from pages of writing at the beginning to changing the layout
to reflect different artists’ work.

This project was really good because there were so many connections between
art and drama, and music, of course. Sometimes when you’re just doing drama,
you feel that you need to do some art things in order to express all of your
ideas. … So I think that here it’s really good that we’re able to mix it all together
so that then we’re able to get all ideas out and it doesn’t matter which way.
I’m a drama student, and if you see my work in the beginning of the year, I do
writing, I do pages and pages of writing and that’s all. But this is contrary to
what I’ve done in previous years and now what I did with this exile happenings,
I took time into looking at how the layout should reflect their art, and how it
needs to be set up in different ways.
Another issue that arose was one within the students’ own department. Students’ definitions of their own
disciplines were stretched throughout the unit. They needed to be encouraged to explore and delve into
areas that were unknown. Given that a strong emphasis was placed on this process within the unit, students
were supported in taking risks in their own disciplines and experimented with concepts that otherwise
might be left outside of their field.

The last two classes have challenged us and our challenge is to continue by
challenging ourselves. What we want to accomplish with our performance
requires us to reach into ourselves and stretch beyond what we think we can
do. We want to show how we are not stuck in the box of simple, typical and
ordinary.

Collaborative assessment
Finally, while interdisciplinary teaching can be done by a single teacher, most typically it is a collaborative
effort. In terms of assessment the collaboration matters because it enables teachers to draw on their particular
areas of expertise and their specific subject goals to assess student work. To move from a multidisciplinary
assessment in which teachers only consider the perspective of their subject to an interdisciplinary one,
teachers are encouraged to engage in collaborative assessments of student work. Analysing purposes,
disciplinary grounding and thoughtfulness together based on several students’ work entails an important
professional development opportunity for teachers who begin to see how exactly their subject areas
interact, overlap or complement one another. Clarity about such disciplinary connections also enriches
assessment and instruction. To support collaborative assessment of interdisciplinary student work teachers
are encouraged to consider the following assessment protocol.

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A collaborative assessment protocol for interdisciplinary student work

In this protocol you will become acquainted with a student’s work and gather general impressions; you will
assess the piece(s) in terms of its interdisciplinary qualities; and reflect about the protocol itself. Once a person
has briefly introduced the student’s work avoiding evaluation (for example, grade, course) please allow the
question to guide and focus your collective analysis of the work.

i. Getting acquainted with the work (10 minutes approx)

Describe: What qualities of the work(s) call your attention? Please describe qualities of the work
avoiding evaluative language.
Appreciate: Overall, what are the qualities of the work that you appreciate?
Evidence: What makes you say so?
Note concerns: What questions or concerns does this work raise for you?
Evidence: What triggers your concern?

ii. Assessing purpose: How clear, interdisciplinary, and aligned with the areas of interactions is the purpose of
this work?
Describe What is the purpose of the work under analysis? (for example, to explain a phenomenon, to
create a product or work of art, to develop a programme, to change people’s minds, to solve
a problem)
Assess Is the purpose of the work clear (whether explicit or implicit)? Does it speak to one or more
areas of interaction? Does the purpose invite/require an interdisciplinary approach?
Guide How can we support the student to gain clarity about her purpose and frame it in a way that
invites her use and integrate the subjects taught in the areas of interaction (if applicable)?

iii. Assessing disciplinary grounding: Is the student drawing on the subjects’ knowledge and modes of
thinking accurately and appropriately?
Describe Which main subjects or disciplines inform this work?
Assess Consider one discipline at a time: How does this work reveal student understanding of the
aims and objectives of each subject? Are the subjects’ knowledge, skills, understandings,
attitudes being used effectively given the overall purpose of the work?
Guide What knowledge, skills, attitudes, understandings does the student need to work on (if
applicable)?

iv. Assessing integration: How well integrated are the subjects in this work?
Describe What are the key points of integration in the work, that is, where disciplinary perspectives
are clearly brought together in a phrase, metaphor, interpretation, or explanation?
Assess Does integrating perspectives help students advance their understanding (for example, can
they produce richer descriptions, multi-causal explanations, novel interpretations, or deeper
explorations that benefit from the combination of perspectives)?
Guide How can we further support the student in her efforts to integrate available disciplinary
insights to advance her understanding (if applicable)?

v. Assessing thoughtfulness: How reflective is the student about his learning and interdisciplinary work?
Describe Does the work indicate that the student has reflected about his learning (for example, why
the topic matters, how it can be addressed in interdisciplinary ways, the challenges of
interdisciplinary work)?
Assess Do the student’s reflections about the process and outcome of the work reveal
understanding of key aspects of doing interdisciplinary work?
Guide How can we further support this student’s appreciation of the opportunities and demands
of interdisciplinary work (if applicable)?

vi. Revisiting the protocol: How did the conversation help us assess student work?
Revisit In your opinion, how well did this protocol enable us to understand and assess student
interdisciplinary work?
Adjust What changes in the protocol do we need to make next?

Figure 16

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Assessment protocol
The purpose of this protocol is to enable a structured conversation or individual reflection about a particular
piece (or pieces) of student work. The protocol is designed to structure a small group of teachers’ conversation
about a particular student’s work in order to reveal its strength and growth opportunities. It provides a set
of steps through which the group moves, guided by a facilitator. These steps include reminding the group
of the questions to explore, looking at the evidence, describing the evidence, asking questions. Of course,
adjustments to the protocol can be made to accommodate varying purposes as well as aspects such as time
constraints. After becoming familiar with the protocol, groups may want to reflect on how the protocol
might be more effective and then experiment with change. For teachers who are interested in practising
with the protocol the case study at the end of this chapter includes a sample of an exemplary student’s
work.

Reflection point

Have you ever been involved in a collaborative assessment in the past? If so please reflect on: (a) the
strengths of such collaborative assessment, (b) the difficulties or puzzles that arose in the course of the
collaborative assessment and (c) the ways by which your team either resolved or tried to overcome these
difficulties.

Case study

Excerpt from student work

Nuclear bomb victims’ memorial

The memorial I have proposed is a series of silhouettes painted on walls and streets in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki to commemorate the victims of the nuclear bombings in these cities that the United States
conducted at the end of World War II. A mirroring set of silhouettes would be painted in Washington
DC, in the United States, near the political and military centers of command where the bombings
were directed.

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The silhouettes in all locations would be painted in the locations and orientations where actual
shadows would have been cast by victims as the bombs went off. In regards to Washington DC, the
shadows would be positioned as if the light from the nuclear explosions had traveled all the way
around the world. Each silhouette would be accompanied by a small plaque listing the name, or
names, of real life victims who might have cast a shadow just like the painted silhouettes. It would
be impossible to determine the exact locations and positions of real victims when the bombs went
off, but they could be approximated, and real names matched with corresponding body types and
genders. A central information kiosk with a map, further names, and basic information about the
bombings in many languages would exist near by any grouping of silhouettes.

The intended audience of this memorial is two-fold. In one regards, it is a monument to the lives of
victims, and is targeted at descendents and survivors of the blasts, to recognize the potential that was
lost and the emotional gap that people have to live with. In another regard, the target is government
leaders and policy makers, both of the past and the present. Past leaders would be haunted by the
ghosts of the innocent civilians who died at their discretion, and present leaders would feel the
pressure of lives lost in the past weigh upon the decisions they must make in the present.

This memorial does not take a side and say whether the bombings were a good or bad decision, a
horrible mistake or a difficult step that had to be taken. Instead, it recognizes the huge loss of life
that resulted, and stands as a reminder that victims are functioning members of society, not just
numbers.

This exhibit is intended to be similar to one in Berlin, which has signposts describing Nazi laws
persecuting Jews sprinkled through a neighborhood. The silhouettes would not directly intrude
upon people’s lives, cause inconvenience, or attract large numbers of tourists. However, they would
stand as a constant reminder of the empty holes in our society by the use of nuclear weaponry,
and the impact that military decisions made from across the globe can have on real human lives.
The purpose is to integrate the memorial into people’s lives, and to make the remembrance of
victims an everyday part of life, as opposed to a once-in-a-while, optional visit to a remote or isolated
monument.

Brian N., Boston Latin School

Interview with student (excerpts)

Let’s start with the monument you did.

