One day in science class, we were studying about springs. The teacher taught about elastic energy and Hooke’s Law. But suddenly, one student said, “Hey, it’s the same as math!” Then the teacher called the math teacher and she started teaching instead. Of course, as a math teacher, she focused on calculation and formula. So in this class, we studied the same topic from different subject perspectives. It was super exciting. That’s why I remember clearly.

This experience made me wonder, when different subjects have similar topics, why don’t you combine them? That way we can remove the overlaps and study more efficiently. The same goes for all subjects. Now in most schools, we study each subject separately. But I believe there should be some connections between them.

So, what if they are taught across the boundaries? And what if we can find connections with our daily life as well? Actually, I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Hence, there is an expression for that. This idea is called transdisciplinary education.

This education model has been encouraged for such a long time. But in reality, due to its costing quite a lot of time and in-depth thoughts, most schools haven’t achieved it yet. But according to Dobozy and Dalziel, “The transdisciplinary framework seems to be most helpful when it includes a curriculum planning tool.”

That’s why I created the app SmarT. This app promotes high school teachers’ collaboration in order to achieve transdisciplinary education.

SmarT has two outstanding features. Subject integration and material recommendation.

Let me explain about subject integration first.

So let’s say you’re a geography teacher, teaching class 1. This is a part of the annual schedule that you can get from the textbook publishing company. By analyzing this schedule and the textbook, what SmarT does is to collect keywords. More specifically, SmarT finds out how many times a certain word appears in which section of which unit.

For example, when unit 1 section 3 is about environmental issues in Japan, the words like Japan, waste, environmental and pollution appear a lot. This process is done to all subjects.

So when you have a section about culture, SmarT may suggest, “how about combining this section with this history one and the art one?” This suggestion is made based on the keywords that SmarT collects and the result of material searching, which I’ll explain later.

And once SmarT finds connections like this, it offers an integrated schedule. For example, say, you teach geography on Monday 3rd period, Wednesday 2nd period and Thursday 5th period, and the others have schedules like this.

Now, if three of your schedules are combined for a week, starting from Monday, the order of teaching should be like this, right? Then SmarT converts this one into this vertical one.

So what’s the strong point about this schedule? Yeah, some applications have a co-teacher system, which is supposed to be used for teachers to work together. And with this system, they can see each other's lesson plans.

But the problem is they don’t visit you that often. In other words, they don’t see your schedule until they "try to" see it.

On the other hand, this schedule is shared with all the teachers concerned and you can fill in just like you’re doing right now. You don’t have to visit the others' lesson plans every time. Instead, you can check them, while making yours.

Also, referring to the others, you can change or tweak the plan right away.

For example, you noticed that before your class, students are learning about how to make natural dyes from plants. So you might feel like changing this part into a more related one. That way, you can help students more to find connections between the subjects.

So then how does SmarT recommend online materials? As I said before, SmarT collects keywords from each subject. And using these keywords, SmarT searches materials online and suggests the suitable one for your integrated plan.

So let me give you an example. This is an actual article you can find on the Internet and on the right is the actual data that I got. This time I found the article and collected the data, but of course, SmarT will do it instead of us. In addition to this process, SmarT checks which subject each of these words belong to and based on the result, it chooses sections to be integrated and then, it recommends this kind of website to clarify the connection.

So how can teachers use them? Well, it depends on teachers. Of course they can use them in class as teaching materials. Today, I’d like to suggest two ways to make efficient use of them.

My first suggestion is to use them to create a comprehensive exam.

Instead of having exams separately, how about making a test that covers all of the subjects? That way, you can divide tasks such as making and grading tests with the other teachers, and also the students don’t need to take so many exams. In short, it can reduce the burden on both teachers and students.

The other suggestion is to assign an integrative paper or project.

How about letting students make their own costumes? As a geography teacher, you can ask students how their choice of fabric is related to the climate. The art teacher may teach how to dye or paint the clothes and the history teacher may let the students write a hypothetical story about how their costumes were developed.

It would be ideal if you could schedule a class that all of you can join so that students can get advice from different teachers from different disciplines at the same time, which helps them connect these subjects more easily.

Either way, students are required to think beyond the subject boundaries, which is the first step to transdisciplinary education.

According to the organization International School Parent, this kind of experience cultivates students’ deeper conceptual understanding as it allows them to see the same things from different perspectives.

And by understanding deeply, their problem-solving skills are promoted. Combining their knowledge, they can try to solve more complicated problems.

And once they do it, the sense of accomplishment increases their intrinsic motivation and makes them feel like studying more.

This virtuous circle makes transdisciplinary education sustainable.

But in the first place, how should I get users? Well, first I’d ask some high schools that are already trying subject integration, to use this app and give me some feedback, and also the government to further promote the idea of transdisciplinary education recommending SmarT. After that, I’d market to all the high schools in Japan.

Now, the world we live in is so messy and chaotic with tons of unsolved complicated problems. That’s why we have the concept of subjects in order to understand things one by one, focusing on one perspective at a time. And it’s been successful so far.

But just to let you know, subjects are just the collections of the same perspectives of this world. Now what we need is to rebuild the connections to address various kinds of issues in this complexity, which many of us aren’t aware of.

I strongly believe we can reach this goal by using SmarT in education. With this great application, let’s achieve transdisciplinary education together. Thank you for listening.