IDL Planning Map

Planning Map:

Interdisciplinary Learning (IDL) is a planned experience that brings disciplines together in one coherent programme or project. The different disciplines plan and execute as one. This planning map presents information and challenge questions to consider in devloping high quality IDL using the project based/enquiry based learning approach.

Click each stage on the planning journey for more information.

Ongoing Moderation

ROA

Meta Skills

E's & O's + Benchmarks

Project Focus inc. Curricular Area

Feedback

Learner Agency

Assessment

Skills Development

EnquiryQuestion

LI/SC

Project Structure

Evidence

Learner Agency

Where, traditionally, the practitioner holds the keys to the next step, in an IDL experience every learner can express what they’re learning today, and why. In their planning, practitioners need to empathise with learners’ motivations within the content, skill development or provocations they’re planning, and figure out where the plan may have to pivot.As the Scottish system also seeks to empower learners with co-designing their own learning pathway, there is a need to view ‘coverage’ from the perspective of the student, not the syllabus. The fixed learning objective for a group of 30 learners, which we’ve been used to for decades, is not compatible with the flexibility of ever more personalised learner pathways. And when learners have both the skillset and opportunity to exercise that personal choice, they thrive.

Challenge Questions:

• How will the learners be included in your IDL planning process?

• How do you capture learner voice & feedback that is inclusive and representative of all?

• How might you respond to learners suggesting multiple different pathways?

Source: Education Scotland Curriculum Design Toolkit

Project Focus inc. Curriculuar Area

Interdisciplinary Learning is a planned experience that brings disciplines together in one coherent programme or project. The different disciplines plan and execute as one. These disciplines might fall within one curricular area (e.g. languages, the sciences) or between several curricular areas. IDL enables children and young people to:

• learn new knowledge or skills, and develop new understanding of concepts
• draw on prior knowledge, understanding and skills
• transfer and apply that collective knowledge to new problems or other areas of learning.

Source: Education Scotland IDL Thought Paper

Challenge Questions:

• What curriculuar areas need to be included in your planning to ensure a robust IDL project for learners?

• How will you ensure there has been adequate cross-curricular prior learning to ensure the IDL project to move forward?

• How will you ensure learners are reaching outcomes using several disciplines?

Enquiry Question

In the enquiry-based approach, the role of the teacher is facilitator. The teacher may, (or may not), establish the subject of the enquiry, however the learners establish the lines of enquiry. Learner involvement in determining the direction of their work creates ownership and, it is hoped, will engage more with their contexts and help them make sense of the world. Establishing the question should be learner-led - this is the learners' IDL experience.

‘The Enquiring Minds cycle’ is a tool to support planning and carrying out any sort of enquiry based activity. There are 4 stages to the cycle: 1. Initiating and Eliciting (making visible students existing knowledge and exploring subjects of potential enquiry) 2. Defining and Responding (focusing an idea or question or subject and making plans to research it further) 3. Doing and Making (students research, design and construct in order to make a contribution to their chosen enquiry) 4. Communicating, Presenting and Evaluating (new knowledge shared with others in any manner of ways – PowerPoint, video, website, report etc.)

Challenge Questions:

• How will you engage learners in the process to establish the lines of enquiry for the IDL project?

• What prior lessons will need to be built into your IDL planning to ensure learners are engaged with developing their lines of enquiry?

Source: The Enquiring Minds Cycle

E's & O's + Benchmarks

Experiences and Outcomes provide guidelines on what pupils should be learning from the curriculum, which allows educators to plan their teaching, while benchmarks give clarity on the levels of understanding of a subject that pupils' progress can be measured against.

One example of how to approach bundling for IDL.

Challenge Questions:

• How do you bundle E&Os to ensure they link naturally to each other and the enquiry focus?

• How do you use the benchmark statements when planning links to enquiry focus, learning, teaching and assessment?

Source: Grangemouth HS IDL

Project Structure

In ensuring a well-managed IDL project, it's important to have a clear strucutre. The use of project milestones is one way this can be achieved. Milestones should be pre-established, consist of a clear and attainable task(s), include definitive dates, contain both collaborative and individual components, incorporate a formative assessment framework, and help move each learner or group’s project forward.

Pre-Established: Determine milestones before the unit starts. Milestones can be learner developed before the inquiry phase. Definitive Dates: Learner-led inquiry takes time and could go wrong without regular check-ins and definitive dates for completing tasks. Framed Formative Assessment: Conducting formative assessment in conjunction with these milestones will inform strategies for moving forward and revisions needed for the unit. Moving Forward: Learners need to see points of progress to stay positive about sustained tasks. Collaborative & Individual: Effective IDL contains collaborative elements which support the learning process and development of transferable skills, including metacognition, self-management, critical thinking, and communication

Challenge Questions:

• How will you ensure the project focus and milestones are co-created with learners?

