Developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise: An ecological framework for professional learning

Abstract

This document presents an ecological framework to support the development of teachers' interdisciplinary expertise. It addresses the growing need for teachers to engage with the complex challenges of 21st-century teaching and work with knowledge from different fields. The framework is based on an ecological perspective that considers the complex interactions between teachers’ personal resourcefulness, their immediate environments, and the wider institutional and societal contexts. This document is constructed as a compass rather than a detailed guide or map to help readers understand and navigate the complex space of teachers’ interdisciplinary practices, expertise and learning. It acknowledges that teaching practices change—sometimes very rapidly—and there is no single pathway for developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise; new directions and possibilities can be opened by engaging with a range of theory, research, and practice insights when tailoring them to specific professional education needs and contexts. The document provides a detailed overview of the framework and its different aspects at micro, meso, and macro levels. At the micro level, the framework focuses on developing teachers (multi)disciplinary foundations, interdisciplinary know-how, and epistemic flexibility and interdisciplinary dispositions. At the meso level, the framework focuses on teachers’ capabilities to engage in interdisciplinary ways of working, to create tools and environments, as well as a shared language and distributed agency. At the macro level, the framework focuses on teachers’ capacities to navigate and shape interdisciplinary knowledge systems and cultures, including policies, infrastructures, institutions, networks, and communities. The document outlines research-practice insights into how this framework can be applied in practice and activities to assist teacher educators and other stakeholders in using the presented ideas in the design of pre-service and in-service teacher education courses. It discusses some key considerations for institutional and system-level policy and decision-making. The document suggests that the development of interdisciplinary expertise is everyone’s responsibility—teacher educators, institutional and system-level. While pre-service and in-service teacher educators can embrace interdisciplinary focus in specific courses, this alone cannot ensure that all teachers and, consequentially, students are benefiting. System-level decisions and changes are needed to ensure the broad reach of interdisciplinary education and equity.