Opportunities and hindrances for promoting interdisciplinary learning in schools

ABSTRACT

Background

Influential philosophers have suggested that interdisciplinarity is crucial for ecosystem management and scientific practice, and for education to democracy. However, a historical review of the rise of disciplines points at their compartmentalization in schools. An analysis of core construct categories of three disciplines, shows that this compartmentalization may decrease when dialogic argumentation is enacted. This background led us to launch an interdisciplinary program in schools. In previous publications, we identified multiple constraints in its implementation and listed design principles for affording interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation.

Method

We adopt a narrative approach to analyze classroom talk, and ask whether and how interdisciplinary processes emerge in this talk.

Findings

Students maintain dialogic argumentation around Interdisciplinary Social Dilemmas, but guidance is necessary for integrating knowledge from different disciplines. When the teacher is attentive to student’s unarticulated references to disciplinary ideas, she may subtly guide the emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. Often, the teacher misses those opportunities and declaims the integration of knowledge in a non-dialogic talk.

Contribution

Dialogic Education is crucial for the success of interdisciplinary programs in schools, but the actual emergence of interdisciplinary processes depends on the handling of organizational and institutional constraints, on huge design efforts, and on subtle guidance.

This paper is about interdisciplinary learning in schools. For many years, philosophers and educators have claimed that interdisciplinarity should be practiced in educational institutions. Accordingly, interdisciplinary programs have flourished in schools and in higher education. However, research on the nature of the learning and teaching processes involved in the implementation of the programs has been meager so far: The issue whether these processes are actually interdisciplinary has hardly been researched. We claim that this apparent oversight hides huge obstacles. A succinct historical review of the rise of disciplines will point at their traditional compartmentalization in schools. We will show that the rise of new pedagogies may diminish this compartmentalization. Indeed, the analysis of core construct categories (Goldman et al., 2016) that we undertook on three taught disciplines (mathematics, science and philosophy), shows that disciplines are compartmentalized, but that this compartmentalization may be lessened when some learning goals that are common in all disciplines are attained, especially when dialogic argumentation is enacted. In the present paper, we describe a program in which students participated in preparatory disciplinary activities in mathematics, science and philosophy, and then participated in interdisciplinary sessions. We mention institutional, organizational and disciplinary constraints in its implementation, on which we reported in previous publications. We also describe design principles that guided the elaboration of the program. We designed the disciplinary sessions to attain the learning goals prescribed by Goldman and colleagues. Attaining Goldman et al.“s learning goals was not sufficient for designing the interdisciplinary sessions, which also involved other principles. Our aim in the empirical part of this paper is to show that after constraints are lifted and design principles applied, the actual deployment of interdisciplinary processes in classrooms in not ensured. We ask whether and when interdisciplinary processes occur. We will see that their emergence necessitates guidance, and that this guidance should be highly subtle to preserve students” agency in the integration of knowledge from different disciplines.

Necessities and difficulties in interdisciplinary learning

The term interdisciplinarity has not been used until the beginning of twentieth century (Klein, 1990). It is only as new fields of expertise emerged—fields that were based on several domains that were considered as independent till then, that interdisciplinary became a common adjective, and interdisciplinarity, a necessity. However, several thinkers have provided more profound roots to its necessity. Among them, the anthropologist and philosopher Bateson, is prominent. G. Bateson’s (1980) radical view of epistemology opposes the image of modern science that, given enough information and computational power, could predict with certainty, which would in turn make it possible to control natural systems. For him, the growing recognition of irreducible uncertainty, leads to a new social context for science. Bateson recognized the need for adaptive approaches to ecosystem management—a holistic approach to manage the natural resources and ecological processes that serve our social, economic and cultural values, and for scientific practice that can inform decision-making under uncertainty. He offered principles for this new science “that every schoolboy should know” (the title of a chapter in his Ecology of Mind, 1980) and suggests that a major fallacy of the scientific community is that it assumes that it is possible to have total control over an interactive system of which oneself is a part (Bateson, 1978). He saw false presumptions of an ability to “control” and “manage” ecosystems. Adaptive approaches to valuation and decision-making make it essential that values and constraints, knowledge and beliefs, are internally constructed (rather than absolute), as a result of communication among stakeholders. His position is also ethical as he pledges for a position of humility and acceptance of the natural cybernetic system instead of scientific arrogance as a solution. He believed that humility can come about by abandoning the view of operating through consciousness alone (G. Bateson, 1980).

Inherent in the process of learning is the need to refer to multiple perspectives. In his rule that two descriptions are better than one, Bateson emphasized the value of multiple perspectives as a source of insight of a higher logical type, offering the metaphor of binocular vision, in which the perceived differences give a perception of depth. For Bateson, double vision was not a possible way of knowing but an ecological necessity for the survival of creatures, especially in the modern world. Bateson did not expound his opinion about disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning, but his revolutionary view of epistemology inspires an educational effort to provide students opportunities for learning adaptive approaches to ecosystem management—to interdisciplinarity.

The importance of the integration of multiple theoretical perspectives to be used in practice is omnipresent in Dewey’s thought, especially for educating for Democracy (Dewey, Democracy and Education, 1916). Democratic life consists not only in civic and economic conduct, but in habits of problem solving, compassionate imagination, creative expression, and civic self-governance. Study and learning are treated not as acquisition of what others know but as development of capital to be invested in eager alertness in observing and judging the conditions under which one lives. Democracy is the idea of community life itself (p. 328). The success or failure of democracy rests on education. Education is most determinative of whether citizens develop the habits needed to investigate problematic beliefs and situations, to communicate them. Dewey’s educational thinking was the idea that project-based enquiry could interest and motivate learners to engage with the knowledge needed to embark and sustain a process of continually interacting and reconstructing experiences toward unity between experience and knowledge (1916). His considerations of educational value did not contain a hierarchy of specialized subject ends. He saw merit in merging humanistic with naturalistic studies rather than following dualist tradition, where learning materials and contexts were often isolated from learners’ previous experiences in and beyond school. Being disciplinary “stifles every question, subdued every doubt and removed the subject from the realm of rational discussion … [and then when the learner loses interest and] … the fault lay with him, not with the study or methods of teaching.” Therefore, the “remedy for the evils attending the doctrine of formal discipline … is not to be found by substituting a doctrine of specialized disciplines but by reforming the notion of mind and its training” (Dewey, 1916, p. 139). What is required are outcomes (ends) where learners “recognize they have something at stake, and which cannot be carried through without reflection and use of judgement to select material of observation and recollection” (Dewey, 1916, p. 139). On this basis, learners will have an interest in areas which are consistent with their desires.

As thinkers of a modern world, Bateson and Dewey point at the necessity to educate to interdisciplinarity. For Bateson, ecosystem management is crucial; For Dewey, it is democratic life, in which citizens are motivated to inquire and solve together problems relevant to their life. In this paper, we will see that this necessity meets an educational world which is not ready to adopt it. However, our main goal is to show that in spite of the innumerable obstacles to be surmounted, new pedagogies can help in the emergence of interdisciplinary processes in schools. To begin with the obstacles, we first sketch a short historical review on the rise of disciplines to show the origins of their compartmentalization, and to suggest the “deconstruction of disciplines” – the removal of constraints that impede interdisciplinary processes to occur.

An historical sketch of the rise of disciplines and of their (de-)compartmentalization

Interdisciplinarity has historical antecedents, beginning with Greek philosophy. Aristotle seems the most prominent model of interdisciplinarity: He is generally described as a polymath (Greek: πολυμαθής, “having learned much;” Latin: homo universalis, “universal man”), meaning that his knowledge spanned numerous fields of expertise. Aristotle constructed his view of the Universe based on an intuitive feeling of holistic harmony. Harmony and universality are ubiquitous in Aristotle’s thought, and knowing the world and its harmony is a virtue (Ahmed, 2018). When Pythagoras observed that there were the same number of heavenly bodies as there were notes in the musical scale, he ascribed to the heavenly bodies orbits with musical proportions, which he described as the Music of the Spheres. The Pythagorean philosopher uncovers then the secrets in the world: the celestial bodies function in harmony. The discovery of this harmony is not only an intellectual adventure, but also an ethical one (James, 1995).

The advent of medieval philosophy relies on the integration of multiple sources of knowledge (Copleston, 1950). Christian ecclesiastics studied Greek philosophy in an effort to integrate it into religion. For them, knowing the world in its intricacies, and different domains, discovering its principles, and its unity, was an act of faith.

The broad-minded intellectual leaders of the Renaissance integrated all sources of knowledge to understand the world. Great figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus or Pico de la Mirandela were polymaths, and were called humanists. Leibniz’s effort to create a system of universal justice, which required linguistics, economics, management, ethics, law philosophy, politics, and even sinology, is an example of humanistic enterprise.

During the Scientific Revolution that occurred at the end of the Renaissance, specific methods and instruments in different branches of knowledge were elaborated, and the non-reference to other branches of knowledge, when judged unnecessary, became a custom. Chemistry is an example of domain in which advancements occurred when extraneous elements were abandoned: Boyle (1627–1691) refined the modern scientific method and separated chemistry further from alchemy (MacIntosh & Anstey, 2022). Yet, at the end of the Renaissance, the term “discipline” was still not used to designate the specificity of methods, techniques, or devices. This specificity was driven by a need to progress—the need to capitalize on previous results to infer new knowledge. Progress was accompanied by a process of secularization, of any linkage to theology, philosophy and occult sciences.

