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Interdisciplinary Education

Source: **//DNA (Daily News & Analysis).//** (Oct. 26, 2011): Byline: Manjula Pooja Shroff

If education has to cater to everyday living, it must deal with a multitude of topics. Practically speaking, one thing leads to another. Economics is connected to politics and politics to civil society. No wonder that the inter-disciplinary approach is gathering steam. Subjects, as they are taught today in isolation are fast losing their dominance. Interdisciplinary or inter-professional learning is a process by which students come to understand bodies of knowledge and acquire ways of thinking from two or more subject groups and integrate them to create a new understanding.

This trend of interdisciplinary learning stems from the societal need that education requires to prepare a workforce that can address society's most pressing concerns, from health and education to environment and world peace. The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) recently demonstrated the use of interdisciplinary learning quite successfully. Students display interdisciplinary understanding of a particular topic when they can bring together concepts, methods, or forms of communication from two or more disciplines to explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product, or raise a new question in ways that would have been unlikely through a single disciplinary method.

**Gale Document Number:** GALE|A270781030