The effect of interdisciplinary instruction on the structural knowledge of middle level students

This research study investigated the effects of an interdisciplinary unit on structural knowledge as measured by the Ordered-Tree test. The study tested nine hypotheses related to three elements of structural knowledge: consistency of organization of structure, depth of structure and similarity of structure. A treatment-control group design with repeated measure was analyzed using ability as a covariate. The treatment was an interdisciplinary unit on nutrition integrating English, health, mathematics and science. The subjects were sixth and seventh grade students from a middle school in rural Pennsylvania.;The three hypotheses testing the change in the consistency of organization of structure failed to be rejected. No significant difference was found between the pre and post consistency of structure scores for the within treatment group, among ability levels and between the treatment-control group.;The depth of structure hypotheses was not significant. These three hypotheses tested for a change in depth of structure within the treatment group, among ability levels and between the treatment-control group.;The third test for structure dealt with similarity of organization and similarity of concept chunks compared to two experts. There was a difference in the similarity of organization between the pretest and the post test structure of the treatment group. The relationship between concepts were different for the post test when compared to the pretest. The second test for similarity, similarity of concept chunks to an expert structure was tested using two expert structures, an interdisciplinary expert structure and a disciplinary expert structure. There was no change in the pre-post test similarity of concept chunks when compared to the disciplinary expert structure. However there was a significant difference in the similarity of concept chunks for the treatment group when compared to the interdisciplinary expert structure. The treatment group's structure became more similar to the interdisciplinary expert structure.;This study also found support for two issues related to interdisciplinary instruction. The treatment group's rate of absenteeism was reduced by two-thirds during the participation in the unit and there was no significant difference in the change of structural knowledge between differing ability levels.