The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge. It advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, fraternity, or constitutional government. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and by compartmentalization in various realms: the separation of the State from the Church, the distinction between methodologies, or the way ideas got represented and disseminated. Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie was aimed at recording all human knowledge in a comprehensive reference work, accessible for the non-elite (Brewer, 2011). The massive work was arranged according to a “tree of knowledge” (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The tree of knowledge in the Encyclopédie.

The tree reflected the marked division between the arts and sciences, which was largely a result of the rise of empiricism. Both areas of knowledge were united by philosophy, or the trunk of the tree of knowledge. In contrast, theology accounted for a peripheral branch, with black magic as a close neighbor. This representation conveyed the fact that at the end of the age of Enlightenment, and especially during the French Revolution, the mapping of all kinds of knowledge served as a Carta Magna of conquered lands. Humankind was believed to dominate Nature through the power of reason, which use was believed to insure progress (Condorcet & Barraclough, 1795/1955).

Although most branches of knowledge were already delineated through their methods, devices and ideas at the age of Enlightenment, it is only in the mid-to-late-nineteenth century that the term “discipline” emerged in higher education (Ben-David, 1971), especially in German universities (Ringer, 1967). It is commonly defined by the university faculties and learned societies to which they belong and the academic journals in which they publish research (Turner, 2006). It points at a coercive system imposed upon the individual learner. Courses aimed at assimilation of knowledge already established. Teaching was monologic and promised mastery of parts of a discipline (Burbules & Bruce, 2001).

The successes of the age of Enlightenment are undeniable: human rights, free education for all, are some of the outcomes of a society in which reason was put to a pinnacle. However, the atrocities of the 20^th century tarnished the humanistic program, that saw in reason the gist for progress toward a better society, and neglected an ethical perspective.

The post-modernist movement criticized Humanism, and Foucault (1966) famously declared the “death of man:” Humanism put the (white) Man (with Western values) at the center of the universe, thus conveyed dominance and power. In his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault (1975) argued that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of humanitarian concerns. He saw in educational institutions prisons in which disciplines were taught: “The disciplines characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale, around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate” (1975, p. 223).

This radical position is not shared by all post-modernists. Derrida (1982) stresses the relativity of knowledge and deconstructs opinions treated as absolute truths, but this deconstruction is a starting point for a reconstruction. Burbules and Rice (1991) identify in dialogue the means for this reconstruction. This version of post-modernism was adopted in the educational realm through pedagogies labeled as dialogic (Freire, 1970; Wegerif, 2007). Dialogic pedagogies refer to the theory of dialogism articulated by Bakhtin et al. (1981), to suggest that individuals’ beliefs and understanding develop through the identification and internalization of the different voices of others in dialogs. Many variants of these pedagogies have been enacted in schools in the last two decades. Schwarz & Baker (2016) call these dialogic pedagogies progressive to echo Dewey’s idea of progressive education to prepare students to a changing world.

We suggest a new direction in the enactment of progressive pedagogies, which point at a decompartmentalization of disciplines. Recent decades have seen an affluence of interdisciplinary programs, especially at the post-secondary level (Kidron & Kali, 2015; Lattuca et al., 2004; Spelt et al., 2009). They span different foci of disciplines, such as STEM (Tytler et al., 2019), Engineering (Van den Beemt et al., 2020), or Humanistic studies (Ivanitskaya et al., 2002). The aim of the instigators of such programs—preparing the student to a changing and hopefully better society, positions interdisciplinarity in an ethical realm, as an ethical remedy to the inability to solve problems in the world.

Although the above-mentioned studies and other studies have initiated important research directions, especially in instructional design (Boix Mansilla & Duraising, 2007; Kidron & Kali, 2015, 2024), the study how multiple perspectives originating from different disciplines are handled in learning processes, has rarely been conducted. Nikitina (2005) elaborated a three-component perspective on disciplines: disciplines as cultures, epistemologies and languages. As cultures, disciplines refer to academic or department affiliations or to collaborations of people within the institutional structures. As epistemologies, disciplines refer to shared methodological tools and ways of knowing. Interdisciplinary exchange is viewed as an interaction between methodologies. Belief systems fuel knowing processes through epistemic practices. Thus, interdisciplinarity involves boundary crossing among domain-specific cognitions. As languages, disciplines refer to communication that uses a similar language or symbol system. Interdisciplinary exchange is viewed as an interaction of voices in a discourse in which utterances involve semiotic systems and symbols and reflect worldviews and ideologies. The terms dialogue and metalanguage are used or alluded to by teachers and students. Nikitina interviewed then teachers and students that participated in interdisciplinary programs (in elite universities such as Harvard University), and proposed a three steps general process of interdisciplinary cognition – overcoming monodisciplinarity, provisional integration, and revising integration. She did not provide direct evidence of these processes, though. Rather, the cultures, epistemologies, and languages that Nikitina identified as characterizing each discipline, suggest that the occurring of interdisciplinary cognition is a tour de force that elite students only may undertake.

The history of interdisciplinarity, that we sketched here is then a history of gradual compartmentalization of disciplines, and of a growing need to implement interdisciplinary programs. However, virtually nothing is known about whether and when interdisciplinary processes emerge in those programs. In the next section, we will go deep into three disciplines to conjecture opportunities for this emergence in the context of the present study—in schools. The conjectures stand at the basis of the elaboration of a program (described in section 4), in which we describe whether these opportunities were capitalized on (described in section 5).

Delving into the distinctive nature of three taught disciplines and into opportunities for interdisciplinarity

In this section, we undertake an analysis of three disciplines in order to evaluate the challenges to be overcome for implementing interdisciplinary interventions that involve these disciplines. Goldman et al. (2016) elaborated the Disciplinary Literacy framework for designing learning goals and for providing discipline-specific tasks for a reform in instruction in three disciplines (literature, science and history). We endorsed the framework since, as will be claimed later on, it lessens the compartmentalization between disciplines. We were aware, however, that the framework pointed at the intentions of designers, not at implementation. The framework includes core construct categories: (1) epistemologies, (2) inquiry practices and reasoning strategies, (3) overarching concepts and principles for warranting or connecting claims and evidence, (4) types of texts and media in which information is represented and expressed, and (5) discourse and language structures (Goldman et al., 2016). These categories overlap the categories identified by Nikitina (2005): epistemologies and language structures are present; the other categories (inquiry practices, overarching principles and types of texts) put in detail what the instructors interviewed by Nikitina identified as the culture in their courses. When Goldman and colleagues developed the Disciplinary Literacy Framework, they identified learning goals for providing discipline-specific tasks for a reform in instruction in three disciplines (literature, science and history). As will be explained later on, the descriptions in the five categories showed differences as well similarities in the three disciplines. We will claim that when the reform goes toward the adoption of a dialogic pedagogy in the disciplines, the five categories provide a roadmap not only for a reform for the teaching of the disciplines but for promoting interdisciplinarity.

In the following, we rely on the framework to succinctly describe three disciplines, mathematics, science and philosophy. We will see that the description of the five categories of the framework provides a roadmap for interdisciplinary programs based on the enactment of progressive pedagogies in mathematics, science and philosophy. In order to stress the importance of progressive pedagogies for implementing interdisciplinary programs, we will review a research literature which refers to the disciplines as they are taught in classrooms in which progressive pedagogies are enacted, instead of referring to learning goals for a reform. The choice of philosophy as one of the disciplines was based on our conjecture that since critical discussions model philosophical inquiry, the insertion of philosophy as one of the disciplines may provide solutions rather than challenges to the implementation of interdisciplinary programs. The choice of mathematics and science as the two other disciplines relied on the fact that philosophy, mathematics and science differ substantively according to the categories of the framework, thus provide a suitable choice to stress challenges in implementing interdisciplinary programs in schools.

Epistemologies

Mathematics

Mathematics in classrooms in which progressive pedagogies are enacted aim to convey a message on the developmental nature of mathematics (Cuoco et al., 1996) and on the central value of problem-solving activities (Schoenfeld, 1985, 1992). In addition, proponents of progressive pedagogies in mathematics are often sensitive to the cultural aspect of epistemological beliefs (Felbrich et al., 2012). They adopt an inquiry approach (Laursen & Rasmussen, 2019), compare multiple representations of phenomena, toward abstraction and vertical mathematization – the process of level-raising by organizing, symbolizing and model building by starting from a paradigmatic situation in which children can orient themselves (Freudenthal, 1991; Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Drijvers, 2014). They also feature ways of knowing aligned with those of mathematicians (Cuoco et al., 1996), including developing aesthetic sensitivity and appreciation of proofs that explain (Hanna, 2000). The idea of community of inquiry is now popular in mathematics education (Jaworski, 2020).

This description is very different from the way mathematics is traditionally taught as a collection of terms, rules and formulae that need to be memorized (Thompson, 1985), and that exists in a finalized form. Knowing is closely related to deductive proofs (Harel & Sowder, 2007; Weber, 2004), which play the role of technical tools for verifying the correctness of statements proposed by the teacher (instead of proofs that explain), which are already known to be correct.

While researchers in mathematics education agree about the necessity to adopt progressive pedagogies (i.e., by favoring problem-solving activities, processes of mathematization, etc.), the implementation of these pedagogies is very challenging (Burkhardt & Schoenfeld, 2021; Ernest, 2020; Lester & Cai, 2016), partly because activities need to be student-centered to be effective and thus guidance of these activities is not easy.

