Developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise: A scoping study

Abstract

This report is a part of the project ‘Developing teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise’, funded by the NSW Department of Education Strategic Leveraging grant and led by a research team from the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland. The project aims to translate some findings from the research project ‘Developing interdisciplinary expertise in universities’, funded by the Australian Research Council, to NSW teacher education and professional development. The first phase of this translational project involved a scoping study that aimed to identify current focus areas, practices, and challenges in developing pre-service and in-service teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise. The initial work involved developing a consultation paper integrating insights from the project ‘Developing interdisciplinary expertise in universities’ and a scoping literature review on the development of teachers’ interdisciplinary expertise. The follow-up work involved conducting one-hour consultation interviews, where invited participants with relevant expertise and experience shared their knowledge in response to the consultation questions. The main outcomes from the above work were originally presented in two separate documents. This report does not report new findings but integrates these outcomes into a single document. It was produced with the aim of consolidating these research outcomes in a format more suitable for further reference and dissemination. The first part of this report presents key insights from the desk study that led to the development of consultation questions. The second part presents the methodology and key results from the consultation interviews.