Teachers ’ Interpretations about Interdisciplinary Teaching

In this paper, we target the problem, which has been much debated not only in the field of natural sciences, but across the whole comprehensive school curriculum – interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary teaching. We first render an overview of some fundamental issues concerning the definition of interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary teaching. We also consider its virtues and deficiencies as they have emerged in educational practice. Thereafter, we present a small-scale research conducted for examining how Estonian physics teachers (science teachers) understand the concept of interdisciplinary teaching and which aspects they regard most important. The method of concept mapping was used for data gathering and assessment. Estonian science teachers’ understanding of interdisciplinary teaching is mostly limited to connections between different subjects and topics. Science teachers tend to use in concept maps static and very general linking words. The reason for that could be that they have very little expediencies using concept mapping.