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Interdisciplinary Subject (IDS)

An interdisciplinary curriculum equips students with a toolkit for thinking about the complex problems of the world and of themselves as learners. The interdisciplinary subject is a series of lessons, activities, and projects that aim to combine all typical school subjects into one holistic view of education. Our draft curriculum, in partnership with ongoing grant-funding from Holistic Think Tank, provides teachers with actionable steps toward making change. Further developments of the IDS will occur across 2023-2024.

At a Glance

Interdisciplinary education is crucial for fostering innovative thinking and solving complex problems across multiple fields. In other words, multi-subject learning is required to tackle the problems of today and work collaboratively toward change. Our phase 1 (of 3) contribution to the IDS includes:

629 pages of:

  • 41 far-ranging, broad interdisciplinary lessons
  • 246 extension activities to focus each of these lessons across the entire curriculum, as well as supplement media and extensive projects
  • A pedagogical guide for teaching and using the IDS
  • An impact guide for fostering experiential learning
  • Alignment to community change & concepts of wonder, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Implementation

The IDS is designed to be:

  • Modular: We know that educators rarely use activities "out of the box." Each lesson is broken down into modular sections to be adapted, remixed, and broken.
  • Extendable: All lessons contain multiple project ideas, media options, and kickstarted activities for typical classrooms to take these ideas further.
  • Progressive: Our curriculum centers progressive practice, including designing within universal design for learning (UDL) and self-directed education (SDL) frameworks.

This content is aimed at a middle school (6th-8th grade) audience, but could easily be adapted to other grade levels. We recognize that there are varying degrees of implementation of an entirely interdisciplinary course, ranging from pick-up activities in an advisory period to a full class period. In theory, the IDS is designed to tackle a selection of lessons over the course of a semester, followed by an extensive project in the second semester.

Resources

We recommend accessing our resources in the following order:

  • Pedagogical Guidebook: An overview of the design of the IDS, the included lessons, different implementation strategies, and the why/how of interdisciplinary learning.
  • Facilitation Guides (available as Google Documents): Teacher copies of each of the 41 lessons with additional guided information.
  • Student Guides (available as Google Documents): Student copies of each of the 41 lessons.
  • Impact Guidebook: A PBL/experiential-driven guide for harnessing IDS lessons and designing an extensive, multi-week project. We've designed the IDS to implement this project after a series of lessons.

* Please note that the IDS is currently under development in an ongoing grant from Holistic Think Tank in conjunction with the University of Sheffield. This is a draft of phase 1 (of 3) of the Human Restoration Project interdisciplinary subject and changes will be rapidly occurring across 2023-2024. However, please feel free to offer us feedback! Further, Holistic Think Tank is looking for educators to become involved in this project. Visit their website to learn more.