(Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2010) Lenoir, Yves; Klein, Julie Thompson
Multi- and interdisciplinary education is a major postulate in the Swiss school
system and has considerable weight in educational programs and learning objectives, both
in compulsory school and at the upper secondary school level. However, materializing
this postulate still poses problems at the political and institutional level, where the
fragmentation of educational system due to Switzerland’s federal structure does not
foster wide-scale reform; in certain programs at the secondary school level, where
disciplinary logic remains predominant; and in teachers’ everyday practice, which is only
slowly adopting an interdisciplinary posture. Following a presentation of the specifics of
the Swiss educational system and an attempt to define the notion of interdisciplinarity,
this contribution will offer an analysis of developments in the discourse surrounding
interdisciplinarity in Switzerland from the 1970s onwards and present the most noteworthy
initiatives in this field.