Science

Scientific knowledge is tentative, constructed by continuous iterative exploratory efforts to explain phenomena that occur in the natural world through models and theories that are approximations that have limitations (Goldman et al., 2016). It is also socially constructed¹ (Latour & Woolgar, 1986). The continuous use of discursive practices, such as assessing alternatives, weighing evidence, interpreting texts and evaluating the potential viability of scientific claims, allows scientific knowledge construction (Driver et al., 2000). Progress in scientific knowledge is made through dispute and paradigm change (in contrast, for example, with mathematics in which paradigm changes and disputes are far less frequent). Scientific work includes argument in the public domain through journals, conferences (Driver et al., 2000), and peer critique (Ochs & Jacoby, 1997).

Progressive classrooms are often supported by research and development projects aimed to develop students’ epistemological thinking (Barzilai & Chinn, 2018). In such progressive classrooms, the epistemology of science is explicitly practiced. Pluta et al. (2011) showed that an emphasis on epistemic criteria promotes students’ epistemic cognition (see also Sandoval, 2003). Serious unresolved issues were recently raised around students’ epistemic agency while learning in such projects (e.g., Miller et al., 2018). Building on theoretical foundations developed in the nineties on communities of practice and situated learning (Brown et al., 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991), practices of inquiry learning and “learning communities” were implemented for students’ inquiry learning in classrooms (Kali, 2021). In such classrooms, teachers become members of the classroom knowledge community, and participate as knowledgeable mentors, in the model “Knowledge Community and Inquiry” (KCI, Acosta & Slotta, 2018).

Philosophy

Following the idea of the polymath, it could be said that philosophy once encompassed all disciplines, and that its conceptual contribution to the sciences is still profound. Philosophy maintains an interdisciplinary stance, in the sense that the core concern of the philosopher is with thinking itself, undisciplined by social and normative forms of knowledge. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty points to the interdisciplinary critical stance this implied in Enlightenment philosophy, which saw itself “as the attempt to underwrite or debunk claims to knowledge made by science, morality, art, or religion” ([1985] 2009). Rorty shows how, although the holistic perception was abandoned, philosophy nonetheless introduced “new maps of the terrain (viz., of the whole panorama of human activities)” (p. 4–7). Philosophy is therefore not only interdisciplinary in the critical sense, but also in the creative sense, offering new vantage points for learning.

In progressive classrooms, students “philosophize together,” and the concept of dialogue is an essential component of learning. While philosophizing, students are invited to consider different dimensions, including other disciplinary forms of language. The fundamental metaphysical, epistemic, and moral doubt at the heart of philosophy is shared by teacher and students, to become a community of inquiry (Lipman, 2003).

In summary, the comparison between epistemologies in mathematics, science and philosophy as taught disciplines according to progressive pedagogies shows differences as well as similarities. As for differences, tentativeness, fallibilism or ambiguity mostly remain central in the domain of philosophy, and are important in the domain of science, but are marginal in mathematics. The knowing consists of intuitive conjecturing supported by logical inferences and proving in mathematics, iterative exploratory efforts to explain phenomena through constructed models and theories and the use of discursive practices in science and empirical inquiry in philosophy. Philosophy also demarcates itself by its ethical character. As for similarities, fostering epistemic beliefs/practices is central in all disciplines. Also, the idea of community of inquiry is endorsed in mathematics, in science (the term often used is Knowledge Community and Inquiry, KCI) and in philosophy.

Inquiry practices and reasoning strategies

Mathematics

For Mathematicians, the inquiry includes the establishment of a conjecture or a proof through induction, deduction and abduction (Meyer, 2010), and its institutionalization through validation—deduction (Harel & Sowder, 1998, 2007). In progressive classrooms, claims are discovered after students experiment, conjecture, explore, justify and connect (Boaler, 2002; Cuoco et al., 1996, Hanna, 2000; NCTM, 2000). Their reasoning strategies are frequently enacted in argumentative practices through which the epistemic status of claims is at stake—whether certainty of the correctness of claims is attained or not (Schwarz et al., 2010; Rittle-Johnson & Star, 2011).

Science

Scientific inquiry practices build scientific knowledge by developing coherent, logical explanations, models or arguments from evidence. It also entails consideration of multiple forms of representations and models, evaluating which forms may best support explication of novel phenomena (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002; Goldman et al., 2016). Applying such complex scientific inquiry practices is almost impossible in schools, which lack the equipment, knowledge of the techniques and the expertise.

In progressive classrooms, argumentation has taken a central part, especially the construction of scientific arguments. Other efforts for promoting authentic scientific inquiry practices and reasoning strategies in the science involve making use of new learning technologies (Lee et al., 2010, Sandoval & Morrison, 2003; Wagh et al., 2017). The question is how these technologies-enhanced inquiry-learning environment support students understanding of scientific inquiry and the nature of science (Sandoval & Morrison, 2003).

Philosophy

One can point to two overarching features of philosophical work: individual authorship and dialogical stance. Individual authorship emphasizes on authentic thought and individual voice (e.g., Rorty’s analysis of the personal changes reflected in the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey). At the same time, philosophers seem to be engaged in constant dialogue with each other, and with the thinkers of the past. From its Hellenic origin, dialogue has been a central concept in western philosophy. Peters and Besley (2021) trace nine such models:

… dialogue as argument, dialogue as an existential encounter with the Other, dialogue as communion, dialogue as hermeneutics (interpretation), dialogue communication action, as the rational means for redeeming validity claims inherent in ordinary discourse, dialogue as a pedagogical means for cultural action, dialogue as the dialogical imagination and dialogue as conversation and the seat of liberal learning. (p. 669)

Progressive pedagogies emphasize the dialogical stance of philosophy, to degree that representations of individual authorship are abandoned, both in the text used and in the method of inquiry. For example, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is a movement that aims to teach reasoning and argumentative skills to children through the asking of philosophical questions. It borrows many of Dewey’s philosophical and pedagogical ideas. Hardman and Delafield (2010) explain that P4C invites the deployment of Magistral, Socratic and Menippean (playful) dialogs, and that a balance between them is crucial for developing critical reasoning. The introduction of societal controversies in schools has brought forward the critical discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2003), a social-rational kind of argumentation which handles confrontations (Slakmon & Schwarz, 2018).

To summarize, inquiry practices and reasoning strategies are distinct in each discipline, but classes that adopt progressive pedagogies are contextualized in various types of argumentation. Their implementation in mathematics and science classes is challenging, though.

Overarching concepts, principles, themes and frameworks

Mathematics

The core ideas and principles that serve as a basis for warranting or connecting claims in mathematics are tree-like structure rooted in axioms and basic (undefined) concepts (Harel & Sowder, 2007). Progressive mathematics classrooms value vertical mathematization, by which students undertake a reorganization within the mathematical system resulting in insights based on connections between concepts and strategies. A complementary process is horizontal mathematization, by which the students make connections between mathematics and the physical world (Freudenthal, 1991; Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Drijvers, 2014). The fostering of these processes confers to progressive pedagogies the role of making explicit connections (between concepts and strategies, and between mathematical ideas and the physical world).

Science

The use of overarching concepts, principles, themes and frameworks are an integral part of the scientists’ routine thinking and doing. Evidence is warranted and connected to claims through principles emanating from frameworks, key concepts, and themes that reflect unifying or general concepts and themes in science, sometimes called enduring understandings (Goldman et al., 2016)

In progressive classrooms, the science education standards in the US identified cross-cutting concepts, as well as disciplinary core ideas and scientific practices (National Research Council [NRC], 2012). However, Osborne et al. (2018) argue that the suggested crosscutting concepts have no scholarly basis for what the sciences have in common, and suggested a new rationale for the science curriculum that is more coherent and more useful than the crosscutting concepts. They also suggested that scientific reasoning is dependent on three forms of knowledge (content, procedural and epistemic). Enduring ideas are essential in understanding the scientific discipline, explaining phenomena and at making connections to the personal and social lives of the learners.

Philosophy

In philosophical discussions, the overarching ideas and principles are based on distinctions between knowledge and beliefs about the physical world (the realm of science) and about moral issues and metaphysical things such as God, Heaven and Hell, and souls. More generally, an overall issue is the differentiation between convictions, beliefs and knowledge.

In progressive pedagogy, philosophy is presented as an activity which can and should impact and emerge from students’ immediate life experiences. For example, Kizel (2016) argues that P4C can promote student activism, leading to further reflection on the issue. Nishiyama (2019) draws on insights from fieldwork on a P4C program, examining dialogic and political aspects of interactions in philosophy lessons.

In summary, the overarching concepts, and themes are different in each discipline. However, progressive pedagogies provide coherence to all disciplines: They connect the discipline to the physical world (in all disciplines), and to moral issues (in philosophy), connect concepts and strategies (in mathematics), capitalize on enduring ideas to explain phenomena and make connections to the personal and social lives of the learners (in science), and connect insights and political activity (in philosophy).

Types of texts and media in which information is represented and expressed

In the three disciplines Goldman et al. (2016) focused on, texts were envisioned as designed to trigger inquiry and dialogue. First steps are done in mathematics in this direction (Marco et al., 2021; Österholm & Bergqvist, 2013). In progressive science classes, adapted texts are used, and invite inquiry. Across disciplines, the media and representations used in progressive classes are varied and multimodal, a fact that invites talking and writing. This use is challenging in mathematics and in science, though. For example, in science, the efforts to use texts that are as close as possible to the text genre used by scientists for communicating scientific information is the use of Adapted primary literature (APL). APL refers to types of texts that model scientific writing, and whose language is changed to make it accessible for high school students (Yarden et al., 2015), while maintaining the authentic scientific genre including its tentativeness and argumentative nature (Ariely et al., 2019). The APL idea was introduced into the biology curriculum in Israel, but was removed a few years later, since policy makers are not always open for innovations. In strong contrast, in philosophy classes, talk around texts is ubiquitous toward the establishment of a Community of Philosophical Inquiry structure (CoPI) (Slakmon & Schwarz 2018; Yarden et al., 2015).

