Thanks Maureen. Your work certainly puts a different perspective on border crossings and shows the value of crossing borders to establish the benefits of bicultural or multicultural learning. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s some of us in the UK believed in global education and we taught that way, bringing in material and activities from across our wonderful mixed cultures. Now the separatists and neo-con racists are pulling us to a more xenophobic culture where immigrants and their diverse rich cultures are to be regarded with suspicion. I am saddened by what is happening here but my heart and mind lifts when I hear what can be accomplished in NZ - maybe I should emigrate!

Thanks Doris. As always, your work helps shine a light on some interesting aspects of teacher actions. I will chase this one up.

My wife is a French Teacher in a K4- Grade 8 School. Her classes are as close to an immersion approach as she can make them. She reviews the regular classroom teacher's lesson plans and incorporates those in her classes. Many of the teachers learned some French from her and continue the crossover throughout the day. 

Hi Martin,

I encourage you to look at the keynote presentation of Professor David Clarke from the recent STEM2014 conference where the notion of border crossing in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics was addressed. Hope this helps. Kevin.

http://stem2014.ubc.ca/files/2014/07/Permeability-and-Affordances-in-STEM.pdf 

One of the best books on this is by Henry Giroux.  A great read and incredibly informative - really makes one think.  Here's the info:

Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education

Routledge Publishing [1992]

Book Desciption

Border Crossings showcases Henry Giroux's extraordinary range as a thinker by bringing together a series of essays that refigures the relationship between postmodernism, feminism, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy.

Giroux begins by illuminating the shared intellectual and political concerns of academic disciplines. He then introduces the concept of ``border crossing'' as a way to formulate the role cultural workers might play in the development of a critical pedagogical practice that works across these disciplines. It is only through the establishment of a pedagogical practice that is truly united and truly political, Giroux argues, that an emancipatory curriculum becomes possible

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Thank you for the references. I will be reading carefully!

I have crossed borders in my teaching in physical education teacher education. I live in New Zealand and am of European/Pākehā descent I teach indigenous Māori movement in physical education. I cross borders as a non-Māori New Zealander. Te ao kori - the world of Māori movement is identified in the New Zealand curriculum as an aspect of physical education. In my border crossing I have used teaching te ao kori as a means to guiding physical education teacher education (PETE) students to become more bicultural.  In developing my teaching I chose to focus on building a bicultural relationship as it is a unique feature of this country. A key emphasis has been that the teaching has been coordinated and taught by a Pākehā lecturer. This critical stance highlights that while Māori are bicultural, Pākehā also need to grapple with what it takes to be bicultural. I have published a number of articles on this work and have attached one on this comment. I realise my comment is a different tangent to the original question but I believe offers another insight into border crossing. I agree Henri Giroux has some very interesting work on border crossing. 

Article Te ao kori as expressive movement in Aotearoa New Zealand ph...

Thanks Maureen. Your work certainly puts a different perspective on border crossings and shows the value of crossing borders to establish the benefits of bicultural or multicultural learning. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s some of us in the UK believed in global education and we taught that way, bringing in material and activities from across our wonderful mixed cultures. Now the separatists and neo-con racists are pulling us to a more xenophobic culture where immigrants and their diverse rich cultures are to be regarded with suspicion. I am saddened by what is happening here but my heart and mind lifts when I hear what can be accomplished in NZ - maybe I should emigrate!

Border crossing can relate to curriculum content just as it could to pedagogy. One good example is using dance to tteach literacy. I have been involved in a movement that we call specific literacy and this draws on the concept of border-crossing by using both subject specific pedagogy in different vocational areas, as well as vocational content to promote literacy

At Ball State we have been engaged in a community-based teacher education initiative called 'Schools Within the Context of Community' over the last six years ... we have witnessed some amazing transformative impact relative to preservice teachers, our community partners, faculty, and most importantly, student learning ... essentially the model reinforces that preservice teachers must understand the context in which children are growing and learning in order to make content and pedagogy relevant ... as such, we take our preservice teachers (who mostly are white, middle class female with little prior exposure to diversity) off campus for an entire to semester to work in a low-income, african american community.  they practice teach in the school, while their courses (taught in an interdisciplinary, integrated fashion by four faculty) take place at the local community center.  additionally, they are matched with community mentors who serve as host families and who invite them to church, to community events, and to family gatherings so that they might participate authentically in the life of the community.  we work closely with the local community council, and our preservice teachers practice critical service learning, alongside community members, which we can then deconstruct within the lens' of race, power, and privilege ... their opportunity to not only witness, but participate in, amazing acts of community mobilization is transformative, and reframes their previous deficit framework to one of strength and resiliency .... we have collected much data over the last six years relative to candidate transformation, community impact, and impact on student learning ... we're finding some amazing growth relative to culturally responsive practice and culturally relevant pedagogy based on candidate's expanded network of "teacher educators".... it's been an amazing journey of transformation for faculty as well .... very happy to share some published work if others are interested .....

one thing i neglected to reference is the impact of candidates attending church, observing and somewhat studying the 'pedagogy of preaching' in the african american community, which involves a good deal of 'call and response', and then incorporating that into their teaching .... quite wonderful :)

We can find many examples of good practices  when teachers collaborate in interdisciplinary projects. Through such projects they build new skills and learn various approaches in teaching. Of course there are always individuals that have a talent or skill which apply in teaching but I have noticed that in may cases collaboration even in special occasions would give the opportunity to teachers of different specialization to build new skills and adopt one from another some good approaches in teaching.

