Interdisciplinary and Introductory Studies in Teacher Education

Abstract

This paper examines the development of the two first‐year core units in a teacher education course over the decade of the 1980s in one of Australia's largest teacher education institutions. The two units were interdisciplinary in nature, and involved around 1000 students per year, prompting a major structural and pedagogical reorganisation. The unit development used Basil Bernstein's analytical framework to trace the various aspects of that period of development: the construction, the constraints, the possibilities. Key questions are posed about the constraints, and possibilities for building on this expertise in future course development in teacher education are discussed. It is argued that there is a nexus between pedagogic and social structures and that much of the resistance to interdisciplinary programs comes as a result of resistance to alternative social and organisational structures.