Interdisciplinarity in Swiss Schools: A Difficult Step into the Future

Abstract

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.