• What will be the key points of progress throughout the IDL project? How will these be communicated and made clear to learners?

Source: 'Project Based Learning: An Interdisciplinary Approach'

Responsibility of All (ROA)

Responsibility of All refers to the experiences and outcomes in the three key curricular areas of literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing across learning. It is the responsibility of every teacher to contribute to learning and development in these areas.

Challenge Questions:

• Do your ROA link naturally to E&Os and the enquiry focus?

• How do you plan gather evidence of ROAs covered?

Source: Education Scotland

Meta Skills

IDL works best of all when planning is collaborative, and that can include planning alongside learners themselves. That co-design demands greater clarity around the thinking skills we want to see learners use. Those thinking skills are best taught, rather than caught. Learners need to keep developing new thinking skills to process information, solve problems and make decisions. Thinking skills are learnable and teachable.Meta-skills are defined as timeless, higher-order skills that create adaptive learners and promote success in whatever context the future brings.

Challenge Questions:

• How will you build Meta Skills into your IDL and which ones are relevant to your project focus?

• How and when will you bring the meta skills into focus for the learners during the IDL project?

• How will progress in meta-skills be recorded and evaluated?

Source: SDS Meta Skills Toolkit

Skills Development

All children and young people need to be flexible and adaptable, with the capacity to continue developing the new skills which they will need for the rapidly changing challenges of life, learning and work in the modern world. These skills are often cross-cutting and transferable across the whole range of curriculum areas, contexts and settings. They are skills that can be developed by all learners, whenever and wherever they are learning.

Challenge Questions:

• What key skills and personal skills will be included in your IDL project and when will these be communicated with learners?

• What employability skills will be built into the IDL project? WIll these be supported by outside agencies/partners?

Source: Education Scotland - Skills in a Nutshell

Learning Intentions/Success Criteria

The Scottish system seeks to empower learners by co-designing their learner pathway. When planning IDL there is a need to view learning intentions from the perspective of the learner, creating more personalised learner pathways. In an IDL experience, every learner can express what they are learning today and why. This makes planning less linear and more similar to scenario planning: “If the learners do this, then we’ll probably head in this direction”. This means that success criteria will need to be consistently co-created with the learners throughout and IDL teachers will need to ‘plan to pivot’.

Challenge Questions:

• Are your learners involved in the process of creating IDL learning intentions and success criteria?

• Do the IDL learning intentions make direct connections to real-life situations?

Evidence

Interdisciplinary evidence of learning is heavily anchored in the portfolio model: a purposeful collection of learners’ work that exhibits the efforts, learning and progress according to the success criteria, and through out the learning experience.

One example of evidenced learning is to gather the thinking processes using a floor book format. This helps to develop a shared understanding of what learning looks like in each area and records learner progress in a variety of different ways.

Challenge Questions:

• Is the collected evidence of learning appropriately balanced to reflect progress in all the involved curricular areas?

• Are you eliciting evidence that requires students to think about the learning story they want to tell?

Source: Falkirk IDL Blog

Assessment

When planning to assess an IDL experience one should ensure coverage of all four types of knowledge:

• Disciplinary knowledge: Subject specific concepts and contents.
• Interdisciplinary knowledge: Relating the concepts and contents of one discipline to other disciplines and subjects.
• Epistemic Knowledge: The understanding of how experts in certain disciplines work and think.
• Procedural Knowledge: The understanding of how something is done, the steps/actions to be taken to accomplish a goal.

Challenge Questions:

• Does your IDL assessment plan reflect the breadth of knowledge and skills your learners will make progress in?

• Does your IDL assessment plan evidence your learners journey from acquiring new knowledge, skills and competencies through to applying that knowledge, skills and competencies in real-world contexts?

Source: Falkirk IDL Blog

Feedback

Throughout the IDL experience, feedback should not only be specific to the learning intentions and success criteria, but also keep learner agency at the heart of all feedback activities. Making sure feedback is actionable and clear allows the learners to have ownership and control over how they use their feedback.

Challenge Questions:

• Does your planned feedback encourage learners to explicitly review their skills progression, not just their knowledge acquisition?

• Does your planned feedback activities allow learners to immediately ‘do’ something with their feedback when they receive it?

Ongoing Moderation

Moderation develops a shared understanding of standards and expectations between the different curricular specialists delivering the IDL. Moderation is ongoing before, during and after planning of learning, teaching and assessment.

Challenge Questions:

• How do you involve learners in the evaluation of the IDL?

• How could you ensure a shared understanding of standards and expectations amongst those delivering the IDL?

Source: Education Scotland - Learning, Teaching and Assessment Cycle