Crossing Boundaries – Examining and Problematizing Interdisciplinarity in Science Education

This chapter illustrates the opportunities and challenges of boundary crossings in STEM education. We discuss three talks presented at an invited symposium during ESERA 2019 that aimed to problematize disciplinary boundary crossings and examine the potential, affordances, challenges, and impairments to science education they entail. Each presentation examined these issues from a different vantage point, by harnessing a different methodological approach, and focusing on different facets and scales of interdisciplinarity in science education. We begin our discussion with a broad overview of the role of interdisciplinarity in science education. The analysis of boundary crossing in the three presentations is framed by Akkerman and Bakker’s (Rev Edu Res 81(2):132–169, https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311404435, 2011) conceptualization of boundaries as dialogical phenomena, which provides a powerful analytical lens on considerations related to interdisciplinarity embedded in each project. The enactment of boundary crossings in the three projects provides concrete evidence for ways in which recent policy calls in STEM education can be materialized at the level of teaching and learning. As such, they highlight how higher order twenty-first century skills can be fostered meaningfully and constructively in education.