The [task’s] goal was to make … a small model of a monument … memorializing or recognizing a person
or group of people from the course in general. The way she teaches the course is, it goes from bystanders,
upstanders, victims and perpetrators … you could either kind of villainize perpetrators in your monument
or you could recognize upstanders or victims … or kind of get people to speak out on bystanders.

How did you come up with the idea of what you would do?

When we visited Berlin there was this one neighborhood where throughout the entire neighborhood
there are signposts there’s a little, kind of like a street sign but a big sign, and on one side is a symbol and
on the other side is the wording of a Nazi law that would persecute Jews that was passed in the 1940’s.
So the way the monument worked really well … It was just part of the daily life and then it was explained
to us that the whole purpose is … connecting the history. I really liked that and I wanted to kinda do that
in my monument and that it would be there and people would see it and they could understand it but it
wouldn’t interfere with their lives … it would just be like a daily reminder, I guess. So, um, I thought of the
shadows of the bombs. I didn’t really like it at first. I thought it was kind of simplistic.

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And you like it now?

Yeah, I like it now. I decided to have it in D.C. too … In Nagasaki and Hiroshima it’s almost like a
tombstone … there’s a person here and they’re not here anymore and it’s something to be sad about
and recognize and so they won’t be forgotten. It’s not like, “those damn Americans got us”. It’s just
recognizing a tragedy …

I was thinking about the nuclear bombs and the power in this one blast that just kind of in one
instant, like you know it’s in a lot of movies there’s it’s just this light shockwave and people cast a
shadow and then they just like vaporize and they’re gone.

How did you come to think about the shadows?

If there’s a bomb that goes off in Hiroshima it’ll pass shadows in a certain way but then at the same
time in Nagasaki it’ll be shadows in a different direction … so each city will have the shadows from
that individual explosion and I was thinking how you could spread it out all the way around the world
… where there’s a nuclear explosion and there’s like the, um, shockwave around the world is kind of
the image I like. And then we are almost the other side of the hemisphere so I was thinking, what’s an
exact opposite? I tried to visualize it. You could do something there.

The idea of having parallel shadows in D.C. definitely works. And then it doesn’t have to just be
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because D.C. and the Pentagon was where the orders went out to drop
the bomb so that that was the best place. In D.C., the monument … it’s like being haunted by these
ghosts of people … and I could romantically imagine a lawmaker getting out of congress and walking
down and seeing this and thinking, you know, “what’s the impact of my decision?” like real people
are not here, like you can’t, I can’t even hear their cries cause they’re gone, like they’ve just been
eliminated so much …

Did you specify the colors that you would use for the shadows?

Black, yeah, just like a regular shadow would be cast … and then there’d be a little plaque with …
who the person was … If you know someone is … a mechanic you can put it on a gas station trying
to connect the life lost with the reality that continues.

What kind of research went into creating this monument?

Most of what I learned came from … well, earlier in the year we went and saw The Fog of War which
is about… [Robert] McNamara and that was a great film about … the decision to drop the bombs.
So I’ve been kind of thinking about it since then, and there’s been talk in Iraq about using tactical
nuclear warheads.

In class this year we covered Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards the end. We went over first hand
accounts of victims who were seared and had burns … and the effect of waking up after being
knocked unconscious and seeing people walking around with horrible wounds. There’s this one
of a child in a classroom; they see there’s a shockwave and the teacher goes over to the window
to look out and then there’s like this flash of light and she just saw like the shadow cast against the
blackboard through the room and then the teacher dies and almost all the other students die. So
that image was one I had been thinking about too.

[Our teacher] She’s careful in class to not say like the bombings were bad or right … like we had a
post and an online discussion … of the bombings whether it was the right decision or not. I kind of
waffled on it and said that it was probably the right decision but it wasn’t done in a correct manner.

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What did you think?

Well … it’s easy to look now and say all these people died but you wouldn’t have known where the
war would have gone. Obviously it was a horrible thing … but there was no easy way to just end the
war that I could see. Maybe more diplomatic like a blockade or something … but with what we know
today I couldn’t see an easier way out. And I don’t really buy into much of the “we were just trying
to show the Soviets we had the technology” because there are easier ways to do that. We did the
Manhattan Project; they knew. There’s still victims, you know, but it’s not much different than if we’d
invaded and killed that many people. It was a true tragedy using a nuclear bomb. But firebombing
Tokyo I think is almost an … equal tragedy. There’s isn’t as much public outcry over that; it’s just like
this fear of nuclear technology. But there is that one moment—that’s kind of what I memorialized—
there’s just one blast and then people are gone, these holes in the society.

Did you think about this project as an artist?

I knew the significance of the event and how many people died, from reading the first person
narratives and reports—but then you have to make a real monument in the real world. Um—when
you have to try to memorialize it, it makes it very personal. You have this responsibility to these
people … you can’t just, like I’d feel bad just having a statue with a little plaque on it. Building the
memorial definitely engaged me ‘cause it makes like the history interactive. It’s like you’re taking part
in it; it’s like here’s my contribution to history. Like, these people died and I did something about it
instead of just knowing it and absorbing it for myself. I took part, you know; took action. I used art to
make a point. Um, and that makes history much more, you know, alive.

It also brings it down to a personal scale when you realize, okay, you know, you can’t have a hundred
thousand shadows in the city you can only have a hundred … it’s a concrete and practical problem
that you face as an artist—how do I work with this scale? But then you wonder … Wait: there’s that
many people? Like you could walk around the entire city and cover every building with shadows and
it still wouldn’t be enough. It really brings home the scale of it. You realize how much of a tragedy it
was.

Do you think that creating the monument changed your understanding of the event?

I had the history pretty well and this really captured the personal aspect of it for me. And this gave me
a connection with it. In history you normally can’t add anything you know, it’s all said and done, like
you can’t go to the revolutionary war and grab a rifle or something … but this made it possible for me
to have a personal connection. The process of making it and coming up with the ideas and rendering
it and stuff that’s something that if in the future I think back, you know, what does Hiroshima and
Nagasaki mean to me, well here’s this thing … I did that’s … I have like physical memory of working
on it that will make me remember more than just scribbling out some notes or taking a test.

So what exactly did creating the monument mean for you?

I had to visualize in my mind exactly what it was like at that moment and what those people were
doing at that very moment. Especially because it’s one single instant ... that it all takes place in. Like
the monument just kinda captured that moment for me. … the moment the whole earth stood still.
People make a big deal about the revolutionary war and the shot heard round the world; this is really
the explosions heard round the world. Everybody knew about them and it, you know, this whole
nuclear era kicked off. This was an incredibly important moment. And it really captured for me the
intellectual view of it, but then I captured a bit of what it was actually like for these people on the
ground. They were there, they died, were they mutilated, or they got cancer, or their families did …
So it brought together that. And then obviously in the monument I am at the same time trying to
represent people’s reactions and my own.

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Chapter 10 The personal project: Supporting student
interdisciplinary research

Overview
The personal project is a significant body of work that students produce over an extended period of time.
It is a product of the student’s own initiative and should reflect his/her experience of the MYP. The personal
project holds a very important place in the programme. It provides an excellent opportunity for students
to produce a truly creative piece of work of their choice and to demonstrate the skills they have developed
in approaches to learning. Because the personal project builds on a strong MYP learning foundation it is
completed during year 5 of the student’s participation in the programme. The IB places great importance
on the expression of the student’s personality and understanding as measured by means of the personal
project. The personal project is a requirement for all MYP schools, whether or not they request grades
validated by the IB.

The areas of interaction are central to the experience of the personal project. Intended to be the culmination
of the student’s involvement with the five areas of interaction the personal project allows students to
investigate and focus on a theme of their choice and report on their investigation.

This chapter focuses on interdisciplinary personal projects—projects that integrate the perspectives of two
or more disciplines, subjects or areas of expertise. The following questions are asked.

• What constitutes a high quality interdisciplinary personal project?

• How should interdisciplinary personal projects be assessed?

What constitutes a high quality interdisciplinary

personal project?
To support students’ interdisciplinary personal projects we must understand the opportunities and
challenges that such projects present for meaningful and rigorous independent learning. In this section
we begin with two exemplary cases of student work and illustrate the ways in which they represent quality
interdisciplinary learning.

