Transdisciplinarity is a concept of education that comprises the knowledge in a plural way. It is a more open current of thought that seeks to respond to the traditional method of dividing disciplines.
Disciplines are an artificial division made by man to facilitate teaching practices. Cross-cutting education is more challenging and requires more complex coordination among educators.
transdisciplinary education
By breaking the boundaries between one discipline and another, transdisciplinarity seeks to understand phenomena and acquisition of knowledge in a holistic and contextualized way. Knowledge acquires a transversal characteristic, as it crosses all disciplines in some way.
In practice, this means that a transdisciplinary methodology will not only teach the functioning of the human body from biology, but also from mathematics, chemistry, sociology, etc.
Transdisciplinary teaching requires the definition of an organizing thought, also called complex thinking. Complex thinking is a different way of thinking that goes beyond the Cartesian division of areas of knowledge.
The understanding of transdisciplinarity is complex, because while studying the relationship and transversalities between disciplines, it must preserve the peculiarities of each area of knowledge.
Example of transdisciplinary activity
To understand transdisciplinary teaching, we can think of an activity carried out in a school's vegetable garden. By preparing the land, planting and caring for the sown food, children can learn about biology, geography and science.
They can also use math to calculate the amount of seeds or time for plants to grow and can learn about healthy eating and body care.
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The emergence of transdisciplinarity
The term transdisciplinarity was created by the educator Jean Piaget and published for the first time at the I International Seminar on Pluri and Interdisciplinarity, which took place in 1970, at the University of Nice, France.
Then, several other educators began to devote themselves to the topic. Today, transdisciplinarity is widely studied and the main research center on the subject is the Center International de Recherches et d'Études Transdisciplinaires.
Difference between multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
These three concepts may be confusing because of their similarity, but they are essentially different. Understand the difference between them:
Multidisciplinary
Multidisciplinary refers to the idea of several disciplines. This is the traditional form of education, with the division of teaching by subject areas.
interdisciplinary
An interdisciplinary methodology is one that promotes dialogue between different areas of knowledge. In a school that adopts this perspective, teachers dialogue and plan classes together, so that one discipline can relate to another.
Interdisciplinarity can be a way to reach transdisciplinarity.
transdisciplinary
Transdisciplinarity is the most advanced concept in terms of disciplinary division. This form of teaching requires not only the addition of disciplines, but the organization and contextualization of knowledge.
Here, the boundaries of disciplines are broken and the phenomena of human nature and man himself are understood in their entirety.
The benefits of transdisciplinary education
For scholars and advocates of transdisciplinary education, this way of understanding education is a 21st century urgency. According to them, traditional education, by dividing knowledge into several disciplines, makes it difficult to understand the whole.
Transdisciplinary education seeks to break with the understanding of what knowledge is and how it should be taught. It is opposed to teaching practices decontextualized from reality and which impede the understanding of contents in a broad way.
This new way of thinking about education privileges practices cooperatives, stimulates the creativity, a reflection it's the critical thinking. In addition, it seeks to awaken the interest of students with contextualized content that can contribute to their understanding of the real world.
See also the meaning of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.