Enhancing student teachers’ collaborative interdisciplinary design through knowledge-building activities

Abstract

This study aims to investigate student teachers’ interdisciplinary design collaboration and integrated teacher knowledge in a knowledge-building environment. A class of 14 participants was divided into four groups to discuss interdisciplinary learning design ideas using Knowledge Forum. Data include (1) a pre- and post- questionnaire designed to investigate the participants' interdisciplinary design capacities (e.g., teacher efficacy, epistemic fluency, interdisciplinary design communication, integrated teacher professional knowledge) and (2) records of online activities such as numbers of notes generated, modified, and read. The findings showed that student teachers’ perception of teacher efficacy to design interdisciplinary learning, epistemic understanding, interdisciplinary design communication, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), and integrated technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) were significantly enhanced. The online knowledge-building activities were more likely to relate to student teachers’ epistemic understanding and integrated teacher knowledge (i.e., TCK and TPK). The significance of practice-based, design-oriented activities for developing interdisciplinary collaboration in teacher preparation is discussed.