interdisciplinarity: a concept still unclear

I nter dis cip linarity: a concept still unclear

Giovanni Gozzer

An innovation in school curricula

For the first time, I believe, in the history of the organization of teaching in the state school system at the lower secondary level (from the sixth to the ninth year of schooling), the curricula prepared by the Italian Ministry of Education in I979 introduced, as one of the guidelines to curriculum planning, a section on qnterdisciplinarity'. Having stated as a premise that the 'various branches of education express, according to various subdivisions of knowledge, approaches to reality and ways of mastering it, the organization and transformation of the real world, and to this end they use specific vocabularies that converge towards a single educational end', the instructions continue:

It will therefore prove worthwhile from the standpoint of both the theory and the practice of education, to make provision in the curriculum for the inter- linking of the various disciplines with a view to a more relevant and down-to-earth cultural approach to reality, aimed at the acquisition of knowledge that has unity in its interconnected diversity (one may consider, for example, the contribution that language teaching can make to the under- standing of scientific or mathematical terms; not to mention the benefits in clarity of thought and capacity for self-expression achieved by the teaching of art and music through the non-verbal languages specific to each of these disciplines).

In fact, this formulation, although entitled 'Unity of Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity', does not appear to be a~n accurate description in terms of teaching methods (for the compulsory, common-core schooling at lower-secondary level) of that principle of interdisci-

Giovanni Gozzer (Italy). Former director of the European Education Centre in Frascati (I959 to I974), he was administrator of the Italian educational reform project from i948 to I953. He was a member of the Unesco committee for the evaluation of the results of the "Major Project' in Latin America ( i965) and of the I IEP committee to evaluate the French education system (z969). His published work includes Report on Secondary Education and Invisible Capital, National and International Relations in Education (three volumes to date).

Prospects~ VoL XII, No. 3~ x982

282 Giovanni Oozzcr

plinarity that has been formulated in the mainly epistemological studies carried out in the past ten or fifteen years at university level and in the context of scientific research in general. Finally, this document does no more than acknowledge, through the fine-sounding term 'interdisciplinarity', the simple fact that no discipline is totally autonomous and isolated. It would be difficult to deny that there is a connection, if only a linguistic and semantic one, between the teaching of language as a means of self-expression, and any other discipline; or the implications which non-verbal languages--graphics, for example--may have, either in the sphere of visual transmission and communication or in that of the representation/identification of technical processes. But is this enough to justify talk of interdisciplinarity? And, above all, in what particular way should one under- stand the interdisciplinarity that became widespread after the educational disruptions of I968 (when a kind of epidemic of icono- clastic rage broke out against educational disciplines, with consequent total rejection of old-style school subjects)?

In the years before and after the I97OS, controversial experiments were carried out in many places, and a great amount of pedagogical- political-revolutionary writing has been devoted to this 'formal acceptance' of the principle of interdisciplinarity in school curricula: improvised applications of this principle were frequently introduced at all levels--primary, lower secondary and upper secondary. The idea of ~abolishing' subjects and replacing them by 'discipline-based aggregates' was not new: in the t96os it had won many supporters. Attempts were constantly being made to group together 'activities' (rather than educational content) in broad categories: the rise of the Piaget school of psychology and of Bruner's structural cognitivism had, moreover, paved the way for this change, towards which the most advanced modern educational trends were pointing. Above all, the major experiment in mass schooling was in keeping with these new departures.

