Teaching about local, national and global disasters, such as the Titanic disaster of 1912, can encourage young people to engage with an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon diverse perspectives and methodologies. An integration of historical, social and scientific reasoning and thinking is needed to develop a comprehensive understanding of such issues. To develop students’ interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, teacher collaboration across subjects (Erduran, 2024) has been suggested as a promising approach (Park & Cho, 2022).

However, the current educational landscape in England presents numerous practical and logistical barriers to implementing effective cross-curricular teaching. Timetabling in secondary schools often places subjects like science and history in competing blocks, making collaborative teaching often impossible. This structural challenge is compounded by the uneven allocation of curricular time between subjects, with core subjects typically receiving more teaching hours than others.

The physical and organisational structure of schools further exacerbates these challenges. Departments are becoming increasingly atomised, with the removal of central staff rooms eliminating crucial spaces for informal interaction. This isolation results in limited opportunities for departments to collaborate and share knowledge, while teachers develop expertise within their own disciplines but may have limited understanding of other subject areas. Moreover, the 2014 national curriculum privileges subject-specific disciplinary knowledge, which has led to the marginalisation of cross-curricular, transferable skills in the curriculum. The opening sections on purpose and aims are specific to individual subjects with no standardised assessment criteria across all subjects, and each programme of study provides limited guidance on the possible crossovers and commonalities across subjects.

‘Departments are becoming increasingly atomised, with the removal of central staff rooms eliminating crucial spaces for informal interaction.’

The Remembering Titanic project emerged as a direct response to these challenges. By selecting this historically significant event for Southampton, we created a meaningful context for cross-disciplinary learning. A collaboration between the University of Southampton and the SeaCity Museum, the project brought together secondary science and history teachers in a collaborative environment where they could develop mutual understanding of each other’s subject content, identify connections between their disciplines, explore opportunities for meaningful cross-curricular learning, and design an integrated unit of work for key stage 3 students on a topic of local relevance.

In our project, time was allocated for teachers to explore the story of the Titanic itself and share their ideas and thoughts about how it could be taught. Collaboration between teachers from different subjects together led to unexpected discoveries. They quickly found more commonality between their subjects than anticipated, and reported that the opportunity to step out of school and collaborate with other experts was invaluable for developing their subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.

Figure 1: Science and history teachers exploring cross-curricular links based on the science of the ship

The project workshops became a powerhouse of creativity, with teachers rapidly mapping out curricular sequences. They grappled with core disciplinary knowledge and skill development, shaped lessons through enquiry pedagogy, and carefully considered how to order content to build understanding across both subjects. The discovery of overlaps between curriculum objects in history and science was particularly enlightening for both participants and researchers (Park, 2024).

The project also prompted a critical re-examination of how the Titanic disaster is taught. History teachers realised they were addressing an event of genuine local significance, leading them to reconsider their pedagogical approaches. They moved away from superficial activities to embrace high-quality disciplinary thinking. This included exploring the multinational demography of crew and passengers, examining the global impact of the disaster, and conducting sophisticated historical causal analysis of the loss of life using contemporary accounts from the subsequent inquiry with respect and sensitivity (Park et al., 2024).

Figure 2: Excerpt from the ‘How far did the Titanic disaster have an impact on the world’ lesson

Overall, this unique collaboration revealed the possibility of cross-curricular teaching between seemingly disparate subjects. The success of the project suggests that despite practical barriers, when teachers are given appropriate time, space and support to collaborate across disciplines, they can create engaging learning experiences that help students think across disciplines. Looking forward, it would be valuable for educational researchers to explore how interdisciplinary collaborations, such as the ‘Remembering Titanic’ project, can be scaled up and sustained across different subject contexts, levels of education and education systems worldwide.

References

Erduran, S., Guilfoyle, L., P& ark, W. (2024). Broadening STEAM education through cross-curricular collaboration: The case of argumentation in science and religious education. In Y. Li, Z. Zeng, & N. Song (Eds.), Disciplinary and interdisciplinary education in STEM. Advances in STEM education. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52924-5_12

Park, W. (2024). Remembering Titanic: Lessons from a cross-curricular professional development project with science and history teachers. Education in Science, 294, 22–23. https://www.wonyongpark.com/files/eistitanic.pdf

Park, W., & Cho, H. (2022). The interaction of history and STEM learning goals in teacher-developed curriculum materials: Opportunities and challenges for STEAM education. Asia Pacific Educational Review, 23, 457–474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-022-09741-0

Park, W., Shaby, N., & Newman, R. (2024). ‘We often forget it was a disaster’: Cross-curricular teacher collaboration to develop a curriculum unit on the Titanic disaster. Science & Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-024-00540-0