Interdisciplinary learning: ITAP on selecting and utilising ISMs

This will explore research around the use of ‘Initial Stimulus Material’ (Phillips, 2001; Roberts, 2013) to motivate and stimulate pupils’ subject disciplinary thinking at the start of lessons. It will explore the lessons learnt from a 5-day subject specific ITAP which was designed to enable trainees to analyse and deconstruct practice in both selecting and utilising ISMs related to a clear subject focus, prior to the commencement of their first placement. With schools increasingly focused on inert knowledge retrieval and ‘do now’ tasks this ITAP was designed to help trainees to start lessons with an ISM which drew upon student's schema, and created ‘a need to know’ (Roberts, 2013).