T w o examples

The two most recent attempts to modernize curricula (obviously, in countries where their form and content are considered to be the concern of state) have taken place in Spain (x97x) and in France (I977-79). Neither of these curricula, although they are very advanced, contains any hint of interdisciplinarity. They do however, seem to accept what might be considered a simplified and convenient version of the interdisciplinary principle, which moreover, was anticipated

Interdisciplinarity: a concept still unclear 283

several decades earlier by so-called progressive educational theory: composite structures in which are brought together under a single heading subjects that previously had simply been listed in linear succession. Thus, for example, the recent French curriculum for primary age-groups 1 incorporates all educational activities (or content, as these are often termed nowadays) and divides them into four groups: French language; mathematics; cultural stimulation activities (dveil); physical education and sport. Regrouping, however, is not enough. To take an example: the composite entity labeUed 'cultural stimulation activities' has no sooner been classified in the 'compre- hensive' group, then it once again stands revealed, when its contents are listed, as consisting of the same old names and subdivisions into subjects: history and geography, experimental sciences (physics, technology and biology); music, art and handicrafts. The new names for the old subjects certainly sound more impressive than the traditional ones: singing, drawing, handwork, etc. But fundamentally, there is a return to the ~specialized' subject, detectable through the haze of more or less contingent activities.

The curriculum for so-called basic schooling in Spain, i.e. the eight years of compulsory schooling with a common curriculum at primary and secondary levels, also deals with the problem of the new arrange- ment of educational content s by devising a pattern subdivided into 'areas': linguistics; mathematics; social and naturalsciences; expression in the plastic arts (draughtsmanship and basic technology); dynamic self-expression (music, physical education); religion. It is primarily the so-called 'social and natural sciences' area that achieves a truly 'composite' structure, by combining traditional subjects such as history, geography and civics, with ~new aspects of economics, sociology, politics and anthropology', a sort of introduction to the social sciences, as the official instructions put it.

As for the area of the natural sciences, in terms of general grouping at the first stage (primary school) and specialization at the second (lower secondary), this too ends up as separate 'subjects' (natural sciences, biology, physics), either because of overlapping subject- matter or because of parallel formulation. In some respects, it would be more accurate to talk of the unification or co-ordination of disciplines rather than interdisciplinarity in the strict, epistemological sense of the term.

284 Giovanni Gozzer

T h e Italian model

A slightly different path was taken by those who prepared the lower secondary curriculum in Italy (from the sixth to the eighth year of schooling), which was approved in I979 and came into force the following year3 The Italian model runs along two parallel tracks, so to speak. In the specific formulation of curriculum content, it retains the traditional distinction between subjects (Italian language, mathematics, history, geography, etc.). However, in the general instructions that precede this classification of content, indi- cating 'theoretical and practical educational planning' as the line of approach, the various disciplines are to some extent 'unified' under the common heading 'branches of education', these branches being: language, history, civics and geography, mathematics, science and health, technical skills, art, music, physical education and religious instruction. In this case, rather than expressing an interdisciplinary approach, however vague, as was mentioned earlier, the same set of instructions justifies terminology that unifies the subjects while separating them into branches of education, stating: ' In their various specialized branches, the disciplines provide the means and the opportunity for the united, integrated and complex development of functions, knowledge, abilities and tendencies that are indispensable to the growth to maturity of responsible human beings who are capable of making choices.' The aim is clearly, therefore, a relative ~weeding out', or at least a pruning of the autonomy of the subject as such, so as to replace their straightforward juxtaposition by a plan, design or project that should predetermine what is finally achieved, imposing overall unity at an early stage.

One might, to use a slightly facetious example, say that according to the traditional scheme the subjects' positions relative to one another constituted a sort of federation with acknowledged autonomy: whereas under the new r6gime, the subjects become merely 'prov- Laces' of a single unitary state that subordinates them to its own logic. At one time, associations of teachers of specialized subjects carried more weight, in curriculum planning, than did administrative bureaucracy. Nowadays, the bureaucrats of the administration, strongly influenced by political factors, enjoy all the power that is claimed and exercised by the centralized state.

Not that the nouveau rdgime appears in any way despotic: on the contrary, once it has laid down its objectives, and principles, it delegates to bodies that are compatible with one another, and in sympathy with its aims, responsibility for putting them into practice.

