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STUDENTS ́ INTERESTS AND INTERDISCIPLINARY INSTRUCTION IN MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE

This paper presents the research project IFUN Interest and Interdisciplinary Instruction in Science and Mathematics. As researchers in mathematics and science education we are basically interested in how students’ learning and understanding in these subjects might be improved. Many research studies indicate that students’ interest in science and mathematics declines during lower secondary school level (Hoffmann et al. 1998), but international surveys as well as other indicators do not indicate any general decrease of interest in science among the population in most countries (Sjøberg 2003). A simple assumption is that many young people find various aspects of science and mathematics interesting, but it is beyond the capacity of the school to catch and hold this interest. Until recently research in interest has not to any great extent addressed the relation between interest and education at the upper secondary level. The reason for this could be the assumption that students have developed relatively stable individual interest profiles during lower secondary school. According to Prenzel (1998) there are several factors that lead to questioning this assumption. The students are confronted with an abundance of topics, and although many of these do not correspond to the students’ individual interest they may lead to new areas of interest. At Danish upper secondary education the students’ student can choose between different subject packages and a number of optional subjects. The choices of students might among other things be based on interest. Also the students’ at upper secondary education have to make decisions about future education and profession. Personal interest is a key factor behind modern youth’s educational choice and career aspirations are used as indicators of interest in scientific fields (Gardner 1998). It is characteristic for research in students’ interests that the domains, which have been studied, are ones that belong to academically defined curricula with focus on a single subject, for instance physics or mathematics. In the light of current tendency towards increased interplay and integration between different subjects, interest research in the field of mathematics and science should also include broader and interdisciplinary domains that are associated with the applied, environmental, technological and socio-scientific content. It is the intention of the IFUN-project to fulfill these gaps in interest research. With focus on interdisciplinary domains of the disciplines mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and technology the research questions of the IFUN-project are: