The Mandate for Interdisciplinarity in Science Education: The Case of Economic and Environmental Sciences

Science educators often miss an opportunity to encourage the cognitive leaps associated with the formation of networks of meaning when they deliver scientific concepts as solitary sets of received wisdom. Interdisciplinary science education provides a rich setting for encouraging this formation of meaning within the minds of the students. A wonderful example of this rich interdisciplinary setting can be found when environmental science is informed by the study of economics within the classroom. The usefulness of particular concepts in economic science for environmental science is illustrative of what science students can gain from learning science in an interdisciplinary setting.