The curriculum and the class council, to which the general rules


give responsibility for educational and pedagogical planning, therefore divests individual subjects and the teachers of those subjects of their relatively autonomous roles and characteristic lines of approach. The uniqueness of each subject is not explicitly denied: rather, it is dissolved in the melting-pot of the 'overall educational plan'. The Italian curriculum instructions state, for example, that each discipline should 'seek out and strengthen its own specific contribution to the general educational plan, formulated as a single unit by the class council'.

D isc ip l ines , in t e rd i sc ip l ines , mu l t i d i sc ip l ines

T h e three cases just described are useful illustrations of our thesis by virtue of their similarities and their differences. But, before proceeding further, we should first establish a number of fairly precise deft- nitions, so as to ensure that the words used have consistent meanings.

A point I have noted is that nearly all writing on interdisciplinarity, although the term is interpreted in various ways, is rather vague when it comes to giving an explicit definition of the terms 'discipline', 'subject' , 'materia' or 'asignatura', as these are variously used in some of the widely known languages to denote a specific area of knowledge. The largest Italian dictionary (Battaglia, twenty heavy volumes) gives at least a score of different uses of the term 'discipline', with very wide variations; encyclopedias and lesser dictionaries define discipline generically as 'subject or content of teaching'. The key document in the debate on the problems of interdisciplinarity is the volume on the subject published in 1972 by OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), 4 to which we shall have occasion to refer in what follows.

In the Introduction by Guy Berger, a discipline is defined as 'a specific body of teachable knowledge with its own background of education, training, procedures, methods and content areas'. This definition is both too narrow and too wide. Too narrow because, in defining a discipline as 'body of knowledge', it stresses primarily its static depository character as contrasted with the dynamic, development-and-product ion oriented nature of the 'specific knowledge' that it encompasses; too wide because it incorporates in the discipline concept components (procedures, methods and content) that are in fact common to any discipline whatsoever, and indeed to any cognitive process.

Etymologically, the term 'discipline' is derived from the Latin verb discere, to learn, and from its substantive, discipulus, one who learns;

286 Giovanni Gozzer

there is a perfect parallel with the Greek term mdthesis, the discipline as the object of learning, and mathetds, he who learns. So the original concept of discipline is bound up with the very principle of learning; in classical Greek or Roman history, learning, and hence knowledge, relatively non-specialized into different cognitive sectors, is connected with sofia, i.e. the will to know. This stands for a relatively unitary process of verbal, formal and representative acquisitions that come together under the Greek term paideia, which means growth, a 'rising up' to the life of the mind.

The subsequent division into specialized branches of the general apprendere-paideia phenomenon began to develop more coherently in the late Latin era. The beginnings of medieval culture saw the first systematic forms of academic curriculum planning, which gave rise to the category of the arts, or cognitive techniques, as opposed to the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy): this indicates an incipient distinction between 'human' and 'natural' knowledge.

From these gradually consolidated foundations there grew up the disciplinary organizations that were to form the basis for the medieval schools and studia, from which in turn developed the universities, the highest seat of systematic professional learning (medicine, theology and law).

The ratio studiorum of the Jesuits, which in essence foreshadows the first coherent model of a secondary school system in the West (a genuine primary system was to come into being only later, and on a variety of patterns) already entrusted the paideia-education process to a regular corpus of teachers (the use of this term began, in fact, during the above-mentioned phase) specializing in philosophy, mathematics, Holy Scripture, Hebrew, grammar, the humanities, rhetoric, etc. They were supervised by a director of studies and obliged to conform to the rules of a specific programme that shared out tasks and determined content, procedures and forms of professional conduct.

The term Cdiscipline', understood as a process in which learning finds expression, therefore encompasses the phenomenon of the division of knowledge into various branches, on the basis of historical analysis; as every problem is gradually investigated more thoroughly, it leads to a division of work in accordance with different skills. Disciplinarity appears to be a compartmentalization determined by the need to gain thorough knowledge of the various aspects of each cognitive area: thus, criteria of reflection and study appropriate to each sector are determined, and there is a certain crystallization of the various fields of inquiry, defined by their characteristics of observ- ability, method and application.


