Using interdisciplinary project as a means in TEFL

Presently, one of the burning issues of TEFL is to find out new efficient ways of combining classroom research, educational and pedagogical technologies with the content-based learning and the student-centred methods as well. We dispute that university educators of English simply cannot afford to focus just on the linguistics of the traditional teaching and learning process while developing the 21st century skills in our students.

One of the best ways to do so is to use interdisciplinary studies and to create a number of such projects at all levels of education. The aim of the article is to analyse with one of the recent interdisciplinary projects successfully conducted at Perm State University during the autumn semester of 2017.

Main Part

During the past half century in Russia interdisciplinary education, researches and practice have become increasingly widespread. While using interdisciplinary approach for learning English the students have a possibility to acquire new knowledge, abilities, and skills and master the complex of professional and special competences.

Before analyzing the project itself, we should figure out the notion of interdisciplinary, its essential features and steps.

At present, there are five definitions of interdisciplinary widely recognized by scholars. The first was the definition proposed by Klein and Newell in 1997. He described Interdisciplinary studies as a “process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession and draws on disciplinary perspectives and integrates their insights through construction of a more comprehensive perspective. [Klein, Newell, 1997, p. 393-394].

In 2005 the National Academies (the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine) defined interdisciplinary research as a “a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice”. Research, they said, “is truly interdisciplinary when it is not just pasting two disciplines together to create one product but rather an integration or synthesis of ideas and methods” [National Academy of Sciences].

The third definition was advanced by Diana Rhoten, Veronica Boix Mansilla, Marc Chun, and Julie T. Klein in Interdisciplinary Education at Liberal Arts Institutions in 2006. They described interdisciplinary education “as a mode of curriculum design and instruction in which individual faculty or teams identify, evaluate, and integrate information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of knowledge to advance students’ capacity to understand issues, address problems, and create new approaches and solutions that extend beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of instruction [Interdisciplinary Education].

The fourth definition was put forth by Veronica Boix Mansilla in 2005 in the work “Assessing Student Work at Disciplinary Crossroads.” She was particularly interested in the product of interdisciplinary work: the “interdisciplinary understanding.” Interdisciplinarity, she said, “is the capacity to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking drawn from two or more disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement –for example, explaining a phenomenon, solving a problem, creating a product, or raising a new question–in ways that would have been unlikely through single disciplinary means [Boix, 2005].

Finally, in 2007 William Newell in his work “Decision Making in Interdisciplinary Studies” offered the fifth definition of interdisciplinary studies (which was a refinement of his 1997 definition). He said that the interdisciplinary studies was “a two-part process: it draws critically on disciplinary perspectives, and it integrates their insights into a more comprehensive understanding… of an existing complex phenomenon [or into] the creation of a new complex phenomenon [National Academy of Sciences].

These five definitions have some common features. For example, interdisciplinary research has a particular substantive focus, draws explicitly on the disciplines, has integration as its goal etc. However, the most important feature of interdisciplinary research is that the objective of the interdisciplinary research process is pragmatic: to produce a cognitive advancement in the form of a new understanding, a new product, or a new meaning.

According to William H. Newell the steps in the Interdisciplinary Process are as follows:

• 1.    Drawing on disciplinary perspectives

• •    Defining the problem (question, topic, issue)

• •    Determining relevant disciplines (including interdisciplines and schools of thought)

• •    Developing a working command of the relevant concepts, theories, and methods of each discipline

• •    Gathering all relevant disciplinary knowledge

• •    Studying the problem from the perspective of each discipline

• •    Generating disciplinary insights into the problem.

• 2.    Integrating their insights through construction of a more comprehensive understanding

Identifying conflicts in insights by using disciplines to illuminate each other’s assumptions, or by looking for different concepts with common meanings or concepts with different meanings, through which those insights are expressed

• •    Evaluating assumptions and concepts in the context of the specific problem

• •    Resolving conflicts by working towards a common vocabulary and set of assumptions

• •    Creating amalaiyandicommon ground

• •    Identifying (nonlinear) linkages between variables studied by different disciplines

• •    Constructing a new understanding of the problem

• •    Producing a model (metaphor, theme) that captures the new understanding

• •    Testing the understanding by attempting to solve the problem. [10]

All these steps correspond to the first stage Pre-Conference of our interdisciplinary project “My Country – My Pride”.

