Physics Teaching and Educational Interdisciplinarity with A.V. Usova Revisited

TL;DR

This paper revisits A.V. Usova's pedagogical contributions, emphasizing her insights into interdisciplinary teaching in physics education and exploring how her ideas can address current educational challenges.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of Usova's views on teaching physics as a foundation for educational interdisciplinarity and discusses opportunities for boundary-crossing teaching methods.

Findings

Usova's classification of interdisciplinary relations

Recommendations for applying interdisciplinary teaching

Unified approach to knowledge and skills development

Abstract

The paper deals with pedagogical heritage of A.V. Usova (1921-2014) that yields insights into problems of interdisciplinary relationship in the school science education system. Her fundamental works were used as teaching guides in the preparation of physics teachers of all pedagogical universities of the Soviet Union and Russia. In this study, professor Usova is not an interdisciplinary researcher; she is a researcher of interdisciplinarity. Here is provided a short and consistent description of her views on teaching physics as a foundation of educational interdisciplinarity. Usova elaborated educational functions, classifications, organizational levels, ways of instantiating, content-related foundations of interdisciplinary relations, recommendations for practical applying interdisciplinary relations. Besides, Usova suggested a unified approach to the study of knowledge and skills through the generalized plans. And we would like not simply clarify, retell or restate the very powerful didactic discoveries of Usova, but consider opportunities of teaching across boundaries for actual educational challenges. The future of the field of didactics, which deals with the study of interdisciplinarity, is very interesting and attractive. This problem will always excite scientists, educators and teachers, and the futurity of science education depends on the ways it is solved.