A broad general education
Every child and young person in Scotland is entitled to experience a broad general education. This broad general education takes place from the early years to the end of S3 and is represented by learning across all of the experiences and outcomes.
Interdisciplinary Learning Themes
The curriculum should include space for learning beyond subject boundaries, so that children and young people can make connections between different areas of learning.
Interdisciplinary studies, based upon groupings of experiences and outcomes from within and across curriculum areas, can provide relevant, challenging and enjoyable learning experiences and stimulating contexts to meet the varied needs of children and young people.
Revisiting a concept or skill from different perspectives deepens understanding, and can also make the curriculum more coherent and meaningful from the learner’s point of view.
Interdisciplinary studies can also take advantage of opportunities to work with partners who are able to offer and support enriched learning experiences and opportunities for young people’s wider involvement in society.
Effective interdisciplinary learning:
- can take the form of individual oneoff projects or longer courses of study
- is planned around clear purposes
- is based upon experiences and outcomes drawn from different curriculum areas or subjects within them
- ensures progression in skills and in knowledge and understanding
- can provide opportunities for mixed-stage learning which is interest-based.
There are two broad types of interdisciplinary learning which, in practice, often overlap.
- Learning planned to develop awareness and understanding of the connections and differences across subject areas and disciplines. This can be through the knowledge and skill content, the ways of working, thinking and arguing or the particular perspective of a subject or discipline. Using learning from different subjects and disciplines to explore a theme or an issue, meet a challenge, solve a problem or complete a final project. This can be achieved by providing a context that is real and relevant, to the learners, the school and its community.
For example this may mean:
- A project for P6/P7 to create informative and attractive information brochures (or a website) for pupils in schools in a twin town in France, by using knowledge and skills developed in the study of local history, geography, art and design and French language.
To be genuinely interdisciplinary, learning must support learners in using knowledge and skills from different disciplines and~in applying and deepening their learning in relevant contexts, and help them to make real connections across subjects and disciplines, where appropriate.
In Castlehill Primary School we, in general, use an area of Social Studies to deliver the core of an Interdisciplinary Learning Theme. We also undertake one whole school them annually. Work will be differentiated for each child/class but through the same overarching theme.
