Designing a module to support development of pre-service mathematics and science teachers' skills for interdisciplinary teaching

Interdisciplinary education can help teachers in supporting their students in dealing with complex problems today. However, since teachers might not have sufficient competencies for interdisciplinary teaching, professional support is needed. So, preparing pre-service teachers as competent future teachers in interdisciplinary teaching is also important. Thus, this study aimed to design a module to support pre-service mathematics and science teachers' development of skills for interdisciplinary teaching. This study has adopted design-based research as a methodological framework. The study was conducted in three phases with two iterations to design a module on interdisciplinary teaching. Participants were pre-service mathematics and science teachers in a state university in Istanbul. In this study, qualitative data from different data sources such as participants' artifacts and responses to semi-structured interviews were collected and analyzed through open-coding, axial coding and thematic analysis. The findings indicated that the limited initial conceptualizations of the pre-service teachers changed to more elaborated conceptualizations after the implementation. Moreover, based on the findings, interdisciplinarity, mathematical modeling, and implementation were key dimensions of designing interdisciplinary tasks and problems. Based on the findings of this study, promoting interdisciplinarity, mathematical modeling and active teacher learning experiences were suggested as key aspects to design a module on interdisciplinary teaching for pre-service teachers.