The two examples of outstanding projects that follow illustrate the level of personal and intellectual
engagement and higher order thinking that personal projects may aspire to embody.

17th-century Realism through the eyes of a camera obscura

Sascha is intrigued by the ways in which new technologies have influenced the work of artists over
time. For her personal project she examined how 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer created
his masterpieces using elements of optics. In her research into the painter, Sascha concluded that to
understand the development of Realism as the dominant style at the time, she would have to create
a camera obscura, “a portable box that incorporated lenses and mirrors, so that real-life images were
reflected onto a viewing surface that was visible outside the box where it could be traced or painted”.
Contemporary optical tools are commercially available today but Sascha refused to use these. She opted
to use the materials and technologies available to 17th-century artists. Sascha’s goal was to reproduce the
conditions under which Vermeer created pieces like “The Milkmaid” to judge the contribution of optics to
the development of 17th-century Realist art. Sascha’s paper brought together learning in science, visual
art and technology, addressing fundamental questions about human ingenuity.

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Giving a lift to the Bunyandiko and Buwatha villages

As a young child, Carly spent some time with her family in the villages of Bunyandiko and
Buwatha, Uganda. Her personal project gave Carly an opportunity to reconnect with the women
in the villages that she held dear and support their development through a small sustainable social
entrepreneurship initiative. Carly gathered information about the women’s lifestyles as well as
economic and health needs. She created a scheme to donate donkeys to several households in the
village. Women benefited from this initiative doubly: first the donkeys produced milk that could be
sold. Secondly the donkeys helped the women to carry heavy market loads and water barrels. In so
doing women would no longer carry this weight on their heads—a practice that impacts their hip
bones and heightens risks at childbirth. Her personal project involved raising funds, purchasing two
donkeys, creating a system by which the donkey’s offspring was passed to another family to benefit
multiple families, and previewing the need for a veterinarian to ensure the health of the donkeys
over time. To advance this powerful community service initiative, Carly needed to understand how
to survey and interpret villagers’ needs, advance a financially viable scheme, and communicate
through verbal and non-verbal means.

In what ways do these personal projects illustrate quality interdisciplinary research at the middle school
level? The examples above represent exemplary cases of personal projects. In these projects students delve
into their topics of choice with passion, intellectual rigour, exemplary work habits and professional teacher
support. Key characteristics of quality personal projects are outlined below.

Reflection point

Consider a few examples of successful personal projects in your school. What made them work? List
seven qualities that you associate with successful personal projects. If possible, collect a similar list from
experienced students.

Further ways in which personal projects support interdisciplinary

learning
Personal projects may take many forms
As the examples above suggest, interdisciplinary personal projects may vary greatly in goals, genre and
execution. Sascha’s project illustrates an art history research project where science and technology inform
students’ understanding of past artwork. Carly’s embodies the development of a social entrepreneurship
initiative informed by the data-gathering tools of social scientists and the executive plans of business.

Like their disciplinary counterparts, interdisciplinary personal projects can vary. Across MYP schools students
may be working on:

• original works of art (visual, dramatic, or performance-based depicting a topic typically studied in
biology, history, physical education or mathematics)
• written pieces of work on a special topic such as Sascha’s analysis of Vermeer’s work
• pieces of literary fiction (creative writing informed by insights in history, psychology, geography or
environmental sciences)
• original science experiments (combining biology and technology to test the impact of humans on
local environments)

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• inventions or a specially designed object or system (such as a public campaign against anorexia where
graphic design conveys accurate medical information)
• presentations of a developed business, management, or organizational plan (that is, for an
entrepreneurial business or project), a special event, or the development of a new student or
community organization.

Personal projects engage the areas of interaction

The areas of interaction embody the aspirations of the MYP and should be the foundation of personal
projects. Quality personal projects are designed to nurture students’ capacity for lifelong learning
(approaches to learning), to instill an appreciation for human ingenuity over the centuries; to invite them to
care for their well-being and that of others around them (health and social education), to render students
able contributors to local and global communities (community and service) and to become informed
environmental stewards (environments). The personal project provides a unique opportunity to nurture
these capacities among students, building on a topic that they feel close to their hearts.

In our examples, Sascha’s goal is to understand the conditions that enabled Vermeer to paint as he did, to
capture the ingenuity with which he embraced a new style. Her focus on the process by which humans
advance new ideas or products places Sascha’s project in the context of human ingenuity. Carly’s personal
project, on the other hand, offers a formidable example of learning in community and service. Drawing
on her own experience, she is aware of community needs and is ready to participate in an informed and
responsible way.

While embodying the learning opportunities of human ingenuity and community and service, these
two projects are especially geared to helping students understand multiple “approaches to learning”. All
personal projects invite students to ask question such as:

• how do I learn best?

• how can I guide myself to learn?
• how do I know?
• how do I communicate my understanding?
As a result, approaches to learning plays a key role in all personal projects. Personal projects embody a
significant body of independent inquiry on the part of the students. Successful projects capitalize on
the competencies for learning that students have built in MYP years 1–4. They provide students with an
opportunity to revisit and deepen such competencies in their last year of MYP studies. Sascha’ s rigorous
reconstruction of the camera obscura with original tools and materials and subsequent analysis of Vermeer’s
work gave her an opportunity to revisit principles of design, concepts and experiments in optics, and
perspective-taking in history. Carly’s project represents and illustrates action-driven learning. In all cases
students are invited to practise the skills that will enable them to become successful learners—effective
study skills; critical, coherent and independent thought; and the capacity for solving problems and making
decisions.

Interdisciplinary personal projects invite students to reflect about the very nature and challenges of
interdisciplinary learning. Students must think about the kinds of expertise that best advance their goals,
how to identify reliable sources in multiple disciplines, how to integrate their perspectives to create a
product or solve a problem, how to evaluate the success of their interdisciplinary inquiries.

Connections

To understand how personal projects can focus through the areas of interaction see the MYP Personal
project guide. For each area of interaction, the guide offers key questions as well as examples of possible
topics for study. Most topics can be productively examined in interdisciplinary ways.

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Personal projects build and demonstrate interdisciplinary understanding

Interdisciplinary personal projects place great emphasis on the process of learning while also attending to
its results. Quality personal projects invite students to engage in a reflective process of learning. Students
begin with early beliefs about their chosen topics. New findings, theories, connections or tools enable them
to revise or enrich such initial views. Students’ steps in building understanding are captured in research
logs, project-related informal questions, analytical memos, pilot schemes, draft object designs. Making their
understanding visible enables students to receive informative feedback from teachers, experts and peers
and in turn deepen their understanding. Through such an iterative process, building and demonstrating
understanding take place at once.

Through an iterative process of making understanding visible, receiving new input and revising
understanding, quality interdisciplinary personal projects seek to move beyond uninformed opinion or
commonsensical claims. Students’ inquiry approaches and their resulting insights must be informed by the
subject matters offered in school or by domains that are typically not addressed in school but that students
have a good chance to understand. Examples of school subjects include: biology, physics, visual arts or
history. Examples of extra-curricular disciplines or areas of expertise may include computer programming,
sailing, photography or interior design. Whether students borrow from school-based subjects or from
outside experts, their work needs to demonstrate more than their initial opinions on the topic.

Personal projects address multifaceted topics in a purposeful way

Choosing and defining a problem for interdisciplinary research is challenging for students. Quality
interdisciplinary projects focus on problems or topics that clearly call for more than one source of expertise.
The following features can be seen in exemplary projects:

Topics are personally relevant to students. They invite students to reflect about the issues that matter to
them the most and about which they are curious. Projects may be inspired by family histories, personal
identity, the places where students live, people or contributions they admire, problems they seek to solve,
products they seek to develop.

Research questions or project goals set a clear purpose for the work. By doing this, students can maintain
focus throughout their inquiry. Purposes vary from raising awareness in the school about cosmetic testing
to explaining the differences between creationism and evolution.

Topics are multifaceted calling for different disciplinary perspectives. Students can map the topic to identify
its parts or central dimensions. They can then identify the kinds of expertise that they will need to meet
their goals.

Research questions are focused through an area of interaction. A visible and meaningful connection is
made through learning how to learn, becoming a better steward of the environment, participating in the
community through service, understanding and protecting health, or understanding human ingenuity.