Discourse and language structures

Mathematics

Mathematics language leaves room for metaphors, rhetoric of persuasion as well as to formal logical predicates and articulation of symbols. There is a tension between the need of preciseness of mathematical language and the need for the language to be accessible in communication (see Sfard, 2008, for commognitive conflict). Mathematics discourse is multi-semiotic (O’Halloran, 1998). In progressive classes, instrumental and relational understanding are valued, by means of horizontal and vertical mathematization, thus provides more opportunities for students to express themselves, and enrich their mathematical language (Gravemeijer & Doorman, 1999). High-quality talk, for example Accountable Talk (accountability to knowledge, to reasoning, and to the other) is enacted to help students in such interactions (Hufferd-Ackles et al., 2004; O’Connor et al., 2015).

Science

Scientific language mixes everyday language with specific lexical forms and expressions toward the attainment of a high degree of certainty, generalizability, and precision of statements (Ariely et al., 2019; Goldman et al., 2016). The language in progressive science classrooms is a multi-semiotic form of communication (Lemke, 1990). Teachers teach in several languages, and literacy becomes constitutive of science itself (Norris & Phillips, 2003). The language in these classrooms is argumentative (e.g., Chin & Osborne, 2010) and dialogic (e.g., Scott et al., 2010). The acquisition of this argumentative and dialogic language in classrooms is very challenging, though. Orchestrating opportunities for students to engage in scientific talk is ambitious for teachers (Grinath & Southerland, 2019; Windschitl et al., 2011), but on the other hand it holds promise for supporting students in developing and acting with epistemic agency (González-Howard & McNeill, 2020).

Philosophy

While the syntax of the language in analytic philosophy complies with criteria of formal logic, the philosophy of dialogue is based on everyday language. The logic of the philosophy of dialogue, Dialogic Logic (Krabbe, 2006), which models the structure of dialogs, has rules that are independent of the logical forms of sentences. These rules fit to some extent discursive models of argumentation (like the pragma-dialectical model, van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2003). Since the onset of the Thinking Together Programme (Mercer et al., 1999; Mercer & Littleton, 2007), P4C incorporated its categories of talk, especially Exploratory Talk – a joint coordinated form of co-reasoning in language, with speakers sharing knowledge, challenging ideas, evaluating evidence and considering opinions in a reasoned and equitable way (Mercer & Littleton, 2007, p. 62). The characteristics of this talk are similar to those of Accountable Talk. Daniel (2007) as well as Hardman and Delafield (2010) relate to Alexander’s (2008) principles of dialogic teaching (collective reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful) to characterize talk in P4C classes.

In summary, although Mathematics and Science leave room for everyday language, and rhetoric of persuasion, formal logical predicates and articulation of symbols (in mathematics) and specific lexical forms and expressions (in science), dominate classroom talk. The philosophy of Dialogue provides structures for sustaining dialectic processes among people who are committed to rules of critical reasoning in philosophical discussions. Beyond those differences, progressive pedagogies favor the attainment of high-quality talk and other forms of literacy (reading, writing) in all disciplines which become constitutive of those disciplines. Talk is accountable to the community, to reasoning and to knowledge in all domains.

We can conclude that the analysis of the core construct categories in mathematics, science and philosophy showed notable differences, but also showed that progressive pedagogies seem to bring disciplines close to each other. Indeed, when juxtaposing the learning goals Goldman and colleagues identified Science and History toward a reform (see Figure 2), the picture is very similar at a general level.

Figure 2. Juxtaposition of two tables appearing in Goldman et al. (2016) showing learning goals in science and in history.

Based on our own analysis we just presented, we could have displayed a figure comparing Mathematics, Science and Philosophy, with the same kinds of similarities. Had we achieved the same comparison when non-progressive pedagogies are enacted, the learning goals would have shown differences rather than similarities. The advent of progressive pedagogies seems then to be good news for fostering interdisciplinary processes, as it lessens compartmentalization between disciplines. The facts that (1) argumentation is at the fore in Mathematics, Science and Philosophy, (2) texts in all disciplines invite inquiry, and (3) high-level talk is favored in all disciplines, provide common grounds to the taught disciplines. However, our analysis also showed deep differences, for example with regard to inquiry and reasoning practices (the elaboration of proofs, the building of models for explaining evidence and critical discussions, for mathematics, science and philosophy respectively), or to discourse and language structures (articulation and manipulation of symbols, multi-semiotic lexical forms and expressions, and everyday language in the same disciplines respectively). The most salient difference is that the term “dialogue” is scarce in mathematics, recognized as important in science but shown as difficult to implement, and omnipresent in philosophy. This fact is worrying, as Nikitina (2005) identified “dialogue” as a necessity for interdisciplinary cognition.

In summary, the adoption of progressive dialogic pedagogies suggests a reasonable conjecture, the fact that it lessens barriers between disciplines and opens opportunities for the implementation of interdisciplinary programs. The description of the categories of the Disciplinary Literacy Framework indicates commonalities between disciplines. However, although the same names are used in the Framework (argumentation, dialogue, inquiry practices, communities of inquiry, etc.) in all disciplines, they are instantiated differently in these disciplines. The question is whether it is possible to use the Disciplinary Literacy Framework in order to identify learning goals for a reform in interdisciplinary learning. In the next section, we show how we handled the design of an interdisciplinary program in schools. As will be shown, we took into account the disciplinary learning goals identified according to the Disciplinary Literacy Framework. However, we will see that promoting interdisciplinary learning involves many other factors

Handling multiple constraints in designing interdisciplinary programs in schools

As mentioned in the second section, many interdisciplinary programs have been implemented in the last three decades, mostly in higher education. Due to length limitations, we cannot undertake a literature review on research about interdisciplinary programs, but two main weaknesses appear in most studies: (1) they do not focus on the challenges involved in the implementation of the programs; (2) they do not focus on the nature of the processes emerging in these programs—in particular, they do not check whether these processes were actually interdisciplinary. We provide in the following sections the description of an interdisciplinary program, which addresses these weaknesses: We describe the challenges we encountered in the implementation of the program; we articulate the design principles upon which the interdisciplinary program was elaborated; we inquire whether and how interdisciplinary processes emerged.

Handling institutional and organizational constraints while implementing interdisciplinarity

In 2018, we created the Dialogos Center for fostering dialogic practices in schools in Israel. Our primary intention was not to implement interdisciplinary programs, but to enact dialogical and argumentative practices in all disciplines in schools. Based on an inductive analysis of observations, interviews with teachers, and documents, Zafrani & Yarden (2022) showed that instruction in classrooms was narrowed to mostly direct instruction of terminology and absolute facts, and was stratified into various status levels according to classroom tracking. They showed that teachers may resist dialogic argumentation primarily because it violates the fundamental rules, norms, and practices that grant them individual and organizational legitimacy. To overcome what Authors called the institutional logics that constrained our first efforts, in 2019, we sought an alternative path and negotiated with a city a program in which municipality officers, parents, principals, superintendents, and teachers would take part in decision-making. The stakeholders pointed at the need for a program that would raise strong interest among students and would be “different from” school. By that, they themselves were working according to the institutional logics: For example, the logic of grouping to high-achieving classes dictated that these classes needed a “different” type of learning experiences; The logic of institutional constraints, such as school timetable, physical spaces for multiple groups and so forth, dictated that this “other” type of learning could not take place in school. We proposed an interdisciplinary program, while fully being aware that dialogic practices have the potential to boost interdisciplinarity, as shown in the previous section. We stressed the general idea that interdisciplinarity opens the door for solving problems of the world people care about, thus to high motivation to engage in ecosystem management. These arguments, taken from Bateson and Dewey’s philosophies, convinced the stakeholders. In other words, interdisciplinarity constituted a solution rather than a problem for the stakeholders. We suggested that dialogic practices would be a common denominator in all disciplines to facilitate interdisciplinarity. While the different stakeholders immediately adopted the idea of interdisciplinarity, they were moderately convinced by our determination to enact a dialogic pedagogy to foster it.

The decisions taken with the stakeholders removed some of the institutional constraints (still, some of the constraints such as teachers’ availability, or Covid school regulations very strongly constrained us). The stakeholders also decided that the program would be run as an out-of-school series of five day-long activities (we called focus days) around Interdisciplinary Societal Dilemmas (ISD) in buildings of the municipality. This decision helped avoiding institutional constraints—the stakeholders were not bound at improving achievements, but also solved a problem in schools, the need to provide appealing and interesting program for students in advanced placement classrooms. The decision to organize the program as a series of out-of-school focus days also resolved organizational constraints as the scheduling of coordinated lessons in several disciplines was avoided.

Finally, a professional development program recognized by the Ministry of Education helped teachers prepare the implementation of the focus days. Teachers learned about all learning goals in their discipline and about how to animate the learning sessions during focus days.

In summary, the willingness of many stakeholders to enable the implementation of interdisciplinarity helped in lifting up organizational and institutional constraints in implementing dialogic practices in schools.

Principled design for interdisciplinarity

We saw in the historical review how disciplinary compartmentalization is deeply ingrained in schools. We conjectured that the commonalities we identified between the learning goals in Mathematics, Science and Philosophy would lessen this compartmentalization: the establishment of a community of inquiry, the enactment of argumentation, instigating the making of connections, the provision of texts designed to trigger inquiry, and the enactment of a dialogic pedagogy. Argumentation and dialogue were the most challenging goals because, as shown before, their form and their advent are distinct in each discipline. Accordingly, Koichu et al., (2022) elaborated principles for the design of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. We enunciated content-related principles, pedagogy-related principles and organization-related principles (Koichu et al., 2022). They are displayed in Table 1.