Than you for this. The idea of borders associated with traditional subject disciplines is relevant in my work I am dealing with a crossing between arts (drama) and science. It has been suggested that subject disciplines of the curriculum have evolved structures and characteristics creating boundaries between them and that this is counter to the experiences of many adolescents who frequently cross borders in their daily lives (Phelan, Davidson & Cao, 1991). THis has often meant t disciplinary borders favouring a utilitarian view of knowledge and creativity, often under-valuing disciplines, including the creative and performing arts, not directly associated with primary means of economic production. So science, technology and mathematics are then more valuable than arts and humanities. The borders between self-reinforcing disciplinary structures result in inadequate attention paid to the potential of working across, between and beyond disciplines and the benefits that you rightly point out.

An important process in attempting to cross borders, through interdisciplinary work, is by deploying ‘border (boundary) objects’. The term was first used by Star and Griesemer (1989) describing the work of scientists collaborating to develop a natural history museum. Border objects are conceived as articulating meaning in addressing multiple perspectives and can have different meanings in different social worlds, but at the same time have a structure that is common enough to make them recognisable across these worlds. From this perspective the role-plays used by student teachers in my study are the border objects with structure in the ‘drama world’ applicable and useable in the ‘other world’ of the science classroom. Soon we will have findings that show to what extent these border objects are useful and help the student teachers teach science using drama.

For me role playing, music and arts are important  because I teach children with special educational needs. Though I wouldn't call it project based learning, it has interdisciplinary characteristics not only because  acquiring language skills should be  horizontal target in all subjects, but also because I take the advantage to teach different subjects simultaneously. But quite the same way i have been teaching in class as primary school teacher teaching all subjects. Crossing borders theories support the theoritical framework but the reason why  science teachers are reluctant to teach science with drama depends on a) their student teacher education b) the specialization and the lack of ideas suggested in books the use to teach the curriculum. Thus  textbooks that suggests ideas of teaching with drama and relevant activities should be provided to them

So hard to trace those boundaries, Sometimes, I would say they don´t exist.

Hi Martin - My colleagues and I from across the disciplines have been practicing pedagogical and curricular border crossing for more than two decades in the form of interdisciplinary learning communities (LCs). At their core, interdisciplinary LCs have four essential features: interdisciplinary subject matter, collaborative learning pedagogy, team-teaching, and integrated assessment. They provide an alternative to traditional college general education course offerings by connecting courses often perceived as unrelated. In a LC a common theme, question, or issue is used to integrate courses and provide coherence, rather than subject matter alone. LCs strive to build both academic and social communities of learners.  In LCs, faculty teach together, while students learn cooperatively and collaborate on integrative assignments.  My teaching partner (theater) and I (psychology) detail both the teaching and learning practices engendered by this approach in an article  - "The Play's the Thing: Embodying Moments of Integration Live, On Stage".  We report on a learning community, which integrated adolescent psychology with acting - "Smells Like Teen Spirit: Performing Adolescent Identities." Crossing the boundaries between the classroom and the stage, students' learning was embodied, enabling them to understand such complex interdisciplinary concepts as "transitionally".  The teaching was also embodied as we modeled, then "performed" the pedagogical practices of each others' disciplines.  It was team teaching that was at the heart of our "pedagogical border crossings".  Thanks for the opportunity to address such an interesting concept…Jack Mino 

With a shift from Pedagogy (Focus on Children) to Andragogy (Adult centered Learning) and subsequently Heutogogy (Self-Directed Learning) while using advantages of Digigogy (Using Digital Tools), I would say anything is possible.

What an interesting thread of ideas. Not much compelling to add here, but I wanted to say that I love the idea of pedagogical border crossings, and it seems that drama offers a particular kind of pedagogy in ways u described nicely, Martin, and that others added here--the embodied, often-vocalized, lived-through nature of engaging with ideas and content. I have used drama to enact content themes, and then a class will engage in analysis of themes in scenes we have enacted. I started to explore virtual reality as a tool for drama and perspective taking, but didn't get too far with it. Eva Zygmunt, your work on community-based partnerships in teacher education sounds amazing! i hope to check it out.

One of the reasons why we set up the ethics in science education projects for out of class online discussion was the context of a science lab with 'benches' does not signal discussion opportunities. This seems to me to be a pedagogical border linked to students' previous experiences and expectations. I remember discussing the need to suggest a change to a humanities classroom  environment for science teacher trainees as they struggled in getting students to engage in discussions with Mary Ratcliffe and believe something along the same lines is covered in her and Marcus Grace's text on Science for Citizenship.