Ways of constructing interdisciplinary tasks in teaching

Over the past decades, the solution of interdisciplinary problems and tasks has become one of the important areas of training and education, socially approved and institutionally supported at various levels. At the same time, the topic of the actual construction (and not only the use) of interdisciplinary, interdisciplinary tasks is covered only in a small number of works. There are at least two reasons for this. Not all researchers and practitioners who turn to interdisciplinary problems and use them construct them themselves. And even for those who construct them, reflection, explication and generalization of their experience, a strategic vision of new types of interdisciplinary tasks is a special meta-task that is set by a few.

Probably, no meaningful classification of ways of constructing interdisciplinary problems can be completely exhaustive. In this construction, the creativity of the developer of interdisciplinary problems can be manifested, the results of which will not fit into the previous classifications. It is hardly possible to describe and predict all the possible ways of reasonable linking of certain disciplines (including future ones) and the types of questions based on these connections. At the same time, such classifications are important, useful and heuristic.

One of the important possible ways of constructing interdisciplinary problems and tasks can be the use of R.T. Williams’ ideas about the ecology of various types of knowledge. His metaphor of the ecology of knowledge allows us to analyze different types and kinds of knowledge produced in different «ecological niches», as well as their «ecological diversity». The introduction of explicit ideas about different sources and types of knowledge into the content of interdisciplinary tasks can become one of the important areas of interdisciplinarity in education as a whole.

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