Research goals are viable. Students propose to carry out a scope of work that is appropriate for their age
and context and for which they have adequate resources (reading materials, expert mentors, interviewees)
available within their school, family and community networks.

Sascha and Carly illustrate purposeful approaches to multifaceted topics. Sascha frames her topic and
inquiry purpose with great precision.

My goal in this project is to build a camera obscura box in order to personally

judge the efficiency of optics during the 17th century, thus gaining a better
understanding of 17th-century Realism.
Her project clearly calls for an interdisciplinary approach. It involves creating a device (using knowledge of
technology and science) to understand how the nature of art (in the visual arts) was transformed into a new
form called Realism (history of art). Materials and mentors are available to her at school.

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Sascha explains.

Throughout my project, my main focus was to develop opportunities for me

to appreciate the capacity of artists during the 17th century to invent, create,
transform, enjoy and improve the quality of artistic instruments during their
time. This was focussed by human ingenuity as it encouraged me to see the
relationships between science, aesthetics and technology. In other words, I
looked at the technological and scientific aspects (optics and reflection) of a
period in time and used them to gain a better understanding of art from that
period.
Carly’s topic is also multidimensional, relevant and feasible. She seeks literally to provide a physical lift for the
women in their daily carrying of heavy loads, and figuratively to lift the women out of their current poverty.
The issue is relevant to the villages of Bundyandiko and Buwatha. The project is feasible in that Carly’s father
has initiated a similar and successful project in a neighbouring community, albeit with goats. She had seen
her father work and he was ready to help her as well. The project demanded integrating multiple forms of
expertise: understanding the culture and economic structure of the villages; how to create a sustainable
budget; how to structure and run a fundraising campaign and communicate accomplishments.

Carly explains.

My goal is to support and develop an existing women’s group by creating a

small microfinance program to help a women’s group in the village be able
to generate their own money … This being my final year in Uganda, I wanted
to leave something behind. My first year in Uganda was spent in Kasese,
near the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains, this is where the villages of my
project are. Since I lived in that community, attended a local school, I wanted
to give something back, I wanted to help them … Because I feel so close to
this town, encourages me to carry on with this project a lot. Simply talking
to the women, and seeing in what positions they are in, and how much help
they truly need, inspired me a lot. It really made me want to make a difference,
and even obligated to. The fact that this project will not have an ending, will
only continue to grow and will help families, even after my personal project is
finished, motivates me the most.
Another student developing a campaign against animal testing in her school explained.

I was inspired to carry out this project when I was exposed to commercials on
cosmetic animal testing by the PETA organization. Their commercials were
very persuasive and included devastating photography which really touched
my heart. As I researched more, I became aware of many new perspectives.
I discovered that I had been contributing to the cruelty by buying cosmetics
from companies that do tests on animals. This boosted my interest and
determination because I realized that there are so many people out there
who were ignorant, just like me. So then I saw this project as a mission to save
the animals. I chose cosmetic animal testing because we relate to this in our
everyday life. We all use cosmetics, whether it is lipstick or hairspray. But is it
really necessary? Is looking beautiful worth the millions of animals killed?

Personal projects are well grounded in subject matter knowledge and modes of
thinking
To be interdisciplinary a personal project must draw on two or more areas of expertise. In some cases
such areas represent school subjects. In others they are embodied in the professional work of lawyers,
community organizers, businesspeople, or designers outside school. To conduct quality work students must
identify relevant forms of expertise in general and specific terms. With the help of their teachers students
must identify which disciplines will be most helpful and in each case which sources, concepts, tools or
methods they may want to employ.

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Sascha’s project demonstrates understanding of art, history and technology. For example, she explains that
the subject of 17th-century paintings were usually outdoor scenes, objects close to a strong light source
often depicted in misleading proportions. Close analysis of particular works of art illustrates her explanation
of the emergence of Realism. She also demonstrates her capacity for historical reasoning as she sifts through
primary sources to determine the exact materials used to create the camera obscura. She sought to “verify
that all my findings were accurate, thus guaranteeing that my camera would closely resemble one from the
17th century”. Finally she advances her understandings of science and technology not only in her choice
of materials to construct the camera obscura but also in her capacity to determine how the focal length of
lenses affected the size of the box.

Carly also drew on multiple disciplines or areas of expertise. She employed focus group interviews and
observation techniques borrowed from the social sciences to discover that the women were usually carrying
loads to the market and back and were responsible for lugging heavy water containers from the wells to
their homes for household use. She learned that these women were suffering physically from carrying the
loads as the weight forced their pelvic bones closer together, consequently narrowing the birth canal and
causing difficult pregnancies. She heard their concern over the education of their children. Carly borrowed
from microeconomics to work out a budget, determine the costs of a donkey as well as the salaries for
those running the project. She learned how to present a budget to prospective donors. She attended to the
sustainability of her scheme by ensuring that the donkeys bred and that offspring were distributed among
villagers. She also planned for each household with a donkey to contribute 10% of their earnings from the
donkey’s milk towards the provision of children’s healthcare and education.

One student developing a school campaign against animal testing explained her process in detail—
especially interesting is the healthy skepticism with which she approaches multiple sources of information.

I did lots of research using a variety of different sources. I thought of what

information I need which would suit my goal. I decided to gather information
on: (1) cosmetic testing statistics to prove the extremity of the issue, (2) specific
alternatives to animal testing, which will back up my arguments and stress
the fact that there is no reason for cosmetic animal testing to continue, (3) the
testing procedures to expose how cruel and disgusting it is, (4) contacts of
animal rights organizations for direct information or raw material like video
footages because such footage speaks louder than words, (5) information for
getting active … to inform my audience about how they can actually solve the
issue … and (6) I need information to prove that products not tested in animals
are safe … As a part of my research, I also interviewed a Science teacher …
because I wanted to find out how I can prove that products not tested on
animals are scientifically reliable.

Personal projects integrate disciplinary perspectives

Projects clearly integrate information and perspectives into a complex explanation, a new artistic
interpretation, a conceptual model, a fictional narrative, a project. The integration of perspectives yields a
better, deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the topic under study. In quality projects the initially
stated purpose of the work guides students in their efforts to integrate.

For example, in Sascha’s account an understanding of optics in the camera obscura informed a deeper
explanation of the visible features of Realism. Sascha learned that the camera only portrayed images in very
strong light, and that objects had to be focused individually when tracing them: “I have become aware of
the ‘defects’ and imperfection of optics used during this period of time”. The technical limitations of the
camera obscura led her to understand how salient features of Realism—the daylight and indoor scenes with
strong light sources, the varied proportions of the objects portrayed—were the result of the limitations of
the optic devices used. According to Sascha, “its use led to the depiction of distorted or unfocused images.
It also limited painting to daylight scenes and indoor scenes with strong light sources. In addition, objects
in dim light were often erroneous and misleading due to their focus or proportion in comparison to other
objects in the same painting”. The project enabled her to “find evidence of these defects (arising from the
use of optics) in Realist paintings from the 17th century”.

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Carly, too, integrated multiple forms of expertise in her project, yielding a more effective intervention.
Collected data from women’s focus groups (a technique often used in the social sciences) helped set the
priorities for her project and determine the desirable level of funding. Her fundraising campaign and
fundraising strategies in turn yielded a social intervention that can only be assessed by gathering information
from women again. Intertwining social science and business enabled Carly to have greater impact.

Personal projects invite reflection and meta-cognition

Projects invite students to reflect about their own learning in multiple ways: Firstly, projects invite them to
reflect about the sources of expertise informing their work (qualities, contributions, trust). Secondly, they
invite students to reflect about disciplinary similarities and differences, and the challenge of combining
different perspectives. Third, they may address the contributions as well as the limitations and possible next
steps of their work.

Sascha’s paper displays a constant willingness to reflect on her assumptions, findings and conclusions. She
explains.

Consulting ‘experts’ seriously influenced my practical work in a positive way.

This is because they helped me make decisions regarding things that I was very
unfamiliar with in such a way that I learned and understood the information
they had to offer me.
Her physics teacher, a carpenter and a design technology specialist offered advice on the building of the
camera obscura. Conflicting primary sources about the camera yielded an understanding of how to weight
the trustworthiness of sources at times when information is broadly available.

Working on the project revealed unanticipated insights. She explains.