Table 1. Design principles of interdisciplinary scientific dilemmas (ISD) (Koichu et al., 2022) and learning goal.

Design Principle	Description	Learning Goals
Content-related
ISD Formulation Principle	The formulation of the ISD should have the following characteristics: (i) it is related to students’ experiential reality; (ii) it is problematized for the students so that it would evoke a strong emotional response; (iii) it is authentic—it is important not only to the students but to a larger community; (iv) it has a set of possible solutions; each solution has its pros and cons within-the-reach of junior high school students provided appropriate resources; (v) it is of an interdisciplinary nature (it can be discussed and possibly resolved by enacting conceptual or procedural apparatuses from different disciplines, but cannot be reasonably resolved by the knowledge from one discipline only.	Connection to personal experience and to larger community fallibilism or ambiguity knowledge. Texts for inquiry Perspective taking
Disciplinary Argumentation Principle	Students’ engagement with the ISDs should be supported and prepared by disciplinary argumentation and learning. Disciplinary activities for learning the (missing or requiring recall) knowledge in science, philosophy and mathematics should be interwoven in the instructional design, either as preparatory tasks or as activities necessitated by the ISD itself, in activities designed to afford disciplinary dialogic argumentation.	Disciplinary preparation Argumentative and dialogic practices
Pedagogy-related
Group Work Principle	Create repeated opportunities for cohesive group work of different types (e.g., co-learning, collaborative problem solving). Design opportunities for teacher involvement supporting students’ group work	Community of inquiry, dialogic practices
Role Playing and Perspective Taking Principle	Stimulate motivation and agency by means of creating role-playing opportunities (e.g., empower students to act as advisors to some authority or as decision makers.) Design opportunities for the students to pick sides and enter the shoes of another side.	Perspective Taking
Tangible Products Principle	Organize students’ work toward constructing tangible products (e.g., texts, artifacts) that encapsulate different voices. Use technological means when possible.	Communication of ideas to the community
Organization-related
Students’ Load Principle	Make realistic assumptions about the learning load of students (e.g., the students should not be overloaded with new information) and do not underestimate time that needs to be allocated for meaningful engagement with the tasks. Consult teachers about this and follow their advice.
Teacher Load Principle	As a rule, the teachers are overloaded with their regular tasks, and therefore may invest less time in preparation than the project team hopes for. Practically, use the PD meetings for conducting simulations and going with the teachers over the documents prepared by the project team.
Systemic Affordances Principle	Create stable channels of interaction with stakeholders, (parents, principals, superintendents). Their involvement in the design processes, even if cursory, shapes the availability of the administrative resources for design (e.g., PD hours, teaching hours for preparatory activities, physical facilities), and provides a valuable source of feedback on how the instructional design fits “the bigger picture.”

The design principles have some similarity with design principles elaborated by others (e.g., Boix Mansilla & Duraising, 2007; Kidron & Kali, 2015; Tsemach et al., 2023). The right column of Table 1 provides the goals that each principle aims at attaining. The content-related principles – ISD Formulation Principle and Disciplinary Argumentation Principle condensed the knowledge accumulated in meetings among researchers in mathematics, science and philosophy education about characteristics of ISD dilemmas that are likely to be accessible as well as dialogue-triggering among school students. We considered the ISD Formulation Principle as conveying Bateson’s epistemological perspective of ecosystem management. It also puts forward the need to pedagogically adapt for students those ISDs that can be related to their experiential reality, would evoke in students a strong emotional response, and would not have “obviously wrong” or “obviously correct” solutions. The Disciplinary Argumentation Principle postulates that disciplinary dialogical sessions should precede interdisciplinary sessions around ISD, that is, design that necessitates knowledge from different disciplines for preparing the resolution of the ISD in interdisciplinary activities. In these preliminary activities, the learning goals should fit the specifics of each discipline. Accordingly, in all sessions, we tended to establish a community of inquiry, we enacted argumentative practices, and all texts were designed to trigger inquiry and dialogue. We encouraged the making of connections, but in mathematics, connections were between concepts and strategies, in science, they were between the personal and social lives of the learners in science, and in philosophy, they were between insights and political activity. And least but not least, we enacted a dialogic pedagogy, Accountable Talk, in all sessions (accountability to the community, to reasoning and to knowledge).

The pedagogy-related principles—Group Work, Role Playing and Perspective Taking and Tangible Products principles convey the goals of Bateson (perspective Taking) and of Dewey (Establishing a community of inquiry, and Communicating ideas to the larger community). As displayed in the right column of Table 1, the learning goals for the interdisciplinary program add new learning goals to the goals identified in the Disciplinary Literacy Framework. The organization-related principles relate to the ways the research team handled the multiple constraints it faced in the implementation of the program.

Following the recognition of the principles, designers held meetings in order to provide resources, instructions and a macro-script for teachers to implement the interdisciplinary session. Dialogue also took place between designers and teachers to train them to implement dialogic practices in their disciplines, to negotiate the macro-script of the interdisciplinary sessions, and to distribute responsibilities among teachers in the guidance of these sessions.

Multiple agents (researchers, designers, teachers, principals) met to design, implement, reflect and re-design from one focus day to the next. One hundred and fifty Grade 7 students from classes for high-achievers from four schools in the town participated in five focus days, during the first year (Koichu et al., 2022). The theme of each focus day was an ISD. At the beginning of each focus day, a person knowledgeable in an important societal issue was invited to give an introductory talk in which he/she presented the general issue to be handled during the focus day and animated a brainstorming. The talk was followed by separate disciplinary sessions in Mathematics, Science and Philosophy, and thereafter a session inviting interdisciplinarity in order to resolve the issue by capitalizing on what was learned in the disciplinary sessions. Figure 3 describes the organization of the first focus day.

Figure 3. The structure of the first focus day.

The complex efforts for implementing the program and designing its activities were described in previous publications (Koichu et al., 2022; Zafrani & Yarden, 2022). The empirical part of the present paper is novel; it focuses on the nature of talk in the interdisciplinary program.

The interdisciplinary nature of talk in the interdisciplinary program

An obvious query, after huge efforts were invested in handling multiple constraints and in instructional design, is whether interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation actually emerged during the program. We formulate this query as a research question, and ask about the conditions of its emergence. As explained before, we relied on previous research on dialogic argumentation and conjectured the emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation in activities designed according to the principles displayed in Table 1 (Koichu et al., 2022). We collected around 150 discussions from the interdisciplinary sessions of the five focus days. In these sessions, students were arranged in different settings ((un-)guided small group discussions, teacher-led whole-class discussion, whole-class unguided debate). We audio- or video-taped these discussions, in order to identify episodes of (attempt of) integration of knowledge from different disciplines. All discussions were recorded. For all of them, the Ministry of Education and the authority for ethics at the Hebrew University authorized the recording (audio- or video-, depending on the consent of parents and students). All stakeholders agreed upon at least audio-recording of all sessions. Few stakeholders did not give their authorization for video-recording, and only around 50 discussions were video-taped. However, the audio technologies we used enabled us to generally identify the discussants during the discussions. We watched at and listened to all recordings. We followed the guidance Derry and colleagues (Derry et al., 2010) provided for selecting, and analyzing the video and audio dataset of the discussions, in addition to the technologies and the ethics that helped us share the dataset and interpret them. While watching and listening the discussions, we directed our attention to whether interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation emerged and the conditions under which it emerged, or its emergence was hindered. We adopted a narrative approach derived from ethnography that involves what Mary Catherine M. C. Bateson (1989) called disciplined subjectivity, which reveals what can be learned about the observer and the interactions between the observer and the observed. This approach fitted our deep engagement in the design of the program, the PD program and the organization of the focus days. We identified two kinds of stories, one of emergence, and one of hindrance of emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. Either kinds of stories happened in all 50 discussions. Accordingly, we selected and transcribed 8 episodes that told these two stories.

In order to tell the story of the (hindrance of the) emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation, we used the Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (SEDA). SEDA was developed by Hennessy and colleagues (Hennessy et al., 2016) for analyzing Educational Dialogues, according to the standards of Dialogic Education. The scheme consists of 33 dialogic moves organized in eight clusters: Invite elaboration or reasoning (I), Make reasoning explicit (R), Build on ideas (B), Express or invite ideas (E), Positioning and coordination (P), Reflect on dialogue or activity (RD), (G) guide direction of dialogue or activity and Connect (C). We decided to use the eight clusters for coding, and not the full 33 codes scheme because they increase practicality and afford a higher inter-rater reliability. The make reasoning explicit cluster (R) includes categories such as elaborating, challenging, or refuting others’ ideas, and in addition with the Build on Ideas (B) cluster, make salient the deployment of argumentation. Thus, SEDA provides a suitable scheme for identifying dialogic argumentation in classroom talk. In the telling of our stories, we used the SEDA scheme, and payed attention to the emergence or hindrance of interdisciplinary processes. We present here a first story, that represented a first type of narratives that told the successful emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation.

First story: During an autonomous small-group dialogic argumentation, the teacher pays attention to the mention to ideas elaborated in a previous disciplinary activity to trigger interdisciplinary processes without interfering the group argumentation

The first story is taken from the third focus day, which is around whether parents should be compelled to vaccinate their children. In the mathematics session, students learned about epidemiological models of diseases, and about infection coefficient. In the science session, they learned about how vaccination functions, and about herd immunity – if enough people are resistant to the cause of a disease, such as a virus or bacteria, it has nowhere to go. In the philosophy session, students learned about Western vs. Traditional Chinese medicine. Table 2 displays an excerpt of the discussion. In the right column, we inserted letters that point at the SEDA categories mentioned above.

