Taking Stock of the Scientific Literature on Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Abstract

Interdisciplinary teaching and learning (ITL) are prevailing trends among K-12 educational practitioners and policymakers. However, with the exclusion of STEM and CLIL, the empirical scholarship on ITL in K-12 settings has never been systematically reviewed. In this paper, we review the empirical literature on K-12 ITL within the humanities, social sciences, and arts, asking how ITL is understood and implemented in peer-reviewed research articles. We examine how existing scholarship on ITL diverges in its definition of interdisciplinarity; processes for designing and implementing ITL; and scholarly objectives that the study of ITL is meant to accomplish.