Redefining interdisciplinary curriculum: A journey of collaboration and change in secondary teacher education

When beginning to teach a secondary education course focusing on interdisciplinary curriculum together, four women teacher educators determined changes we hoped to make for the following semester. For example, we took up the notions of difference, arts integration, and collaboration all under the umbrella of interdisciplinary curriculum. We were in search of a model of interdisciplinarity that could incorporate our understanding of education and our teaching interests. We designed this model in order to guide our students into identifying themselves as educators rather than purely content-area specialists. Similarly, we saw this course as an opportunity to encourage collaborative practices. We could model team-teaching as our students planned interdisciplinary units together. Likewise, we could demonstrate to our students that transcending their own disciplines allows for more powerful teaching and learning. We saw redefining interdisciplinary curriculum as a route to encourage preservice teachers to teach for social justice and to show teaching's potential as a collaborative profession. This article narrates how we experienced the changes of crossing disciplines, co-teaching sections of the course, exploring arts integration, and providing practical experiences in four different voices. We use our varied voices as we hope the reader may then come to better understand our individual experiences as well as our collaborative journey. While we encountered several roadblocks on our travels, we also found that we offered opportunities for creating new knowledge among ourselves and our students.