Table 2. Subtle guidance of integration of knowledge from previous disciplinary activities.

Turn	Actor		SEDA category
254	Noga	And like, live and let live. If that’s something that one thinks, and we don’t have to force people to do something they don’t want to do	I
255	T1	Yeah, but you were in Science (the earlier science module), right? And student1 was and student3 and student 4. You were in Science and I have a question. When a person does not get vaccinated, does he only hurt himself?	G
256	Bar	No	P
257	Ely	No	P
258	Noga	He doesn’t only hurt himself but if the rest (of the people) get vaccinated and he doesn’t, then in any case it’s not supposed to hurt him	R
259	T1	So you’re saying that you’re counting on the population that it will get vaccinated and I would not	I
260	Bar	Most (people) get vaccinated. The rate of vaccination	B
261	Noga	It’s pretty rare. I haven’t heard so far about anyone who didn’t get vaccinated	B
262	T1	Okay	UN
263	Bar	The rate of non-vaccinated, those that don’t get vaccinated is much less than those that do get vaccinated and then you have the herd effect that we learned about in Science	R
264	T1	Herd immunity	I
265	Bar	Yes. That if the majority gets vaccinated and just a little don’t (…) (it’s) like a shield, sort of. (…)	R
268	T1	So how can I make sure that the majority indeed get vaccinated? Because, like, student2 will come and say “I know that everyone here is vaccinated so I won’t get vaccinated” and then the second (person) will say “I too don’t want to get vaccinated”	G
269	Ely	And then everyone won’t get vaccinated	R
270	T1	So how can I promise that it will be (…)	I
271	Bar	In any case everyone wants to get vaccinated because it’s not related to if they catch (a virus) from someone, like, you can develop the illness by yourself somehow, and then you need to get vaccinated so that doesn’t happen to you	R
272	Ely	But that’s like I said … like, in my opinion you need to, like, enforce vaccinations only for disease that like really threatens life, like measles and all that, and for diseases that are less (threatening), like the flu, and all the diseases that don’t necessarily threaten lives, it’s not mandatory to get vaccinated because it’s not — (unclear)	R
273	T1	So you’re saying let’s for a moment separate between diseases that are truly threatening and that have been proven to …	I
274	T2	Life threatening	B

Up to turn 254, the four students discussed the dilemma by relying on their worldviews without explicitly referring to previous disciplinary outcomes. It is important, however, to stress that the philosophy session, which focused on a comparison between Western and Traditional Chinese medicine, turned vaccination to a debatable issue: they learned that there are people in the world that are knowledgeable in medicine, and who do not use vaccination in their treatments. In the discussion, students expressed their viewpoints, were fully engaged in the solution of a dilemma they understood. However, the discussion did not converge. The SEDA categories in Table 2 show the high frequency of explicit reasoning, invitation to reasoning (I) and building on ideas (B): In 255, Teacher 1 (T1) decides to intervene after Noga expresses her reasoned position against forcing parents to vaccinate their children. T1 reminds the group that they attended a science session, and asks a specific question “When a person does not get vaccinated, does he only hurt himself?.” After the students answer “No,” Noga counter-argues in 258 the implicit argument of T1 (that vaccination should be coerced) by claiming that if the others are vaccinated, the person who decides not to get vaccinated does not hurt them. In 259, T1 clarifies Noga’s position, against hers. In 260, Bar strengthens Noga’s argument by asserting that “most people get vaccinated.” In 261, Shirley testifies Bar’s assertion. So far, dialogic argumentation rules the talk, as illustrated by the SEDA categories of the talk moves—mostly I, R and B categories. The students are highly engaged in the discussion. T1’s “okay” shows that she follows the arguments of the group. In 263, Bar expands the argument he initiated in 260 by claiming that “those that don’t get vaccinated are much less than those that do get vaccinated and then you have the herd effect that we learned about in Science.” This is a straightforward reference to a central idea learned in the science session, the herd effect (if enough people are resistant to the cause of a disease, such as a virus or bacteria, it has nowhere to go). T1 continues following subtly the group, by providing a more precise term—“the herd immunity.” The explanation given by Bar in 265, that the majority is a kind of shield, perhaps echoes this precision. T1’s intervention in 268 challenges Noga and Bar’s argument (“How can I make sure that the majority indeed get vaccinated?”). In 269, Ely understands well the risks of absence of coercion when being aware of the herd immunity “and then everyone won’t get vaccinated.” Bar’s intervention in 271 is noteworthy as he counterargues this risk by saying that it is commonplace that most people want to be vaccinated to protect themselves from illness. Ely’s conclusive position in 272 splits between life threatening diseases (for which vaccinations is mandatory) and more benign diseases. This position shows a conclusion based on the integration of knowledge learned in the science session, with what was learned in the philosophy session when comparing Western vs. Asiatic medicine, the fact that vaccination to a debatable issue.

We can see how T1 is attentive to the arguments raised by the students, waits until one student (Noga) claims that “we don’t have to force people to do what they don’t want to do,” to invite students to think about what they learned in the science session. The teacher attempts to guide the discussion (G) to integrate information from a disciplinary session, when this knowledge seems to her relevant to the dialogic argumentation that deployed. This attempt gradually leads students to incorporate what they learned in science in their talk which was philosophical so far, and which becomes interdisciplinary. The talk remained dialogic, and the teacher’s role was restricted to hint to a relevant idea from a disciplinary session, to challenge arguments brought forward by asking a question to show that she follows the stream of arguments, and to repeat the conclusion the group reached. In conclusion, this episode tells the story of guided interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation, in which the guidance is subtle—based on opportunities to branch students to disciplinary knowledge, that they allude to, yet leaves autonomy to the group in deploying a form of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation, which conveys their high civic engagement.

Second story: The teacher misses opportunities to help groups of students integrate knowledge from disciplinary sessions. Instead, she declaims an integration of knowledge from different disciplines, and deprives the classroom talk from its dialogic character

This story is a story of hindrance of interdisciplinary processes. Like for the first story, similar versions of this story happened frequently in the program (in all 8 analyzed discussions, and in all the remaining skimmed over discussions). The specific story we will tell happened during the first focus day, which was dedicated to an ISD—whether to insert DNA information into biometric data for passport control uses. The mathematics preparatory session, students learned methods to encrypt information and how these encryptions can be broken. In science, they learned about DNA and that everybody has a distinctive DNA signature. In philosophy, they learned about relations between the individual and society through texts by Rousseau (who stressed the common good) and Locke (who stressed individual rights). The designers thought that the disciplinary sessions would be useful to the interdisciplinary session, and would trigger interdisciplinary processes: inserting information about DNA in passports raises the issue of how well it can be encrypted, and issues about its usefulness for the individual and for the society. The distinctiveness of DNA signatures was believed to be crucial for solving the ISD. But a different story happened. Parts of the protocols we will describe have been analyzed in another publication (Tsemachet al., 2023) for a different use—describing the epistemic practices deployed during the problem. In the story we narrate, we focus on the (hindrance of the) emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation.

At the beginning of the interdisciplinary session, the teacher (T1) reminds the students of the general question (which was put forward already at the beginning of the day)—whether to insert DNA information in biometric passports. She then arranges them in five small groups of 5–6 students. She invites them first to take a reasoned position on the issue at stake, and then to discuss the issue in order to reach an agreement. The groups have a worksheet at disposal in which the question is written as well as the two tasks (taking first a reasoned position, and discussing the issue in order to reach an agreement). Then, she and another teacher (T2) pass by the groups, to help them in their deliberations. Table 3 shows the beginning of the guided discussion of one group:

Table 3. The teacher misses the opportunity to capitalize on a student’s reference to a previous disciplinary activity.

7	T1	The question is, I want you to tell me whether you are for or against it, but to give me a reason, a scientific reason, or a reason from what you have learned. The biometric passports?	G
8	Benji	Yes.	UN
9	T1	Should you put your facial features in there, your DNA information? Should you enter this information? It is not information written inside some chip. [Are you] for or against, Bar?	G
10	Bar	I am against it because you can lose your passport, and then let us say someone finds it, I don’t know, a criminal, let’s say, and then he can use your details from the DNA for stuff.	P+R
11	Ely	But also, with a non-biometric passport, there’s a risk of identity theft.	P+R
12	Bar	Yeah, or breaking into your privacy or stuff like that.	R
13	Rotem	They can’t, it’s your DNA.	R
14	T1	So wait, Bar, you’re against it?	I
15	Bar	The criminal can hack his DNA.	R
16	Benji	Because it’s possible to enter (the database).	R
17	Rotem	That’s not true because if the criminal tries to enter with his DNA, it won’t be the same. The DNA won’t be (the same).	Pּ+R
18	T1	Bar is against.	P
19	Bar	He can’t.	R
20	T1	Because she says if I-	UN
21	Bar	Like no, he won’t steal my identity, he’ll be able to use this information.	R
22	Sarah	He will not have access to the information because if he enters DNA in order to enter the information, he will have to enter his DNA.	R
23	Rotem	And if it turns out someone, I don’t know, knows how to break into all the repositories.	R
24	Ely	(of the) DNA?	I
25	Bar	But even a normal person can break in.	P+R
26	Rotem	No, but it’s specific to DNA, not to…	R
27	Bar	DNA no, it’s harder to break.	R
28	T1	Daniel, what are you saying?	G
29	Daniel	I actually wanted to say what she said. It’s just so easy to lose something like a passport, especially, and anyone can.	I
30	T1	So, you say what Bar said. Thanks. Liat, what are you saying?	G+P