What started off as a problem (when the lenses on her camera could not focus
properly) turned into an investigation of a valuable aspect of 17th-century
optics: the limitation of 17th-century optical devices to portray only daylight
scenes and images … However there were times when factors beyond my
control influenced my project in a negative way … Materials and information
availability sometimes limited me on the production stage … Nonetheless, this
taught me to be improvisatory in finding solutions, and to look at more sources
of information when one source was limited. If I were to repeat my project, I
would research and consult modern-day artists who incorporate optics in their
work. By doing this I could compare modern-day optics to those of the 17th
century, thus gaining a better understanding of the progression undertaken
throughout the Realist movement and the exact importance of the camera
obscura for modern society.
Carly also exhibited thoughtfulness. She pondered about the ambitious nature of her project, a common
challenge of interdisciplinary research.

I was scared at the beginning of this project that it wouldn’t work out, that
I was thinking too high for this project, and I was afraid I would disappoint
the women. That is why I spent so much time researching, to make sure that
everything I have would be foolproof.
She examined the relative advantage of multiple courses of action. For example, when considering making
a poster to raise awareness about the situation of women, she concluded: “I found it did not enhance my
project, or add anything new, which wasn’t already in it.”

Other students’ comments illustrate the thoughtfulness here outlined.

Connections

Information about how the school can optimally organize the personal project experience for students
can be found in the MYP Personal project guide.

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Advice on interdisciplinary inquiry

Even when age-appropriate, interdisciplinary inquiry is challenging for students. Students cannot
be expected to produce high quality work without guidance and support. The features of a quality
interdisciplinary project outlined above set the foundation for student support. Building on such features,
personal project supervisors are encouraged to:

• explore with students the multiple forms that their project might take (for example, written paper,
a product, a work of art). In doing so supervisors will bear in mind that the genre in which a project
is produced will greatly inform the type of disciplinary expertise needed to complete the project
successfully. For example, a work of art will necessarily prioritize expertise in the arts. A literary work
will demand high performance in languages.
• ensure that student projects clearly reflect the educational intention of an area of interaction. All projects
will enable students to apply approaches to learning skills, but they will vary in the areas they embrace.
• discuss the inquiry process and expected standards of any interdisciplinary understanding with students.
Explain, for example, how the iterative process of sharing work in progress, receiving feedback and
revising can support and deepen students’ understanding of their chosen topic over time.
• discuss students’ chosen topic attending to the degree to which the topic is personally relevant to
students, related to an area of interaction, multifaceted and perhaps inviting of an interdisciplinary
approach, and viable. Supervisors may recommend a conceptual mapping of the topic along these
criteria, and through this discussion they can help students clarify their specific purpose or goals.
• guide students in the task of identifying the potential disciplinary forms of expertise necessary for
a successful completion of the personal project and offer feedback and suggestions about expert
sources to consult or possible informants to contact. Supervisors may invite students to map the
key dimensions of the topic and brainstorm the kinds of experts that will be necessary to include
for each part of the problem. When necessary, consult with colleagues on the selection of particular
insights, big ideas, techniques and approaches in the relevant disciplines to ensure that students’
understanding is rigorous in developmentally appropriate ways. Supervisors may also arrange a
consultation meeting with the school’s theory of knowledge teachers to inquire about what particular
disciplines may contribute.
• support students in their effort to integrate disciplines or subjects. Supervisors may explore with
students how each chosen discipline contributes to an understanding of the whole, how some
disciplines are limited in themselves to help students understand the problem they study and can be
complemented by other disciplines. For example, supervisors may inquire what would happen to the
project if we took away a given discipline—for example, history or the arts?
• ensure that the project is reflective and metacognitive. Supervisors may listen carefully as students talk
about their learning process, the achievements and limitations of their work, and the work habits with
which they organize their production. Supervisors may comment on a student’s research plan and progress
toward achieving stated goals. They may invite students to assess their own work for its merits and possible
improvements, and comment on the unique challenges of interdisciplinary research.

How should interdisciplinary personal projects be

assessed?
Like other forms of student interdisciplinary work the personal project should be assessed along four
fundamental principles: clarity of purpose, disciplinary grounding, integration and reflective strength. These
principles inform the application of a series of concrete criteria embodied in the personal project’s aims,
objectives and assessment criteria that can be found in the Personal project guide on the online curriculum
centre (OCC).

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Examples of development of interdisciplinary personal projects

Required structure Essay Mural Fundraising

Title page Poverty in my City: How Creating a Mural about Fighting Poverty in my
Can it Be Explained? Poverty in my City City

Table of contents Titles of sections and Titles of sections and Titles of sections and
sub-sections of the sub-sections of the sub-sections of the
project project project

Introduction Area of interaction: Area of interaction: Area of interaction:

• What is the area of health and social community and service human ingenuity
interaction through education Goal: sensitization of Goal: finding ways in
which you are Goal: understanding the people in my school which different groups
focusing the topic? causes and effects of to the conditions of of people can take
• What do you want to poverty in my city poverty in my city action to fight poverty in
find out about the Outline: general review Outline: general review my city
topic, and why does of poverty through local of poverty in my city; Outline: general review
it matter to you? statistics; consideration of ways of of poverty in my city;
• How are you main aspects of poverty conveying a feeling and finding out about
conducting the and its causes or a message; people and
investigation of the consequences in terms drawing my way of organizations fighting
topic? of health, education and perceiving it; poverty;
local environment evaluating ways of
seeking feedback from
others; completion of contributing;
the mural deciding on processes
and procedures,
beneficiaries;
organizing the fund
drive

Description of the Research through Investigation of different Investigation into

process and analysis reading various sources (about art and poverty in the city
1. Gathering from documents, statistics; the topic at hand); and organizations that
expertise and interviewing of social choice of aspects of already work with poor
different sources workers, sociologist, poverty to be reflected people;
psychologist, poor in the mural; interviewing and
• Who do you need to
people in different parts gathering data about
talk to? choice of techniques,
of the city, police; needs and possible
• What kind of sketches; feedback on
analysis of data and stages of completion action;
expertise is
information and final product choice of strategy to
necessary?
organize and publicize
• How would you go
the fund drive;
about gathering this
expertise? organizing and
completing the
activity; follow-up with
beneficiaries

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Required structure Essay Mural Fundraising

2. Putting expertise Showing the contrast Showing how the Short analytical
together between what different symbols of poverty are description of the
• How does learning sources say about used and explaining how different ways in which
from different the main causes and to produce the impact institutions are working
sources help you consequences of poverty you want to create in the to raise money to fight
advance your in the city; community; poverty and how their
project? analysis of how the justifying the use of actions have made a
consequences of different techniques and difference;
• What would you do
to put it all together? poverty affect health colours in the mural; analysis of the way in
and education of the showing the contrast which the fundraising
poor people of the city; between own will be carried out to
analysis of how poverty interpretation of make it appealing and
affects the environment symbols, techniques and effective;
where people live (may colours used, with the review of the process
be related to housing, feedback received by in terms of difficulties
pollution and other others; encountered and how
factors); evaluating the changes these were overcome
review of the process introduced into the
in terms of difficulties mural; analysis of the
encountered and ways characteristics of the
in which the student audience;
solved them analysis of the best
location for the mural to
create the greatest social
awareness

Conclusions and Identification of the Evaluation of whether Reflection on human

reflections main causes and the mural has been ingenuity through the
consequences of poverty able to reflect the impact that this type of
in the city that affect environmental problems activity may have on the
health, education and linked to poverty in the ones who benefit from
environment, according city; fundraising;
to the findings of the reflecting on the impact assessment of the impact
research. A new approach the mural has had on the of the project on people
to the question could be community; who benefited from the
to consider how changes fundraising; review of the
reflecting on the impact
in the surrounding outcome (money raised
the mural has had on
environment improve versus expectations),
the student’s own
the quality of life of poor involvement of others,
perception;
people responses;
formulating a new
question that could indication of other ways
arise in the mind of the to help to fight poverty
student: is a mural a in terms of community
good way to sensitize and service; overall
people about a specific perspective on how the
problem? or what other project changed the
means could have been student
used?

