Describing and supporting effective science teaching and learning in Australian schools - validation issues

Constructivism is a wide school of thought and its view on learning has important implications to both teaching and learning. Taking a constructivist view of learning to explain interdisciplinary education may help teachers understand the process of building concepts and learning among students as well as the implementation of assessment tasks. Based on a constructivist view of learning, this paper illustrates the assessment aspect of interdisciplinary learning using concrete examples of students' work collected from the Schools Around the World (SAW) project. SAW is an international project which was established in order to set standards for students' work and to stimulate the sharing of teaching ideas among teachers from nine participating nations or regions, with an aim to promote professional development among teachers. This paper attempts to introduce the background of interdisciplinary learning and its assessment methods and hopes to stimulate professional discussion in this respect among teachers.