The compartmentalization of knowledge

The principle of the interconnection of various disciplines and of the establishment of links or bonds between areas that were originally distinct and juxtaposed in parallel, although not unrelated to the law of communicating vessels, becomes an absolute rule when the increasing specialization of technical and scientific knowledge breaks down the old partitions belonging to the order of juxtaposed disciplines and makes it necessary to identify new interdisciplinary links. From this process, which is therefore the main aspect of the research being carried out by present-day students of epistemology, new requirements arise, concerning both changes in the content of university curricula and the formulation of new criteria for defining areas of specialization and research. The principle of disciplinary integration on the basis of overlapping, structural relationships and interdisciplinary links takes on particular importance, especially in the field of scientific research: integration takes place not only at the level of disciplines, but also in the activities of researchers, who work in groups, homogenous or otherwise, thereby ensuring that the progress of research work is helped along by complementary skills.

From the scientific domain, the principle of complementary relations among disciplines spills over into the traditional, and probably less clear-cut, realm of the humanities, which, having acquired new tools and methods of research, now style themselves 'human sciences' (a title that contains an implicit recognition of the reciprocal links and relations with the more advanced methodologies of scientific research). Subjects that formerly gravitated only about their own axis of specialization, such as history, philosophy, geography and even literature, are establishing new connections, widening the scope and horizons of their 'focus', and using scientific, analytical and quantitative procedures. Side by side with the old humanistic disciplines, the term being used here in the strict sense, there are emerging the new 'sciences of man', somewhere between scientific division into disciplines and the legacy of the traditional humanities.

It is beyond doubt that in this situation the principle of interdisciplinarity in advanced studies and research is essential if new ground is to be broken and fresh discoveries are to be made. The seminar held in Nice (I97 o) and publication of the OECD-CERI volume emphasize a state of affairs that is already well established.

288 G~'ovanni Gozzer

Discipl ine and scientific t h o u g h t

The papers submitted at the seminar in Nice include one that I regard as rather significant: the study by Marcel H. Boisot, which sets out to define disciplinarity (and interdisciplinarity) in relation to scientific thought. Every discipline, he argues, presupposes three conditions: a set of observable objects that can be formally represented; a set of identifiable, reproducible and coherently interpretable phenomena; and a set of laws or rules that give that formal expression to the relations among the objects observed or the symbols that represent them. A distinction is drawn, therefore, between raw phenomena, for which no explanatory scientific theory has been found, and authenticated phenomena, which can be brought under formal laws or principles that make provision for predictable effects. Science would appear to be a historical attempt to transform raw phenomena into authenticated phenomena: the transition, in other words, from what Herodotus called apodeixis or narration, based on personal experience, to real, genuine episteme. It should be stressed that, whereas for some disciplines episteme is the necessary outcome, for others it represents a methodology of research that makes the identification of its content more precise, but cannot in any way weaken the connecting links with the original axiomatic structure.

It is, however, on the strength of these considerations that certain epistemologists (but, mainly, some impetuous educationists) have seen fit to demolish the very idea of a discipline, acknowledging at most that it has a 'heuristic' function, owing to our inability to grasp knowledge as a single whole. A discipline, therefore, would appear to have the status of a 'fragmentary snippet', and be designed to break up reality into increasingly narrow fields and to define specific areas of activity in which ~styles of thought, methods and procedures' are developed.

This thesis, dear to the hearts of supporters of interdisciplinarity, presupposes, however, a sort of arbitrarily controlled development of these ddcoupages; in other words, a gradual and conscious rationality, working from the bottom upwards chronologically and causing a counter-thrust from the top downwards, which makes the process respectable in terms of scientific explanation. But while this procedure may yield promising results that satisfy the epistemological researcher, it certainly does not help to solve the somewhat more mundane problems that preoccupy the teacher. A student of linguistics can undoubtedly come up with impeccable models for the interpretation of language: but it is less certain that he would be capable of teaching a child to talk, as its mother does, or teaching it to write, as a teacher

Interdisciplinarity: a concept still unclear .289

of the alphabet is able to do. Both of these follow paths which diverge from that of the linguist.

T h e discipline as the basis o f learning: three levels

At the school level, the discipline is therefore the natural medium, indispensable and gradually becoming more integrated and complex, that underlies the pupil's intellectual growth in the course of his paideia. As such, every discipline has its own pattern of development: from non-specific sensory emotive learning (nursery school), to the earliest experience of symbols, to representation, to formal recog- nizability (primary school). At this level, the various disciplines emerge in their initial organized form, characterized by the presence of a single vector (the teacher) and syllabuses and content that do not differ according to the target population.

The first qualitative jump occurs at the level of lower secondary schooling: the disciplines are already defined as such, although they are grouped together according to affinities, or in accordance with the abilities required. They already imply the assessment of varying individual skills. At this stage, subjects become the first tools exer- cising specific abilities (arithmetic, drawing, music and manual work) or for reflecting about communication, relationships, and the patterns to be seen in historical events and in the geographical and human environment.

At the third, or upper secondary, level, the subjects are divided on a scientific and technical methodological grid. In each discipline one may find not only its characteristic content, but also methodologies for achieving greater sophistication and development, links of contiguity, pupils' preferences for certain lines of advance rather than others, and individual departures from the institutional guidelines formally Iaid down in the curricula. At this level, the teachers show a higher standard of skill and apply more rigorous criteria of selection. Finally, at university level, the highest degree of integration and complexity is reached. There is no longer a discipline called 'history': there are countless lines of approach to history, through diachronic development, synchronic patterns, disciplinary connections, geographical and political areas (single countries and nations), major civilizations, etc. The one constant factor is the component 'history'; there is a common basis for research through neighbouring disciplines; there is a series of interconnections, due to the use of common analytical or methodological tools. And this seems to be the true

290 Oiovanni Gozzer

domain of interdisciplinarity, defined as interaction between two or more disciplines, ranging from straightforward communication of ideas to reciprocal integration of key concepts, vocabulary, methods and procedures--in short, the integration of research and education. However, although the question of interdisciplinary connections arises at the level of the university, this fact does not warrant exclusion or rejection of the 'discipline' concept at the lower levels. Admittedly, there is the oft-repeated assertion, originally made by Popper, that problems exist whereas subjects do not. But problems do not exist in their own right; disciplines then become tools that may be used to formulate problems.

Ge t t ing r id o f subjects

In the early I97os, there was a tendency to ~do away with' subjects: the 'subject abolishers' have been identified with those who called for the elimination of academic competition, applying the radical Marxist principle of struggle against the 'ownership'-based order of the traditional discipline areas. That the decision-makers were not indif- ferent to this demand when drawing up the new school curricula has been mentioned earlier: and there is no lack of evidence for the wave of experiments, which, in the name of interdisciplinarity, proclaimed that separate subjects no longer held sway.

To mention one example among many: a weighty tome on the results of putting interdisciplinarity into practice in a lower secondary school (an experiment which, in fact, has never taken place, but only 'theorized'), uses as datum the following assertion: 'the official curricula, with their destructive logic, based on separate contents, on division into subjects and on the different names given to those subjects, are the scourge of the authoritarian school'. There would probably be no need to dwell on the inconsistency and superficiality of such claims, which place the organization of knowledge on a par with economic and political organization, were it not for the fact that quite a number of educationists have taken statements of this kind quite seriously; the list of books inclining towards this thesis which have been published in Italy and elsewhere in the past ten years is almost endless.

There has also been a certain amount of recognition by state education authorities and justification of this sudden allergy to disciplines and this infatuation with the new forms of an interdisciplinarity that is improperly understood and even less properly apphed.

Interdisciplinarity: a concept still unclear 29I

In t e rd i s c ip l i na r i t y a n d p e d a g o g y

I would take as an example a treatise on educational interdisciplinarity that was published in I975. The author acknowledges that 'only interdisciplinary education seems worthy of consideration as suited to the intimate nature of the individual as a single consciousness capable of making sense of cultural analysis'. And he continues: 'Interrelations are the key to the purpose of every educational undertaking. Interdisciplinarity is today's context for the relational character of individual development whereby the individual acquires his cultural equipment. '

Essentially, this kind of research seems always to leave the real situation out of account. In other words, there is no practical and experimental analysis of the way in which the introduction of education based on interdisciplinarity might affect the human learning process in schools. Even a list of the various forms of interdisciplinarity (heterogeneous, arbitrary, auxiliary, composite, complementary, urdfying, etc.) suggests a system of classification rather than a realistic working framework for use in an educational setting. The conclusion is fairly obvious, and we shall at tempt to formulate it as dearly as possible.

N o l ea rn ing w i t h o u t a d i sc ip l ina ry f r a m e w o r k

I t is clear that, as every discipline becomes increasingly differentiated in its special field, so it automatically becomes necessary to establish links, connections and relations. But it is not through artificial manipulation, or, worse still, through a distortion of the specific nature of the disciplinary field itself, that we shall either achieve the aims of learning or construct the broader scheme of relations that underlies interdisciplinarity in the true sense of the word.

There can be no concept of the 'international' without the basic principle of the 'nation'; an orchestra can function only if its members possess specific skills in playing the instruments that together pro- duce the concert; an orchestra, too, is something 'intermusical'; the playing of an orchestra, moreover, depends on respect for the specificity of every instrument, although the basic language of music is something that is shared.

The debate on disciplines has been thrown wide open, and there are new discoveries still to be made: there is room for reductions, innovations, abolitions and re-introductions: their diversity resides

2 9 2 Cn'ovanni Gozzer

mainly in the link between their highly specialized individuality and the continuing expansion and development of human knowledge, as well as of the techniques derived from science: every secondary establishment is familiar with the continual mushrooming of new 'disciplines' that either become incorporated into the earlier framework or else replace it; the natural momentum of the growth of human culture makes this inevitable.

Less subject to rapid changes, perhaps, are the organization and definition of disciplinary areas at the primary and lower secondary levels. But probably it is only by drawing more and more distinctions among subjects as these gradually become more specialized that the individual is helped to master the meaning of things and is given equipment for his 'journey through society and through history'.

Unfortunately, our Western societies have two hidden vices: the first is misuse of the concept of innovation and overly hasty implementation of reforms without preliminary verification of their implications and consequences. The second vice is that of offering to the least developed countries the latest and most sophisticated new theories, in the belief that it is easier to inscribe new educational patterns on a tabula rasa, whereas structures built up over centuries have a natural defence mechanism that rejects such innovations. This second fault, in particular, is a more or less acknowledged hindrance in relations with countries that are laboriously constructing their own education systems. �9

Notes I. 29Iinist~re de l'l~dueation--Gontenus de formation dt l'dcole ~ldmentaire--Gycle prdparatoire,

dldmentaire, moyen; horaires, objeetifs, programmes, instructions, Paris~ Centre National de Documentation P6dagogique, 1977-79.

2. Nuevas orientaciones pedagoglcas; educacidn general bdsica, xoth ed., Madrid, Editorial Escuela Espafiola SA, 1981.

3. I nuovi programmi della scuola media: presentazione e commento~ Florence, Edizioni Giunti Marzocco, 1979.

4. OECD-CERllnterdisciplinarlty--Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities, report based on the results o f a Seminar on Interdisciplinarity in Universities, which was organized by CERI in collaboration with the French Ministry o f Education at the University of Nice from 7 to r2 September 197o.

interdisciplinarity: a concept still unclear

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