Transdisciplinary teaching and learning: an experiment

Abstract

In our smart new world, characterized by continuous technological evolution, knowledge is subject to rapid obsolescence and change is the only constant. In this context, teachers are called upon to overcome the ingrained automatic habits of traditional knowledge transmission by developing a perspective that is less tied to individual disciplines and more open to the many facets of reality. Only with a questioning and curious attitude aimed at innovation and pedagogical experimentation can teachers make their message meaningful again and help new generations to develop the habit of flexible and complex thinking in order to orient themselves in a fluid, globally connected and hypertechnological society. Following a course on multidisciplinarity, a group of secondary school teachers embarked on a journey of reading and experimenting in the classroom, realizing that through the transdisciplinary approach theorized by the quantum physicist Nicolescu, one can educate for the future. Identifying and tackling conceptual issues to work on and overcoming the narrow limits of individual disciplines in order to understand complex events is the direction in which teachers and students of today's school should move, so that they will face tomorrow with greater awareness and effectiveness.