Turn 7 shows that T1 gives the direction of the discussion (G), as she paraphrases the invitation written in the worksheet—to express a reasoned position on the issue. She stresses that the position should be based on what was learned in the disciplinary lessons. In 9, she expands on the meaning of the dilemma and invites a student—Bar, to express his position. The teacher at this point is at the center of the discussion. On 10, Bar expresses a reasoned argument against the insertion of DNA information (P+R). The reason he invokes, “a criminal … can use your details from DNA for things,” is elaborated by Ely in turn 11. In turn 12, Bar responds to Ely, to elaborate his argument further (“break into your privacy”). Rotem’s contribution in turn 13 challenges the reason (and not the position) invoked by Bar, by mentioning that “[a criminal] cannot [break into one’s privacy],” since the information is about the DNA signature. Turns 10–13 provide an episode of dialogic argumentation, as the discussants refer to each other and weigh the pros and cons of positions brought forward rationally (SEDA category R). Like for the first story, the civic engagement of the students is high. Rotem’s contribution is based on an idea elaborated in the science session—the distinctiveness of the DNA signature. It is unclear, though, how the distinctiveness of the DNA signature does not enable criminals to break into privacy. Students talk about DNA, privacy (rights of the individual), or “hacking” – ideas that were raised in the science, philosophy, and mathematics respectively, but not in an articulated way. T1 misses the opportunity of capitalizing on Rotem’s reference to the distinctiveness of the DNA signature, which was discussed in the science session, to clarify what Rotem meant. Rather, she attempts to bring the activity back to the presentation of reasoned arguments (turn 14). We interpret this move as her objective to stick to the instructions written in the worksheet and/or to her difficulty to follow on-the-fly ideas expressed in the dialogue. She could have used Rotem’s contribution for integrating knowledge from biology in philosophical/world-view consideration: For example, although, as Rotem claims, the DNA signature is unique for each individual, so that its insertion in the biometric passport is a divulgation, even if encrypted. Instead, she invites students to take a yes/no position. However, the students ignore her and continue their dialogic argumentation (15–17, 19, 21–27 – mostly SEDA categories P and R) in which the six students of the group participate, despite T1’s repeated requests to state their positions (18, 20, 28, 30). Bar’s intervention, “He can hack his DNA” (turn 15), which alludes to the idea of encryption elaborated in the mathematical session, is opposed by Rotem (in turn 17), and Sarah (in turn 22). This would have been an excellent opportunity for T1 to elicit more deeply the mathematical knowledge gained in the mathematics activity—for example to recall that while methods of encryption become more and more sophisticated, deciphering methods become more sophisticated too. However, again the teacher misses this opportunity, and leaves the students focus on particular cases—identity theft and stealing private information, without linking them to broader issues, like the distinctiveness of DNA, and the deciphering of encrypted data. There is no consensus among the students who continue their dialogic argumentation, in spite of the requests of the teacher to stick to the presentation of yes/no reasoned positions.

As the discussion continues, T1 notices that students in another group ask for her help. Table 4 presents the discussion that develops, when Doron, one of the students in another group, asks her for an example of a supporting reason for biometric passports:

Table 4. A student resists the teacher’s intention to stop dialogic argumentation.

31	Hila	Anyone can hack into your personal information. Let’s say.	R
32	T1	Wait, Doron can’t hear you at all, and it’s a shame.	G
33	Doron	T1, you didn’t explain why biometric passports may be useful	I
34	T1	What? Are you in favor?	I
35	Doron	Yes …	P
36	T1	For example, someone who is a terrorist… A terrorist, today you can tell by his facial identification (identify a certain person by facial recognition), catch him already at the airport on the way to an attack. For example, this protects me; it is an argument in favor. Yes.	I+P
37	Hila	So, let’s say someone is a terrorist, let’s say someone is a terrorist. He can’t get a passport because no one will issue one for him, he can’t, he’s not allowed to pass because… let’s say, someone, I don’t know, someone who was released.	R
38	T1	I need to check this. What, Teacher 2, someone who is a criminal, is he not issued a passport?	I
39	T2	Listen. First of all, you are right. Everyone has a passport. It doesn’t matter if they’re a terrorist or not, ok? But if now that person is considered a terrorist, ok? He arrives in the country; they can tell him, “Listen, we won’t let you in.”	G
40	T1	Using the facial features that are in the database.	B
41	T2	Not just the facial features, but in general, his fingerprint, according to the retina of the eye, or even according to his DNA test. Ok? They can tell him, “you’re not coming in.”	G
42	T1	But it protects us.	B

Doron asks T1 to give a reason supporting the insertion of DNA (32). This question may seem weird, but in the context of the program in which students are used to figure out pros and cons for various issues, her request is understandable. Also, the ISD was presented as a dilemma, and it is highly plausible that the members of her group were against the insertion of DNA in biometric passports, but that she felt that she should take another reasoned position. After T1 expresses that she is simply interested in students’ positioning of yes/no reasoned arguments (“what, are you in favor?”), she provides a reason to support a biometric passport—biometric data can help border control identify and prevent terrorists from infiltrating the country (36). Hila counter-argues that no one will issue a passport to a terrorist (turn 37). We see that Hila continues arguing, until this point with her peers, and then with the teacher. T1, who seems unsettled, and who is not ready to argue, approaches T2 to ask him publicly to answer Hila’s question/counter-argument. T2 provides information (in turns 39 and 41) to T1 and the students. In Table 5, we present the continuation of the activity in the class. T2 decided to ask publicly all groups what was learned in the philosophy session:

Table 5. In spite of the students’ opposition, the teachers impose their integration of knowledge in a non-dialogic talk.

43	T2	By the way, just a second… Those who were in the philosophy group, think about the two philosophers in this context that T1 is talking about. One philosopher Rousseau said we need the common good, ok? The common good comes before the individual. Ok? The group, the majority, decides. John Locke said that the individual comes first. I am what matters. So, think when you argue for and against, what, why, what, a second, who is more important in this matter? Try to do who says what, as if you were talking from his throat.	G+C
44	T1	Ah yes.	UN
45	Liat	But I’m not done.	G
46	T1	Oh sorry, wait.	G
…
62	Rotem	These things are inside the passport to protect it. That also means his privacy but also a protection system. In the same protection system, it is impossible to fake.	R
63	T1	So, you are saying that it can help us because it is another means of protection.	R
64	Rotem	Protective measures.	UN
65	T2	But protection from whom?	UN
66	Benji	About your details, about everything.	R
67	T2	Yes, but for whom?	I
68	Rotem	Me.	R
69	Hila	But Rotem, I wasn’t talking about identity theft. I was talking about, let’s say, he lost his passport. It can reveal the details of where he lives, his name, and then he.	R
70	Rotem	He can’t because his details are saved inside the card. To get inside the card, you need DNA and facial recognition or things, so it’s impossible.	R
71	Hila	But he can know his name and where he lives.	R
72	Rotem	You need facial features.	R
73	Hila	Even according to the passport without DNA.	R
74	T2	Rotem, yes.	G
75	Rotem	I said.	UN
76	T2	You said very interesting things. I want to ask a question and refine it a bit so everyone will understand. When you talk about protection, it’s actually your details that are now in a repository, ok? An international, national database. Who are they meant to protect?	G
77	Rotem	They come…	UN
78	T2	Second, I will give you the option to make it easier for you to tune in. Your details are here to protect you as an individual, ok? As a citizen of the State of Israel, OK? It’s to protect the country, ok? And it doesn’t matter what country you live in, ok? Whom does it come to protect, and for whose benefit does it come to protect?	G
79	Rotem	It came to protect me and for my benefit, but because it’s my details, my things, but in the same situation, if, say, a terrorist steals it, it will still protect him, and he still won’t be able to steal it, I mean it still protects the majority.	R+P
80	T2	I will present a case here.	G

The protocol in Table 4 shows that T2 attempts at integrating knowledge from different disciplines to solve the dilemma of the ISD. T2’s “By the way, just a second…” at turn 43, suggests that what he brings from the philosophy session is not linked to what was said before. He points students to relate to Rousseau’s Social Contract, and Locke’s Treatises of Government to show the tension between the common good and the individual’s rights. This intervention does not stem from what the group discussed before. The “just a second” conveys this disruption. T2 forces the introduction of topics discussed in the philosophy session. T1’s “Ah, yes” indicates that this intervention comes out of the blue. This effort to integrate knowledge from philosophy is rejected by Liat (“But I’m not done”) in (45), a fact that indicates that Liat is more interested to solve the dilemma in her group than to listen to T1 in his declamation. T2 respects her will to continue expressing her thoughts without being disturbed (“Sorry”). The students continue in dialogic argumentation during which students elaborate on each other’s ideas, or challenge each other, a fact which points at high civic engagement. The content learned in the disciplinary modules does not figure in this dialogue. In the long run, it is sterile.

