Interdisciplinarity for Learning and Teaching Mathematics

Enrico Rogora,Francesco Saverio Tortoriello

doi:10.1590/1980-4415v35n70a25

Enrico Rogora, Francesco Saverio Tortoriello

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1980-4415v35n70a25

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Abstract

Abstract Complex problems need interdisciplinary approaches. Thinking in an interdisciplinary way asks for changes in learning and teaching and hence in our views on pedagogical problems. An interdisciplinary approach could provide a new framework also for dealing with disciplinary didactical problems. In this paper, we propose a methodology which we call globally interdisciplinary laboratories as an effective way to practice interdisciplinary teaching at the high school level. We discuss the possibility of applying this methodology to the learning and teaching of mathematics. Globally interdisciplinary laboratories are designed by a pool of researchers in collaboration with high school teachers of several disciplines and they are delivered in the classroom by a pool of teachers in co-presence. This has been experimented in Italy in many classes which are part of a national educational project called Liceo matematico. In this paper, we discuss the general design principle of a GIL and exemplify the methodology by considering the one we have called educate the sight, which aims at stimulating, within an interdisciplinary framework, intellectual curiosity, the ability to spot the prominent features of a problem and, in mathematics, the ability of conjecturing, which should be one of the fundamental concerns of mathematical teaching, according to Polya's decalogue for mathematics teachers (POLYA, 1981).

Highlights

In this paper, we discuss the theoretical framework of a research project in education, developed since 2014 by a group of researchers at the University of Salerno, under the scientific supervision of the Department of Mathematics, involving 8 distinct Departments1
Coming back to complex problems, mathematics is the fundamental glue with which to build an organic interdisciplinary teaching proposal, but it may provide specific tools for modeling and analyzing complexity, which should find their space in higher education curricula. This is not of our concern in this work, even if we have designed specific activities to be carried out in high school in order to introduce some of these tools, namely globally interdisciplinary laboratories on probability thinking and climate emergency, in which we assign a paramount role to developing critical attitudes toward mathematization (ROGORA, 2014; DE MARCHIS; MENGHINI; ROGORA, 2020)
The most persistent attainment of students participating to this globalmente interdisciplinares (GIL), i.e., the attitude that remained through the years, is student’s awareness of the importance of the observative phase in tackling a problem and the possibility to get hold of specific tools to enhance this ability, the most effective of which is the custom to share the look with other people using and developing a specialized language, specific to the problem under consideration

Summary

Introduction

Coming back to complex problems, mathematics is the fundamental glue with which to build an organic interdisciplinary teaching proposal, but it may provide specific tools for modeling and analyzing complexity, which should find their space in higher education curricula This is not of our concern in this work, even if we have designed specific activities to be carried out in high school in order to introduce some of these tools, namely globally interdisciplinary laboratories on probability thinking and climate emergency, in which we assign a paramount role to developing critical attitudes toward mathematization (ROGORA, 2014; DE MARCHIS; MENGHINI; ROGORA, 2020)

Globally Interdisciplinary Laboratories

Designing a GIL

The GIL “Educating the sight”

Interdisciplinarity and the teaching mathematics

Findings

Conclusions