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Mathematics is one of five disciplines in the successful interdisciplinary STEM course ‘nature, life and technology’ (NLT) for upper secondary education in the Netherlands. In this study the way mathematics manifests itself in the course is examined at the intended, implemented and attained curriculum. The results show that students often don’t recognise mathematics in the course or that they consider the level of mathematics in the course as too low, not interesting. Besides this, mathematics teachers seem to struggle more with their role in interdisciplinary teaching than science teachers. Some feel that there is no need for their mathematical expertise, due to the extent to which mathematics is used. Even though the course has many positive outcomes when it comes to mathematics in the course NLT not only shows diversity in practice but also raises questions we need to address if we want mathematics to be part of interdisciplinary education.

In this chapter, talking from our professional experience in Secondary Mathematics Education in Catalonia, we will first describe the essential elements of working with interdisciplinary activities and knowing how to carry them out from an organizational point of view. Subsequently, we will describe in detail two examples in which good learning outcomes were achieved. Both examples have arisen from the necessity to attend to all the capacities of the students in low secondary school (12–14 years old) and to give them the possibility to develop their own creativity. Furthermore both examples have an extension activity for students in upper secondary school (16–18 years old) where it is possible to attend to their abstract capacity and connect all their knowledge appropriate to their age. Furthermore, we have chosen these two cases because both are very close to the reality of the students and both have an important background: to the desire for, and valuing of, a critical attitude. In the concluding section, we define some features of these interdisciplinary activities which can be extrapolated to any educational centre.

Schools in Australia and internationally are responding to calls to offer new and innovative learning opportunities in STEM. STEM stands for Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Mathematics, but when amalgamated into the acronym ‘STEM’ can potentially mean more than the sum of the four parts. In choosing how to respond to the STEM ‘push’, schools must first navigate through the many ‘versions’ of STEM emerging within the education community, and then face the task of upskilling teachers in content and language, teaching approaches, and new technology and equipment. Professional development of teachers plays an important part in assisting teachers and schools in this period of innovation and change. This chapter describes one such professional development project where teachers from ten schools in regional Victoria, Australia, were supported in developing new knowledge, language, pedagogy, and curriculum to support their development of a ‘STEM vision’ for their schools. The activities developed by these schools are outlined to illustrate that they each have taken a different approach to STEM, with case studies showing how these activities were developed. The factors critical to the success of the program are outlined, which have implications for a policy response, as well as challenges that may threaten the sustainability of such initiatives.

To gain insight into ways student’s experiences with mathematics can support them to reach their human potentials, we explored children’s engagement in a collaborative art project. We describe the teacher-developed project and facilitation approaches that supported the exploration. Using a narrative inquiry methodology and artefacts from the experience, we narrate children’s experiences using four dimensions: autonomy, authority, success, and relationships with others. We contend that the children were involved with ideas and peers in ways that resulted in building a positive relationship with mathematics, producing a counter-narrative to one of failure and helplessness typical of mathematics as a discipline. Recommendations for further study focussed on mainly mono-disciplinary contexts are shared.

This paper attempts to demonstrate that inter-disciplinary mathematics is an old practice, newly rediscovered, and formerly accessible to everyone, but problematised by modern times. Evidence of interdisciplinary mathematics, now often termed STEM, is presented from history and from more recent curriculum documents. Research into the benefits of integrated approaches to STEM education give qualified support to such approaches, and suggests characteristics defining effective interdisciplinary learning. An example of a project-based approach is examined for its contribution to thinking about how inter-disciplinary mathematics might be more generally applied to student learning in Primary and Secondary schools in modern times. Curricular considerations and examples are examined for interdisciplinary possibilities, while some caveats are presented to temper any rush to inter-disciplinarity without due consideration of the consequences.

The two chapters on teacher education for Interdisciplinary Mathematics Education are introduced. It is argued that teacher education is required for the innovations that interdisciplinarity demands, and that the success of interdisciplinary education stands or falls on the state of teacher preparation for it.

In order to eliminate the lack of teaching materials relevant to interdisciplinary teacher education, we implemented a worksheet about human blood. Altogether 64 students of bachelor and master study programmes of biology teacher training at Constantine the Philosopher University (CPU) in Nitra, Slovakia, filled in a 12-item worksheet which required the application of mathematical methods for answering biology-related questions. Moreover, students were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their attitudes to this material. By means of a content analysis of the teacher trainees’ performance on each of the 12 items, their current mathematical competencies (unit conversion, calculation of percentages, the rule of three, and combinatorics) were evaluated. Based on the statistical evaluation we conclude that the students’ success rate in tasks focused on unit conversion, calculation of percentages, and the rule of three, was significantly different than in tasks focused on combinatorics. This suggests that the higher knowledge shown in Mendelian concepts (combinatorics) is probably based on studying it in an interdisciplinary manner in their general biology courses. Finally, we conclude that the analysis of feedback received from students provides the university educators with the opportunity to adjust the content of the worksheet, and to improve their teaching strategies, in interdisciplinary contexts.

We describe what Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Fellows reported regarding their experiences within a research-intensive programme in STEM Education. Our study employed a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data included a survey by Kardash () to examine Fellows’ research expectations, familiarity with literature, and ability to conduct statistical analyses pre and post the interdisciplinary STEM Education programme. We also analysed qualitative data from the Fellows’ pre-, mid-, and post-evaluation interviews. We discovered significant growth in their confidence levels in studying, conducting, and analysing research ( < 0.001). At the end of their nine- month research experiences, Fellows stated they felt they had gained skills in coding and analysing data, conducting interviews, using technology, writing, and presenting, but most frequently noted their increase of interpersonal collaborations with other future STEM teacher researchers. This research is the first to examine the effectiveness of an academic year interdisciplinary STEM Education REU programme. REU programmes typically are offered two months (8 weeks) between Spring and Autumn semesters and within only one STEM content discipline located in schools of science and engineering, as opposed to education.

We summarise the progress made by the works reported in this book for the field of Interdisciplinary Mathematics Education. It is concluded that there is still much to be done in this subfield.