Students’ attitudes towards interdisciplinary education: a course on interdisciplinary aspects of science and engineering education

ABSTRACT

A course entitled ‘Science and Engineering Education: Interdisciplinary Aspects’ was designed to expose undergraduate students of science and engineering education to the attributes of interdisciplinary education which integrates science and engineering. The core of the course is an interdisciplinary lesson, which each student is supposed to teach his/her peers. Sixteen students at advanced stages of their studies attended the course. The research presented here used qualitative instruments to characterise students’ attitudes towards interdisciplinary learning and teaching of science and engineering. According to the findings, despite the significant challenge which characterises interdisciplinary teaching, a notable improvement was evident throughout the course in the percentage of students who expressed willingness to teach interdisciplinary classes in future.

KEYWORDS:

• Interdisciplinary education
• engineering education
• science education
• teacher training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Aharon Gero holds a B.A. in physics, a B.Sc. in electrical engineering, an M.Sc. in electrical engineering, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, all from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. In addition, he has an MBA from the University of Haifa, Israel. He is a faculty member at the Department of Education in Technology and Science of the Technion. His research focuses on electrical engineering education and interdisciplinary education that combines physics with electronics, such as electro-optics and microelectronics education.

Notes

1 The inclusion of these topics is partially based on the recommendations of Jacobs (1989) and Azriel (2003).

2 A detailed description of one of the lessons is provided in the Appendix.

3 Since the analysis of the fifth and sixth interviews yielded no significant new findings, it was decided to stop data collection after six interviews.