Disciplinary Integration in Teaching: The Necessity of Systematic Evaluation Tools

Abstract

The discipline-based curriculum, which was typical of industrial-age education, still predominates in the current education systems in many countries, where educational institutions at various levels, particularly universities, prioritize specialization in curriculum design. While specialization may have been effective in improving teaching efficiency and rendering students’ understanding more focused, it also leads to the creation of a mono-disciplinary knowledge (Tramonti, 2019). This discipline-based curricular paradigm has its limitations in addressing complex real-world problems, such as climate change, public health crises, and the digital divide, which never present themselves according to the disciplinary boundaries of physics, mathematics, or language arts and are inherently multifaceted. The solution of real-world problems necessitates an interdisciplinary perspective and the ability to draw on knowledge or skills from a variety of domains. Compared with discipline-based instruction, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary teaching (MITT) has the potential to improve affective and cognitive learning and critical thinking, offering learners/students the opportunity to obtain a broad general knowledge base (Hardy et al., 2021). For this reason, the adoption of MITT approaches has become a growing trend in global curricular reform.