Activity 7: My interdisciplinary connection map
Once I got started on my interdisciplinary connection map I felt like I could have kept adding more and more things! There are so many things that have an impact (or could potentially have more of an impact) on my teaching practice.
Creating this connection map did make me realise how I draw on so much of this when I'm in the classroom - for example, when it comes to relationship building with students I draw very much on my experiences teaching skiing and teaching English as a foreign language as in both situations I found that I needed to gain the trust of students (often in a very short period of time) in order to make them feel comfortable and to help them get the most from the learning experience.
One thing I noticed from my map is that there are connections that currently aren't being made which could help improve my practice. The first of these is that I have been completing the Mind Lab course at the same time as working on a graduate certificate in primary maths teaching. Both courses share similar ideas about getting students to work collaboratively, getting them to take ownership of their learning and engaging students by making learning relevant and accessible, however, I've been viewing them as very much separate. I've been completing Mind Lab tasks one day and then working on assignments for the graduate certificate the next without really spending much time reflecting on how they fit together. This is something I think would certainly help my practice and enable me to help find ways to help meet our school goal of raising achievement in mathematics. The challenge with this is finding the time (with all the study and working) to do this effectively! Also convincing the senior management team and head of maths to allow me to radically change the way I am teaching maths when this is an area we are focusing on as a school. I would need to be able to show that what I was doing would benefit the students and help raise achievement.
I think I could also make much more use of professional connections. There are so many different ways in which I am in touch with different teachers both locally, nationally and internationally but I know I don't make the most of their collective knowledge and experience, nor do I share enough of what I'm doing with others so they can learn from my experiences. The benefits of doing this are that I could learn from what others are doing and get different ideas for things to try in my own school as well as share my practice so others can learn from me. The challenges are that while I often have good intentions to do this, I am so busy with other things that it gets pushed to the side. It is also sometimes scary to put yourself out there and share what you are doing (both the successes and the failures) so that is a barrier I'd have to get over personally (and I imagine others too).
I have long been a fan of an interdisciplinary approach as you rarely approach things from a single lens, you always use everything you know when trying to understand something new or come up with a different idea. When I was studying history and politics at university for my bachelors degree we often used literature of the time to study periods in history or to get a different viewpoint on political events. I found it was not only far more interesting than reading a textbook but also gave a human viewpoint to the events that we were studying. I also feel that in the workplace, you often draw on knowledge and skills gained from all different areas. When I was working as a ski instructor I used what I had learned about teaching children from my primary teaching qualification to help new instructors develop their teaching for children. When I worked as a personal assistant to a CEO I was able to use what I knew about government and politics to help my boss understand changes to legislation. Helping students see the connections between curriculum areas and integrating disciplines will better prepare them for live beyond formal education.
One thing I noticed from my map is that there are connections that currently aren't being made which could help improve my practice. The first of these is that I have been completing the Mind Lab course at the same time as working on a graduate certificate in primary maths teaching. Both courses share similar ideas about getting students to work collaboratively, getting them to take ownership of their learning and engaging students by making learning relevant and accessible, however, I've been viewing them as very much separate. I've been completing Mind Lab tasks one day and then working on assignments for the graduate certificate the next without really spending much time reflecting on how they fit together. This is something I think would certainly help my practice and enable me to help find ways to help meet our school goal of raising achievement in mathematics. The challenge with this is finding the time (with all the study and working) to do this effectively! Also convincing the senior management team and head of maths to allow me to radically change the way I am teaching maths when this is an area we are focusing on as a school. I would need to be able to show that what I was doing would benefit the students and help raise achievement.
I think I could also make much more use of professional connections. There are so many different ways in which I am in touch with different teachers both locally, nationally and internationally but I know I don't make the most of their collective knowledge and experience, nor do I share enough of what I'm doing with others so they can learn from my experiences. The benefits of doing this are that I could learn from what others are doing and get different ideas for things to try in my own school as well as share my practice so others can learn from me. The challenges are that while I often have good intentions to do this, I am so busy with other things that it gets pushed to the side. It is also sometimes scary to put yourself out there and share what you are doing (both the successes and the failures) so that is a barrier I'd have to get over personally (and I imagine others too).
I have long been a fan of an interdisciplinary approach as you rarely approach things from a single lens, you always use everything you know when trying to understand something new or come up with a different idea. When I was studying history and politics at university for my bachelors degree we often used literature of the time to study periods in history or to get a different viewpoint on political events. I found it was not only far more interesting than reading a textbook but also gave a human viewpoint to the events that we were studying. I also feel that in the workplace, you often draw on knowledge and skills gained from all different areas. When I was working as a ski instructor I used what I had learned about teaching children from my primary teaching qualification to help new instructors develop their teaching for children. When I worked as a personal assistant to a CEO I was able to use what I knew about government and politics to help my boss understand changes to legislation. Helping students see the connections between curriculum areas and integrating disciplines will better prepare them for live beyond formal education.
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