DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ SKILLS IN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTEXT

Technology is progressing. Science drives its development. New jobs appear every day on the labour market, some we haven’t even thought about. Many of today’s students will do these jobs. They probably won’t be trained for these jobs since they haven’t been invented yet. However they will learn somehow.

„Nothing is more important in the twenty-first century than learning to manage change.” (Fullan, 2008).

But for this to happen, their thinking and knowledge must be adaptable. The skills they acquire in school should allow anchoring in the real world.

On the other hand, the teachers’ role is changing from keepers of knowledge to facilitators of learning. „…many teachers are comfortable delivering information. They view themselves as the keepers of the keys. But our job as educators is to facilitate learning, which derives from the French facile or from the Latin facilis, „easy to do”. Our job is to make it easy for students to internalise whatever information we are trying to impart to them – to make it personal, and to take that knowledge and use it to make their lives richer.”(DeLorenzo, Battino, Schreiber, Gaddy Cario, 2009)

Applying the principles of continuity and consistency in the school education reform in Romania in the curricular area of “Mathematics and Science” shifts the focus of the educational process towards the acquisition of skills and abilities.

Their role is to guide the teaching approach towards the student’s final acquisitions. On the other hand, the list of values and attitudes shapes the axiological and affective dimensions of personality development in terms of the subject. Achieving all these things should be the aim of the teacher’s activity, representing an intrinsic part of his/her job.

Contextualized knowledge in the education process contributes to the development of the student’s personality. From this perspective, the teaching process achieved through the study of school subjects such as biology, physics, chemistry, should be geared towards one major goal – shaping the student’s personality according to the uniqueness of scientific knowledge. (Piaget, 1997; Cucos, 2001).

Unified scientific knowledge is a guarantee of correct interpretations of the various processes, phenomena, laws etc. achieved in the process of teaching-learning interconnected topics/concepts. The academic content presented by these subjects does not allow students to form a unified vision on the concepts, thus distorting the student’s integrate development.

For example, green energy is one of the concepts which can be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective. The term green energy is used for the energy provided by the environmentally friendly sources. They are also non-polluting because they have lower carbon emissions. We can include here the solar energy, the wind energy, the hydro and geothermal energy (Garabet, 2009).

At present, the electricity generated by renewable sources is becoming increasingly available, thus reducing the environmental impact while increasing the energy independence.

The Sun is undoubtedly a vast source of energy. In one year, it sends to Earth 20,000 times the energy the entire population of the world needs. In just three days, the Earth receives from the Sun an amount of energy equivalent to the one existing in fossil fuel reserves. Solar energy is the source of all energy used by mankind. Heliothermic potential equals over 12 million billion tons of conventional fuel per second. Of this 80% is consumed by water evaporation, 16% by photosynthesis, and the remaining 4% would ensure the replacement of all fuel consumption for the population of the Earth (http://www.terrasgreen.com).

Biology and chemistry, but especially physics focus on the understanding of nature. These subjects addressed strictly in terms of specialized scientific knowledge do not offer students a unified view of things, being considered isolated. Achieving unity in the diversity of scientific knowledge, which will foster the understanding of the world, relates directly to the application of interdisciplinary connections.

References

Cucoş, C. (2001). Istoria pedagogiei. Idei şi doctrine pedagogice fundamentele. Editura Polirom, Iaşi.

DeLorenzo, A.R., Battino, J.W., Schreiber, M.R., Gaddy Cario, B.B., (2009). Delivering on the promise:The education revolution. (pp. 76). Solution Tree Press, USA.

Fullan M. (2008). The six secrets of change. Jossey-Bass, USA.

Garabet, M., Neacsu, I. (2009) Discovering green energy @ portal.moisil.ro, Proceedings of the 4^th International Conference On Virtual Learning, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, Bucureşti, 401-407.

Piaget, J. (1997). Psihologie şi pedagogie. Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, Bucureşti.

TERRASGREEN, Available at: http://www.terrasgreen.com.