The teachers continue then passing by the groups of students scattered in the classroom. In turn 62, Rotem refers to “protective measures.” This term echoes ideas raised in the philosophy session where the comparison between Rousseau and Locke’s texts led to the idea that the society needs protective measures against individuals whose actions cause prejudice to others. This is the first time that the group used the term “protective” in its discussion. It is plausible that this mention of protection was triggered by T2’s intervention at turn 43, when he invited the students to remember what was learned in the philosophy session about the balance between human rights and the common good. In (62), Rotem introduces the idea of privacy, and in (63), T1 interprets the student’s turn as “it can help us because it is another means of protection.” In turn 65, T2, who understands that the discussion blurs boundaries between the protection of the individual and society, asks, “protection from whom?.” In (67), he modifies his question as “protection for whom,” to which Rotem answers in (68), “me.” In this succession of turns, T2 attempts to explicitly integrate what was learned in the philosophy class in turn 42, by leading the students to weigh whether adding information on DNA is good for the individual or for the society.

The turns 68–73 are a sequence of interactions among students around the understanding of a situation, not around arguments about the issue. In (76), T2 says first, “You said very interesting things. I want to ask a question and refine it a bit so everyone will understand,” which is a way to take the lead, since he feels that the students are going nowhere. At that point, the talk ceases to be dialogic, and the teachers impose their direction (category G in the remainder of the dialogue): T1 provides an example for which welfare of the individual and of the society are in tension (“When you talk about protection, it’s actually your details that are now in a repository, ok? An international, national database. Who are they meant to protect?,” and in (78), he clearly states, “to protect you as an individual, or to protect the country?.” At (79), Rotem does not grasp this tension (“it came to protect me … . It still protects the majority”). Here also, T2 misses the opportunity to articulate this tension. Rather, he decides to present a case of his own (80). In this case (not shown here), T2 ignores the oppositions of the students, and his conclusion, “The state decided they didn’t feel like taking care of people […] And they say, listen, we don’t want to treat a second-class citizen,” integrates the biological idea of the uniqueness of DNA and philosophical ideas, but the integration is his.

The second story exemplified that we saw that when unguided, students maintain dialogic argumentation, which is sterile in the long run. Another theme of this story is the teachers’ recurrent missed opportunities to capitalize on students’ ideas that are relevant to disciplinary sessions, to promote interdisciplinary processes. Rather, and this is the third theme of this story, teachers force the exposition of the integration of knowledge in declamations, in spite of the students’ opposition. At that point, talk ceases being dialogic.

Conclusions

This paper focused on interdisciplinarity in schools. We followed thinkers who saw in interdisciplinarity a necessity. Gregory Bateson claimed that in the modern world, the management of ecosystems is extremely complex and pledged for a new epistemological stance which does focus on a unique vision for scientific inquiry. Dewey took a societal and motivational stance which pledges the integration of different disciplines to inquire, discuss, and solve real-life problems for educating students to democracy. However, we showed that, so far, the educational world is not ready to adopt interdisciplinarity in its agenda. The historical sketch of the rise of disciplines that we conducted, showed that disciplines became compartmentalized. This compartmentalization turns the initiation of interdisciplinarity in schools to be highly difficult. The comparison of the core category constructs of three disciplines in the context of progressive pedagogies suggested that a de-compartmentalization of disciplines may be possible through the attainment of learning goals such as the establishment of a community of inquiry, the making of multiple connections, the choice of texts designed to trigger inquiry, and the enactment of dialogic and argumentative practices in all disciplines. We conjectured that the attainment of the above learning goals in interdisciplinary programs would help in the emergence of interdisciplinary processes. We checked this conjecture through the implementation of an interdisciplinary program, having in mind that the fact that the learning goals have the same name in different disciplines still hides profound differences between disciplines.

The implementation of the interdisciplinary program we elaborated raised institutional and organizational constraints that we reported elsewhere (Koichu et al., 2022). We provided details on disciplinary constraints that we took care of at the level of instructional design. We listed a series of design principles. Bateson’s vision of ecosystem management inspired our choice of Interdisciplinary Societal Dilemmas (ISD). We articulated the ISD Formulation Principle as conveying content that is accessible as well as dialogue-triggering. The ISD Formulation Principle also conveys the need to adapt ISDs to the students’ experiential reality, to trigger strong emotional responses, and invite solutions that are not “obviously correct” solutions. It fits Bateson’s epistemological perspective. The Disciplinary Argumentation Principle postulates that preparatory disciplinary activities of dialogic argumentation should precede the resolution of the ISD. It fits Dewey’s ideas of education to democracy. The right column in Table 1 stresses that these two content-related principles rely on the core construct categories of the Disciplinary Literacy framework (Goldman et al., 2016).

If this framework was useful for the content-based design principle, the pedagogy-related principles—Group Work, Role Playing and Perspective Taking and Tangible Products principles conveyed additional learning goals, that fit Bateson’s and Dewey‘s visions (perspective Taking for Bateson, Establishing a community of inquiry, and Communicating ideas to the larger community for Dewey). These learning goals are beyond the learning goals identified in the Disciplinary Literacy Framework. The adoption of learning goals according to the core constructs of the Disciplinary Literacy Framework is necessary but not sufficient for lessening the compartmentalization among disciplines and enabling interdisciplinary processes. The original empirical part of the paper indicated that the design principles was not sufficient either.

The empirical part of the paper gave an answer to the question whether and how interdisciplinary processes emerged in the program. After the meticulous application of content, pedagogy and organization-related principles for interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation, one could have expected that the “whether” would have been superfluous. However, we showed that in spite of this meticulous design, the emergence of interdisciplinary processes was not a simple matter. We adopted a narrative approach in the analysis of the audio and video dataset available on interdisciplinary sessions. We identified two kinds of narratives instantiated in two stories, in the dataset—one story of emergence and one story of hindrance of emergence of interdisciplinary processes. In both stories, students participated in autonomous dialogic argumentation: they positioned themselves, gave reasons for their positions, referred to others’ arguments to build on them or to challenge them, without any guidance. In their discussions, they showed high civic engagement as they related to the social issue at stake. In other focus days, students functioned as an editorial team of a newspaper to decide on the publication of articles in the newspaper, or as a tribunal, with judges, attorneys, plaintiffs, defendants and jurors. This feature of the interdisciplinary sessions fully concurs with Dewey’s view of the role of interdisciplinary activities in the education of students to democracy. However, in both stories, although students’ discussions around ISD were animated, they did not lead to the integration of knowledge from different disciplines. Students did not autonomously capitalize on what they learned in disciplinary sessions. Students sometimes alluded to ideas elaborated in disciplinary sessions, but they did not incorporate well these ideas in their argumentation.

The two stories differed in the role played by the teacher. This role was necessary since autonomous discussions among students are dialogic but sterile. In both stories, the teacher invited students to refer to previous disciplinary activities, but this invitation was generally unproductive. In the first story, the teacher was attentive to the ideas that emerged in the discussion. She capitalized on the allusion to ideas elaborated in previous disciplinary sessions (like “the herd effect”) to sharpen them (T1 rephrased this idea as “the herd immunity”). Her interest gradually led students to incorporate what they learned in science in their talk, which became interdisciplinary. The talk remained dialogic, as the teacher restricted herself to hint to a relevant idea from a disciplinary session, to challenge arguments brought forward by asking questions, to show that she follows the stream of arguments, and to repeat the conclusion the group reached. Such a guidance is subtle—based on opportunities to branch students to disciplinary knowledge, that they allude to, yet leaves autonomy to the group in deploying a form of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation.

In the second story, the teacher acted differently. Like in the first story, students alluded to ideas raised in disciplinary sessions, but the teacher missed opportunities to capitalize on these allusions. We suggested possible hints that the teacher could have given to nurture the discussion and to trigger interdisciplinary processes without being too intrusive. Rather, the teacher took the lead and declaimed the integration of knowledge from different disciplines. Interestingly, students resisted this domination, as they saw these declamations as disturbances in their deliberations. The insistence of the teacher in taking the lead left her at the center of non-dialogic interactions. Interdisciplinary processes were hindered, as the students became peripheral in her declamations.

Narratives such as the second story presented here were more frequent in our analysis of this program than narratives such as the first one: The dialogic and subtle guidance that characterized the first story happened less than the teacher’s non-dialogic orchestration of integration of knowledge. These findings suggest that Bateson’s vision of what should every boy know—a kind of multiple view of the world is very difficult to access in junior high schools.

The conclusions we reached rely on a case study, but we should be humble and ask whether the study really counts as a case. We brought theoretical reasons for the necessity to adopt dialogic pedagogies for triggering interdisciplinary processes. Moreover, the design of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation was principled as it relied on disciplinary analyses and research in dialogic argumentation. The animated but sterile unguided dialogic argumentation among students, the absence of integration of previously learned ideas in disciplinary sessions, the teacher’s explicit and unproductive reference to previous activities, the subtle capitalization on opportunities to mediate interdisciplinary processes, or the non-dialogic declamation of teachers that hindered interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation, were patterns that popped up constantly in the dataset we collected. These reasons point at the generalizability of the kinds of design principles for interdisciplinary programs in schools and of the opportunities and hindrances of the deployment of interdisciplinary processes in classrooms when the design principles are applied.

While narrating the stories that emerged from the interdisciplinary sessions, we became aware of the difficult role teachers should play to enable the emergence of interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. This goal is reachable, as some teachers could handle this integration successfully, but it demands from teachers to be highly attentive to the flow of ideas in interactions among students, and to grasp opportunities on the fly to help students incorporate past disciplinary understandings in interdisciplinary dialogic argumentation. We should admit, however, that the PD program we developed did not prepare enough teachers to this difficult role. Anyway, the necessity to prepare young citizens to the management of ecosystems, and to belong actively to democracies—the visions of both Bateson and Dewey, is more urgent than ever.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [2699/17].

Notes

¹ Although among cultural psychologists, affirming the social nature of any knowledge is obvious, this affirmation in the world of science, in the world of facts and laws is an important insight.