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Abstract
The siloed nature of education has likely caused some high school students to not recognize the interdisciplinary nature of mathematics, leading them to misunderstand its relationship to other subject areas. A misunderstanding of mathematical interdisciplinarity can cause issues when these students approach interdisciplinary problems later in life. The purpose of this study was to observe, investigate, and analyze the ways in which students understand mathematical interdisciplinarity following a collaborative and interdisciplinary project. I implemented a descriptive qualitative action research approach to determine how a collaborative interdisciplinary project on NASA technology in a high school mathematics course affects students’ understandings of mathematical interdisciplinarity. Data collected from seven students through pre- and post-questionnaires, observations during the 13-day intervention, and student artifacts suggested that students’ broad understandings of mathematical interdisciplinarity were not affected by the NASA technology project, though multiple participants indicated their mathematically interdisciplinary understandings changed in the discipline of technology. However, both weak and strong conceptual changes existed within multiple codes of mathematical interdisciplinarity. Based on the findings and analysis, a primary recommendation for personal practice is to update the NASA technology project guidelines to better guide students towards mathematically interdisciplinary understandings and social constructivist behaviors to promote more conceptual change. Future research focusing on comprehensive mathematical interdisciplinarity in nontraditional mathematics courses is also needed.
