Interdisciplinarity in U.S. Schools: Past, Present, and Future

This article examines the historical evolution of the concepts of interdisciplinarity and integration in American education. We first focus on United States education in the 20th century to review the rationales for integrated and interdisciplinary primary and secondary education. We place such rationales in the context of the larger purposes attributed to education given societal changes and intellectual developments that characterized the times. Then we turn our attention to today’s educational landscape and new contemporary demands on education imposed by fundamental global, digital, and environmental transformations. Here, too, we place interdisciplinary education in the broader context of emerging trends in American life— recognizing that such trends are present and may take distinct forms in other countries.