Knowledge in the classroom: teaching organization in an interdisciplinary perspective

Abstract

This paper is a bibliographic research about interdisciplinarity and
its organization in the curriculum. The concept of interdisciplinarity
is discussed and a few epistemologic-methodological approaches are
proposed to introduce the interdisciplinary practice in the school routine.
As a conclusion, it is emphasized that interdisciplinarity should be taken
as an instrument that may allow school to be an environment where critical
and collective knowledge may be produced. To such end, curriculum should
be redesigned and continuing teacher education practiced. It is needed, on
one hand, to plan and operate knowledge vertically through the curriculum
matrix, relating the idea of increasing complexity and deepening (vertical
dimension), and in the other hand to relate the knowledge of one discipline
to another (horizontal dimension). The idea of interdisciplinarity should
delicately bring together the vertical and horizontal dimensions through
curriculum and teacher practice, to allow the emergence of new knowledge
with relational and contextual meaning.