Promoting effective interactions between mathematics and science: challenges of learning through interdisciplinarity

This chapter examines the experience of students and teachers in a Grade 2 classroom in negotiating an interdisciplinary mathematics and science learning sequence on the flight of paper helicopters. We argue that integrated STEM learning and teaching is best conceptualized through the productive interplay of individual disciplines, in this case, the mutual reinforcement of mathematics and science concepts related to flight investigations. The learning sequence was designed to engage students in the multimodal epistemic practices of each discipline, involving student creation and refinement of representations, and the chapter describes the development over three lessons of students’ developing command of investigative design, ideas about force and motion in relation to flight, and statistical constructs of variation in measure, and data organization and modeling including measures of central tendency. Data analysis involved interviews, ethnographic analysis of classroom video capture, and student work samples. The analysis demonstrates the mutual reinforcement of mathematics and science ‘ideas in common’ and the teachers’ role in shaping student representational work. Challenges in designing and implementing the sequence included some misalignment of different mathematical practices with curriculum specification and consequent lack of familiarity of teachers with content. The study showed, however, the power of a well-structured interdisciplinary sequence for disciplinary learning.