A bibliographic review on teachers’ impressions about interdisciplinarity in Science teaching

Abstract

A large number of studies on interdisciplinarity indicates that the practice of this type of approach is not being carried out in the classroom. Thus, a literature review was carried out to analyze scientific works that focused on the impressions of teachers, Elementary School (Final Years) and High School about the interdisciplinarity in Science Teaching, both in an epistemological perspective of the term and in teaching experiences around interdisciplinary practices. To do this, an analysis was made in online journals of the Teaching Area in Brazil, from the years 2012 to 2016, having as criteria adopted for the research, the search for the word ‘interdisciplinarity’ as a keyword of the articles, but that the approach in Science teaching was explicit in the abstracts. The results showed that although a single successful experience of interdisciplinary practice appears among the articles selected, most of them point out the difficulties, although the teachers recognize the importance of such an approach. Among the factors that hinder interdisciplinarity are: lack of epistemological knowledge about interdisciplinarity, fragmented initial training, fragmented curriculum, excessive content, lack of time for collective planning, lack of knowledge of curricular planning in other disciplines, external evaluations, resistance of students, consonance between content and grade. Given the context, we can see the reasons that lead to the inefficiency of interdisciplinary practices while at the same time understanding the urgency to expand discussions in search for the overcome of challenges for an interdisciplinary know-how.