Bibliography Books, newspapers, Books, newspapers, Books, newspapers,

magazines, interviews, magazines, interviews, magazines, interviews,
internet sites internet sites internet sites

Appendices, where Statistics, graphics, Pictures, photos, list of Questionnaire used

appropriate histograms, artists, art movements for the interviews, and
questionnaire used that inspired the student supporting statistics
for interviews, other
material

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Chapter 10 The personal project: Supporting student interdisciplinary research

Framework for planning a personal project

The table below can be used when planning a personal project.

Area of Interaction

What is my topic? Why do I want to investigate it?

What are the main parts of the problem/project that I need to understand?

1. 2. 3.

What sources or individuals will help me gather the expertise I need?

Sources Questions

What are the important ideas, concepts and skills that I’m expecting to learn OR what have I learnt
after completing this research?

1. 2. 3.

How do these ideas, concepts and skills help me address my topic?

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 Chapter 10 The personal project: Supporting student interdisciplinary research

Have I gained the expertise I need to complete the project? Who else or what other resources might
I consult?

What are the main components of my research project that I need to develop and for which I can get
feedback?

1. 2. 3.

What have I learnt and how does it help me advance my question?

Figure 17

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Chapter 11 Professional development and teacher
support

Overview
Throughout this guide, we have paid particular attention to student learning. We have addressed the
challenges and opportunities interdisciplinary work presents for students, and how learning can be supported
and assessed. Yet interdisciplinary teaching also involves important opportunities for teachers’ learning. A
mathematics teacher meets with arts colleagues with excitement about the possibility of a fractal art project.
Geography teachers collaborate with biology teachers on a unit on the impact of water scarcity on global
health. A language A teacher consults with the technology teacher as he or she supports a student’s personal
project on an e-advertisement campaign. In all these cases teachers are learning from and teaching one
another, expanding both their expertise and their professional relationships. How do teachers learn to teach in
interdisciplinary ways: what barriers do they find and what kinds of supports will they benefit from?

How do teachers learn to teach in interdisciplinary

ways?
Points of departure
Learning to teach in interdisciplinary ways can be an exciting and challenging task. The excitement is
clear: Interdisciplinary teaching invites new collaborations with colleagues and friends in a school; it allows
teachers to tackle topics that they deem important, even if slightly outside of the areas of expertise. It
enables teachers to engage their students’ multiple talents in projects that matter to them; it enables
teachers to learn about topics that are intrinsically interesting to them.

In a sense, learning to teach in interdisciplinary ways is similar to other forms of professional development.
Learning works best when teachers have an opportunity to experiment in their practice, considering a few
elements of a new framework, putting them to use in their designs, and reflecting about the results they
obtained and how their practice could be further developed. Teachers may find multiple points of departure
and preferred structures on their way to becoming better interdisciplinary teachers.

Small expansion
Teachers revisit a disciplinary unit that they teach and consider a small-scale expansion. For example, a
biology teacher attends art classes to see how lessons in three-dimensional drawing in the arts can help
biology students become better observers of nature.

Course thread
Some teachers prefer to incorporate a question that is posed throughout their course—a question that
invites meaningful connections beyond their discipline. For instance, in a course on modern history a teacher
may add “how does art reflect the changes in lifestyles and ideas at different periods in time?” Addressing
this question will require learning to analyse a painting and understanding markers of artistic style, placing
them in historical context.

Improving a successful unit

Often, teachers choose to begin with a close analysis of an interdisciplinary unit that they teach well. They
feel comfortable formalizing the elements of the framework of a unit for which they feel well prepared.
These teachers find a framework productive in improving particular dimensions of their unit.

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 Chapter 11 Professional development and teacher support

Exploring a topic of deep personal interest

Occasionally teachers view creating interdisciplinary designs as an opportunity to teach about topics
that matter both to them and to students. Feeling familiar with the topic, they begin with small-scale
experimental units allowing multiple opportunities for reflection.

Many other points of departure exist, such as collaborating with a particular colleague or following student
interests. What matters in all cases is that teachers build on their strengths. Teachers who are beginning
to work across areas are not encouraged to embark on learning many new subjects at the same time.
Rather, they must build on the areas in which they have a strong foundation and ensure that they have
sufficient understanding (or peer support) in a neighbouring discipline’s insight to incorporate it in class. Of
course, this does not mean that a degree in multiple disciplines is needed. But a solid understanding of the
particular concepts, techniques or modes of thinking of neighbouring disciplines matters a great deal.

As in most effective professional development processes, teachers improve their interdisciplinary teaching
capacity by engaging in a cyclical process that includes:

• becoming familiar with new concepts (for example, analysis of components of the framework
presented here)
• applying concepts to practice (for example, MYP in curriculum planning and teaching)
• reflecting (through close analysis of student work or discussions with peers)
• adjusting designs as well as their interpretation of what concepts mean.
Teacher meetings and regular curriculum development structures in the school can be used to advance
teacher mastery in this way.

How teachers change their minds

Learning involves changing our minds. When teachers engage in productive efforts to deepen their ability
to teach in interdisciplinary ways, they expand their understanding of their own teaching, their subjects,
and the possibilities and limitations of interdisciplinary education. A few conceptual changes that can be
observed are described below.

• From interdisciplinary teaching as a form of motivation, to interdisciplinary teaching geared to deep

and broad understanding.
• From interdisciplinary teaching as a goal in itself, to interdisciplinary teaching as a means to deepen
and broaden understanding.
• From disciplines as information fixed in textbooks, to disciplines as dynamic perspectives onto the world.
• From interdisciplinary teaching as teaching “themes” with or without genuine connections across
disciplines, to close attention to meaningful connections that yield deeper understanding.
• From thinking that all disciplines must be involved to produce a good unit in the school, to
understanding that topic and purpose drive disciplinary selection.
• From striving for equal time assigned to each discipline in a unit design, to allowing the purpose of the
work to dictate the relative dominance of one or another discipline in the design.
• From emphasizing activities that may or may not promote deep understanding, to designing
performances of understanding that do.
• From integrating disciplines at the end of a unit, to supporting students’ synthesis throughout a unit.
• From leaving assessment for the end of a unit, to ongoing assessment attending to students’ views of
the purpose of their work, understanding of disciplinary insights and integrative understanding.
• From viewing collaborations as an opportunity to exchange readings, to viewing them also as a chance
to teach each other how to think in a different discipline.

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Chapter 11 Professional development and teacher support

Reflection point

Revisit the ways in which teachers are likely to change their minds when embarking on professional
development and design groups focused on interdisciplinary teaching in their schools. Which shifts make
most sense to you or describe a change of mind that you can see yourself making or having made in the
recent past? Which ones make less sense to you? If possible, discuss these with two or three colleagues in
your school.

Barriers to interdisciplinary teaching

Teaching in interdisciplinary ways can also meet important obstacles. Interdisciplinary teaching is
demanding in intellectual, social and institutional ways. Recognizing potential barriers will enable teachers
and administrators to prepare solutions and supports that are productive for all.

Intellectual demands
Interdisciplinary teaching confronts teachers with the limits of their expertise. It also shows them the
limitations of their own disciplines to address the topics that they seek to teach. Often, teachers find
themselves having to learn selective content in another domain or depending on their colleagues for the
success of their work. This too may present difficulties to teachers used to working in their subject and who
are in full control of the content they teach. Learning to navigate foreign subjects is a challenging task. For
example, a science teacher may ask: What are the big ideas in geography? How do I know which ones will
help my students best?

For many teachers, interdisciplinary instruction appears as a threat to the integrity of teaching in their own
discipline. A careful weighing up of the pros and cons of interdisciplinary designs is in order, one that helps
teachers view the comparative advantage of each approach.

Occasionally, teachers engage in an effort to map the school curriculum in order to find points in which their
teaching might connect across disciplines but find difficulties in identifying genuine connections across
subjects. In some cases, what seemed like logical connections while discussing possibilities prove difficult
to translate into quality teaching practice. In all cases close attention to what is being taught and why is
important, as is a careful consideration of the viability of emerging ideas.

The intellectual demands of interdisciplinary teaching suggest that teachers need space, support and a
trusting environment to experiment. A collaborative climate in which teachers can resort to the human
resources in the school for guidance will enable teachers to consult with librarians, and peers such as the
Diploma Programme’s theory of knowledge teachers if available. At the same time, a climate of informed
experimentation in the school will encourage teachers to try new units and small-scale, safe innovations.

Social demands
Teaching across subjects often invites collaboration. Collaborative work is engaging for teachers in schools.
Sometimes, however, teachers must overcome the hurdles of interpersonal dynamics. Collaborators may
not agree on the preferred purpose of the work; they may feel the need to have their disciplines more fully
represented in a unit design. Collaborators may agree on substance but have different and incompatible
working styles, making working together more difficult than expected. A careful consideration of the
purpose, realistic expectations and preferred approach to collaboration is necessary as a faculty.
Collaborations sometimes require coordination across school areas or departments. Occasionally, teachers
working across departments must bridge not only content but values, educational priorities and working
styles.

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Working across disciplinary or subject lines demands a very special kind of perspective-taking capacity. It
demands that teachers pay attention to the ways in which their colleagues think about knowing, teaching
and learning. What questions matter to them? What types of problems or issues do they prefer? What
approaches do they prioritize? Quite interestingly, interdisciplinary collaborations among teachers seem
more mature when teachers do not only share readings that they identify for each other, but when they
stand ready to teach and learn from each other about issues such as how to perform a close reading of a
literary text, use statistical correlations, or interpret historical sources well. Collaborating in this way requires
that teachers practise curiosity, humility, tolerance for ambiguity, and generosity of mind. These intellectual
dispositions are therefore modelled for students in class.

Institutional demands
The first institutional barrier that teachers mention is, predictably, lack of time. Teachers need time to
coordinate collaborations, plan a curriculum, learn new content and reflect on practice. Interdisciplinary
teaching takes time.

In many cases teachers work in coordinated or linked courses or they co-teach particular units for a
given class. The coordination of teachers’ instruction may prove logistically challenging and financially
burdensome for the school; careful and strategic planning is required.

Most interestingly, it is sometimes the students and parents themselves who resist interdisciplinary
instruction. Because interdisciplinary units sometimes challenge their expectation of what particular
teachers are expected to teach, special attention is needed to explain to parents and students why, for
example, a mathematics teacher will spend time teaching the science of climate change before applying
statistical analysis techniques to help students understand future projections.

Occasionally, the culture of collaboration and interactivity that characterizes interdisciplinary teaching
stands in conflict with a more individual-based culture of the school.

Supporting interdisciplinary teaching

Being aware of the demands of interdisciplinary teaching prepares teachers and administrators for the road
ahead. Interdisciplinary teaching is rewarding but also challenging. It requires an entrepreneurial mind on
the part of teachers and support on the part of administrators. Multiple strategies may prove informative.
Particularly productive ones are listed below.

Creating sustainable structures for professional development

In addition to professional development courses, school field trips and external consultations that are
focused on interdisciplinary teaching and learning, teachers in a school will benefit from forming local
study groups where they focus alternatively on interdisciplinary teaching principles, collective analysis of
student and expert work, and sharing and reviewing unit designs. Occasionally such teams may include
teachers in the same subject area who specialize in different disciplines such as the theatre, music and visual
arts teachers in the arts department or the physics, biology and chemistry teachers in science. On other
occasions study groups may be formed around areas of interest such as human and natural environments or
health, drawing on teachers from various subject areas.

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Chapter 11 Professional development and teacher support

Analysing examples to deepen understanding

Conversations about interdisciplinary education can easily become abstract or aspirational and lose practical
meaning or generate misunderstandings. Teachers benefit from close analysis of exemplary work—work
done by experts on topics of their interest (for example, environmental artists, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, the World Health Organization). Looking closely at how disciplines inform these
exemplars and how they are combined to yield deeper or better understandings of the problems under
study is productive, especially when expert work is not presented in an intimidating way. Again in this case,
book clubs and study groups provide an ideal collaborative context. In a similar vein collaborative analysis
of student interdisciplinary work enables teachers to sharpen their own sense of what counts as quality
work and how to support it.

Supporting meaningful work, bottom-up and top-down

To engage in this highly professional type of work teachers need to be genuinely engaged. They must view
their own learning as meaningful, building on their own interest and desires for improvement. They must also
find the time and encouragement in their institutions to advance this work. Setting sustainable structures for
growth needs a bottom-up and a top-down approach. Teachers can advance a professional development
agenda that meets their needs and those of their students. School administrators can encourage these by
opening spaces for genuine reflection. Providing time and structure without a professional development
agenda in place will yield meagre results. Initiating a professional development movement without a
structure that encourages exchange may cause frustration. A workable balance is to be reached, even if
such balance varies from school to school.

The role of teacher leaders

School environments conducive to quality interdisciplinary teaching are often shaped by teachers or
administrators who take collaborative leadership positions. These are individuals who are committed to
interdisciplinary work and serve as champions for initiatives in the school. These individuals are typically
widely read, humble collaborators and secure in their own disciplinary and professional ability. Ultimately
these leaders seek to establish a community of learners in the school, one where teachers can articulate
their own and others’ ways of knowing with clarity.

Reflection point

After considering the recommendations above, design a preliminary plan for professional development
in your school. What structures would you create? Who should participate? What activities may the group
engage in?
You may also want to reflect on an earlier attempt at interdisciplinary teaching: what went particularly
well and why was it so? What were some challenges that you encountered, and how would you do it
differently the next time round?

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Chapter 12 Conclusion

At the dawn of the 21st century the quality of a curriculum framework is to be judged not only by the
professionalism of its instruction and the deep understanding it instills in its students but, quite importantly,
by the relevance of what students learn. To meet the demands of contemporary societies wisely, young people
of today must become able to navigate growing international interdependence, participate actively in the local
and global sphere, understand the environment and its sustainability, care for mind, body and well-being, and
become reflective learners in dynamic knowledge societies. Responding to these demands the MYP curriculum
model articulates a much needed bridge between what is typically learned in schools and the most pressing
questions that concern our societies. Attentive to adolescents’ development, the programme emphasizes
rigorous learning in the disciplines and interdisciplinary synergy, inviting students to tackle relevant issues,
from climate change to globalization, thus preparing them for the work of the next generation.

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Appendices: Appendix 1—Acknowledgments

Many individuals contributed to this guide. A large number of schools in all IB regions submitted their
interdisciplinary units for review. A list of schools that have submitted sample work for this guide appears
below. Their careful designs and imagination have enriched our thinking about the opportunities and
challenges of interdisciplinary education in the MYP. School heads and MYP coordinators played a key part
in gathering endless lists of materials, and in many cases warmly hosting the research team’s visits. Teachers
and students welcomed the team for classroom observations, participated in extensive phone and face-to-
face interviews, shared carefully documented unit plans and extensive samples of student work.

Two teams of researchers at Harvard University’s Project Zero contributed substantively to the content
presented in this guide. The first, including Liz Dawes, Steven MacAlpine, Matthew Miller and Alison Rhodes,
participated in the empirical testing and conceptualization of the interdisciplinary teaching framework in
which this guide is grounded. The second, composed of Sholeh Koorjee, Yee Ping Lee, Guillermo Marini and
Puay Yin Lim, worked on the documentation and analysis of MYP units and student work. Special thanks
go to Flossie Chua for her analysis and endless creativity in co‑designing activities, graphics and thinking
tools, and her careful editing of text, and to Howard Gardner who served as an ever insightful adviser in the
original research.

The group collaborated closely with a number of exemplary teachers whose work informs this guide directly
in the form of examples or reflections. Among them, and cited here are Javier Bastos, Brian Dempsey, Judi
Freeman, Michael Kozuk, Paul Papadonis, Larry Sheinfield, Jodi Falk, and Valerie Vasti.

List of schools that have contributed

Many MYP schools submitted strong units of instruction for analysis. In selecting units to be included, criteria
such as strength of design, relevance of the topic, link to areas of interaction, and teachers’ experience with
the unit were considered. The units selected had to collectively illustrate various aspects of interdisciplinary
work and vary in scope. These units served as inspiration for the examples developed for this guide. In many
respects examples reflect the experience of teachers and students in the classroom, but these unit designs
have been expanded and adjusted to illustrate particular aspects of the framework.

