‘Multidisciplinary’ is a term used very often these days. Workplace trends are very clear about this fact and the new roles emerging in almost all segments of industry point towards the need of a workforce that is skilled in multiple domains. Marketing is no longer limited to creativity and communication and the need for marketeers to be equipped with digital marketing, social media, usage of generative AI etc. are almost a given. The line between sales and marketing is so unclear in most industries these days that sales personnel need to necessarily have marketing skill sets and marketing teams need to also get down to selling. Finance teams are not just expected to understand numbers but their roles encompass statutory and legal compliances, knowledge of fintech, banking, digital banking, and the list goes on. The trend of being multi-disciplinary extends to almost all aspects of a workplace.
The role of educational institutions is to enable the future workforce, i.e. their students, to be relevant to the working world. To this end the conversations about multidisciplinary education are very much in our midst these days. The problem with schools and universities is that they tend to look at the requirements of the outside world with one lens and that is the curriculum of the student and the methodology of pedagogy. Very rarely do education planners and policy makers think of these changes from a ‘teacher’ point of view.
I have spent the last 2 decades working with schools from all kinds of backgrounds and I am more than convinced that the quality of a school is almost equivalent to the quality of the teachers working there. In this light my logic is that if schools seek to introduce multidisciplinary learning and skills for students, this also means that we need to have multidisciplinary teachers. Somehow this thought of mine sounds like an alien idea as almost all teachers seem to be specialists and not multi-taskers.
The need of the hour is to have multidisciplinary teachers - teachers who can dabble with multitasking, and can demonstrate the same to the students. The truth of the matter is that all teachers are naturally multitaskers, they are capable of doing more than the box that the schools put them into. Skills like music, art, dance, counselling, or sports need not be left only to the specialists, the regular math and science teachers could also double up if they have the skills. What I am suggesting is not what has happened sporadically in schools over the years where teachers tend to fill in as a stop gap effort. I am talking about a concentrated effort to encourage multitasking in teachers, giving them multiple roles & responsibilities that were traditionally not given, introducing this as a school culture, including this as part of the key performance indicators of teachers.
The need of the hour is to nurture a generation that has the ability to multitask and possess multidisciplinary skills. Actions speak louder than words, if our teachers lead the way students will certainly follow. Let’s strive to create systems in schools that help foster multidisciplinary learning, and where teachers take the lead.
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