The interdisciplinary project “My Country – My Pride” was devoted to one of the most significant and unique historical events in Russia. In 2017 we celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

The event gave us a chance to reconnect with the history of our Motherland, to rebuild our ties with the history of Russia and, what is more important for a new generation of students, to rethink their attitude towards their country.

Unfortunately, our students were not fully aware of the importance of the date since they had not studied that historical period properly while at comprehension school. Thus, learning about this topic through English and project activities was also aimed at raising civil awareness and patriotism among our second-year university students, bringing up love and careful attitude to their homeland, motivating creativity and stimulating studying the English language using the student-centred approach.

It should be noted that project as an educational method has been applied in teaching various subjects in Russia since the beginning of the last century [Полат, 2000]. However, project work can be still considered as an innovative tool in designing a new course for teaching English. It is especially important in teaching English to non-linguist university students to build a strong motivation in learning a foreign language.

We fully agree that PBL “is a means of developing a more active and motivating student-centred approach to learning”, the multidisciplinary approach “using real world problems to bringing together knowledge and skills” [Мишланова, 2013], [Donnelly, Fitzmaurice, 2005], [Haines, 1991]. Every year we should develop a new pedagogical and linguistic product to motivate our students [Hutchinson].

The Project “My Country – My Pride” was developed in three stages:

• •    Pre-conference (preparatory),

• •    While-Conference,

• •    Post Conference (Reflective).

Two groups of students (N=37) were offered to visit the Perm State Art Gallery Exhibition: “A Look into the USSR. XX Century in Photography and Porcelain”. The excursion was carried out in Russian. They saw a unique collection of over five hundred photos and porcelain exhibits.

At the same time, they were searching for the information about other museums and exhibitions dedicated to the October Revolution; how and in what way the world would celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution (both in Russian and English).

While developing project materials we varied as much as possible the activities in which the students worked together in small groups, sometimes in the whole group. The tasks which were usually done by groups of students included reading, and translating new vocabulary or translating the parts of the texts both in class and outside class. Thus, students could learn from each other and there was observed an increase in the amount of language being used and learnt.

During this stage, the students were led into the process of creating their own texts of the presentations. As for the grammar and pronunciation, they could easily check whether their ideas were correct by asking the teacher and peer-students during the class time. So we applied an inductive approach to revisiting the grammar rules of the language.

We can state that such a discovery process was an important part of the project methodology and the rules about the language in this way were absorbed much more deeply and memorably by the students.

As for the speaking, we suggested and helped the students to compare, contrast and comment on the materials chosen for the presentation and the slides. Suggestions were made for encouraging students to keep talking for 5 minutes, for example by using fillers effectively.

Writing their own texts and developing presentations was done in class as well as at home and the teacher audienced the groups for the results.

The second stage was organized on the 7th of November. The students presented their projects at the conference “My Country –My Pride” during two classes, which was a success. There were some guests from other departments and the faculty members who asked questions based on the topics. The presentations were video recorded and later analyzed by the teachers.

The Post conference stage included collecting the students' feedback on the conference and the project itself within the consequent two weeks.

A short survey offered the participants four questions:

• 1.    Do we need to create and conduct such projects?

• 2.    What have you learned from this project?

• 3.    What did you like most in the project work?

• 4.    What would you like to see in future projects?

We have obtained 76 responses from the groups. All of them were positive and happy answers. We divided the responses into four categories: “pedagogical component”, “communicative component”, “content-based component” and “the language component”. We should admit that the first component was presented more frequently in the students' feedback (36 answers), followed by “the communicative component” (25), the linguistic component (10) and the content (5).

The pedagogical component included such responses as: I think we need to carry out such projects because they help to develop studentsʼ personality; It helps to figure out the reasons for the pride of our country and to express the individual self; Yes, because we are forgetting our history and donʼt understand how great is our country (not only territorial); Yes. Many of us were not interested in this topic and have now learned a lot.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the interdisciplinary project proved to be one of the successfully implemented pedagogical and didactical tools being a truly student-centered approach in teaching English to university students today.The realization of the project “My country – MyPride” led to increase of motivation in our students.