Units by topic School Year

Interdisciplinary fieldwork: Geography– Chinese International School, Hong Kong 5

Science

Perseverance and determination; Carl Sandburg Middle School , Golden Valley, 1

Appreciating ancient civilizations Minnesota, USA

Ancient civilizations Qatar Academy, Doha, Qatar 2

Sikkus en la cultura Latinoamericana St George’s College North, Buenos Aires, 3

Argentina

The sound of music International School of Uganda, Kampala, 2

Uganda

All monsters are made by people and we are St Dominic’s International School, Lisbon, 5
responsible for the monsters we make Portugal

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 Appendices: Appendix 1—Acknowledgments

Units by topic School Year

Epic revolutions International School of Belgrade, Belgrade, 4

Serbia

Exile International School of Amsterdam, 5

Amstelveen, Netherlands

Metals and the recycling of used metals International School of Uganda, Kampala, 2
Uganda

Facing history and ourselves (Please note that Boston Latin School , Boston, Massachusetts, 5
this is a non-MYP unit.) USA

MYP guide to interdisciplinary teaching and learning 123

Appendix 2: Reading list

Purpose of education
Beane, JA. 1997. Curriculum Integration: designing the core of democratic education. New York. Teachers College
Press.

Boix Mansilla, V and Gardner, H. 2007. “From teaching globalization to nurturing global consciousness.” In
Suarez Orozco, M (Ed), Learning in the Global Era: International perspective on globalization and education.
Berkeley. University of California Press. Pp 47–66.

Gardner, H. 2006. Five Minds for the Future. Boston, MA. Harvard Business School Press.

Gardner, H. 2000. “How education changes.” In Suarez Orozco, M and Baolian, D (Eds). Globalization Culture
and Education in the New Millennium. Berkeley. University of California Press. Pp 235-258.

Gibbons, M et al. 1996. The New Production of Knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary
societies. London. Sage Publications.

Hargreaves, A. 2003. Teaching in the knowledge society: Education in the age of insecurity. Buckingham. Open
University.

Levy, F and Murnane, R. 2007. “How computerized work and globalization shape human skill demands.”
In Suarez Orozco, M (Ed), Learning in the Global Era: International perspective on globalization and education.
Berkeley. University of California Press. Pp 158–174.

Levy, F and Murnane, R. 2004. The New Division of Labor: How computers are creating the next job market.
Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press.

Postman, N. 1995. The End of Education: Redefining the value of school. New York. Knopf.

Suarez Orozco, M and Satin, C. 2007. “Learning in the global era.” In Suarez Orozco, M and Satin, C (Eds),
Learning in the Global Era: International perspective on globalization and education. Berkeley. University of
California Press. Pp 1–43.

Interdisciplinary work
Klein, JT. 1996. Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, disciplinarities, and interdisciplinarities. Charlottesville, VA.
University Press of Virginia.

Klein, JT. 2002. Interdisciplinary Education in K-16 and college. New York. College Board Publications.

Klein, JT. 1990. Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice. Detroit. Wayne State University Press.

Newell, W. 1998. Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the Literature. New York. College Board.

Richards, J. 2007. “Interdisciplinary Teaching: History, Theory and Interpretation.” In Valarie, A (Ed),
Interdisciplinary Language Art and Science Instruction in the Elementary Classroom. New Jersey. Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates. Pp 15–28.

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 Appendix 2: Reading list

Building disciplinary grounding

Boix Mansilla, V. 2004. “Between reproducing and organizing the past: High school students’ beliefs about
the standards of acceptability of historical knowledge.” In Lee, P (Ed), International Review of Research History
Education. London. Fran Cass.

Carey, S. 2000. “Science education as conceptual change.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 21, 1,
pp 13–19.

Donovan, S and Bransford, J. 2005. How Students Learn: History, mathematics, and science in the classroom.
Committee on How People Learn, A Targeted Report for Teachers. Washington, DC. National Academies
Press.

Gardner, H and Boix Mansilla, V. 1994. “Teaching for understanding in the disciplines and beyond.” Teachers
College Record 96 (2) pp 198–218.

Grotzer, TA and Lincoln, R. 2007. “Educating for ‘intelligent environmental action’ in an age of global
warming.” In Moser, S and Dilling , L (Eds). Creating a climate for change: Communicating climate change and
facilitating social change. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.

Hofer, B and Pintrich, P. 1997. “The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and
knowing and their relation to learning.” Review of Educational Research, 67, pp 88–140.

Lee, P and Ashby R. 2000. “Progression in historical understanding.” In Seixas, P and Wineburg, S (Eds),
Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and international perspectives. New York. NYU Press.

Minstrell, J and Kraus, P. 2005. “Guided inquiry in the science classroom.” In Bransford, J and Donovan, S
(Eds). How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom. Washington, DC. National
Academy Press. Pp 475–514.

Perkins, D. 1994. The intelligent eye: Learning to think by looking at art. Santa Monica, CA. The Getty Center for
Education in the Arts.

Perkins, DN and Grotzer, TA. 2005. “Dimensions of causal understanding: The role of complex causal models
in students’ understanding of science.” Studies in Science Education, 41, pp 117–166.

Wineburg, S. 2000. Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts: Charting the future of teaching the past.
Philadelphia. Temple University Press.

Winner et al. 2007. “Studio Thinking: How visual arts teaching can promote disciplined habits of mind.” In
Locher, P, Martindale, C. Dorfman L an. Leontiev D (Eds). New Directions in Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
Amityville, New York. Baywood Publishing Company, 2006. Pp 189–205.

Integrating disciplinary perspectives

Bromme, R. 2000. “Beyond one’s own perspective: The psychology of cognitive interdisciplinarity.” In
Weingart, P and Stehr, N (Eds). Practising interdisciplinarity. Toronto. Toronto University Press.

Dawes Duraisingh, L and Boix Mansilla, V. 2008. “Interdisciplinary forays within the history classroom: How
the visual arts can enhance (or hinder) historical understanding.” Teaching History. December, 2007.

Nikitina, S. 2006. “Three Strategies for Interdisciplinary Teaching: Contextualizing, Conceptualizing, and
Problem-Centering.” Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38, 3, pp 251–271.

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Appendix 2: Reading list

Perkins, D, Simmons, R and Tishman, S. 1990. “Teaching cognitive and metacognitive strategies.” Journal of
Structural Learning 10, 4, pp 285–303.

Salomon, G. 1993. Distributed cognitions: psychological and educational considerations. Cambridge, England.
Cambridge University Press.

Wiley, J and Voss, JF. 1999. “Constructing arguments from multiple sources: Tasks that promote understanding
and not just memory for text.” Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 2, pp 301–311.

Interdisciplinary curriculum work

Beane, L. 1993. A middle school curriculum: From rhetoric to reality. Columbus, OH. National Middle School
Association.

Boix Mansilla, V and Gardner, H. 1999. “What are the qualities of understanding?” In Wiske, MS (Ed). Teaching
for Understanding – a practical framework. San Francisco. Jossey Bass. Pp 161–196.

Clarke, J and Agne R. 1997. Interdisciplinary High School Teaching: Strategies for integrated learning. Boston,
MA. Allyn and Bacon.

Drake, S. 2005. “Meeting Standards through curriculum integration: A bridge to the mainstream.” In Etim, J
(Ed). Curriculum integration K-12: Theory and practice. Lanham. University Press of America.

Etim, J. 2005. Curriculum Integration K-12: Theory and practice. Lanham. University Press of America.

Gardner, H. 2000. The Disciplined Mind. New York. Penguin.

Jacobs, HH. 2004. Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping. Alexandria, VA. Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development. Pp 25–35.

Jacobs, HH. 1989. Interdisciplinary Curriculum: design and implementation. Alexandria, VA. Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Jacobs, HH. 2004. Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating curriculum and assessment K-12. Alexandria, VA.
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Perkins, D. 1992. Smart schools: better thinking and learning for every child. New York, NY. The Free Press.

Wineburg, S and Grossman, P. 2000. Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Challenges of implementation. New York.
Teachers College Press.

Professional development for interdisciplinary

teaching
Darling-Hammond, L. 2006. Powerful Teacher Education, Lessons from exemplary programs. San Francisco.
Jossey-Bass. Pp 3–18.

Darling, HL et al. 2005. Preparing Teachers for a Changing World, What teachers should know and be able to do.
San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.

Little, JW et al. 2003. “Looking at student work for teacher learning, teacher community and school
reform.” Phi Delta Kappan 85 (3), pp 184–192.

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