Ending Silo Teaching

Teachers want students engaged in their learning and who apply that learning in a real-world context. Isn't that the point - being able to use what is learned in class?

Too often, though, what is taught in our classrooms remains firmly within the domain of that subject area and students fail to understand how it applies to their worlds.

Last year three departments in my secondary school endeavoured to create a cross-curricular unit for Year 9 classes. The theory was fantastic - we would teach different aspects of the topic and students would present us with an assessment which we would mark individually using our respective curriculum criteria. In practice, it was pretty much an example of what not to do in cross-curricular teaching. Our lessons were out of sync, some teachers didn't follow the scheme, and some didn't do any presentations. 
However, the experience did show me how it could be done and I saw that there could be benefits to doing it. We need to show students that what is learned in one class has relevance in another, and that these experiences can apply to the real world.

So I was interested that Finland has reviewed the place of traditional subject areas as part of its educational reforms and encourages broader topic studies which embrace a number of disciplines. This 'phenomenon-based' learning allows students to study a real-world phenomenon and study different aspects of it in an interdisciplinary manner. 

 While it has attracted the predictable amount of scepticism, to me, this is a paramount step towards developing twenty-first-century skills in our students. They need to see how subjects fit together to create understanding of a concept. I can teach literature about the Holocaust, but it is through historical understanding that students will appreciate how it happened - and how it might happen again. As Ramirez (2013) says, traditional approaches are "simplification by isolation", designed to help make concepts understandable, but where students are not encouraged to see the links between different subject areas. What we really should be challenging our students to do is to garner the ideas from a range of subject areas and use them to solve real-world problems.

 The 21st Century Learning Design (2016) rubrics state that for students to be constructing knowledge involves connecting knowledge and ideas from at least two academic disciplines. While this might seem an arbitrary definition, it does also reinforce the importance of students applying their knowledge to more than one area. This encourages greater collaboration between teachers, which to me can only be a better thing for our students. 

 This is not easy to do within a New Zealand context, particularly at NCEA level where we see subjects defined by assessment criteria. While it is possible to use assessment in one subject (eg a Physics report) in an English assessment (Writing), the criteria often make it difficult to achieve with higher results. Although we work within an increasingly digital environment, the pedagogy is not as flexible. It's not as though this is a new issue for NZ schools, however. In 2009 Hipkins was arguing that "Teachers need to see beyond their personal place within the system to take account of how learning 'joins up'".

 So while we were unsuccessful in our first attempt to overcome the subject silos we inherited, the English, Social Studies and PE departments at my school should be proud of the steps we took to work towards a common goal for our students. Rather than discarding the effort, we should be building on our learning experiences and continue with our cross-curricular teaching where possible.

References

Eger, J. (2013). Eliminating the Silos in Education. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-m-eger/eliminating-the-silos-in-_1_b_2155016.html

Garner, G (2015). Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with 'topics' as country reforms its education system. The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-schools-subjects-are-out-and-topics-are-in-as-country-reforms-its-education-system-10123911.html

Hipkins, R. (2009). Reshaping the secondary school curriculum: Building the plane while flying it. Findings from the NZCER National Survey of Secondary Schools. Retrieved from http://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/reshaping-secondary-school-curriculum.pdf

ITL Research, Microsoft Partners in Education (2016), 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Retrieved from https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/ITL-Research

O'Connell, S. (2016). Finland Becomes First Country to Get Rid of School Subjects by 2020. Democrat Gazette. Retrieved from http://democratlive.com/business/finland-becomes-first-country-to-get-rid-of-school-subjects-by-2020-784.html

Ramirez A (2013). Smashing Silos. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/smashing-silos-ainissa-ramirez

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