Examining the development of a transdisciplinary collaboration

Abstract

The urban arts play a significant role in the lives of many of today’s youth and may thus be a powerful vehicle for students to engage in and with mathematics. The Urban Arts Project (UAP) aims to incorporate the urban arts across all curricular subjects in one secondary school in Eastern Canada. A key feature of the project is to bring in artists to partner with school teachers in designing and delivering lessons that integrate urban arts. In this paper, we describe the case of one urban street artist and one mathematics teacher and the development of their collaboration to teach two interdisciplinary units of study. Although both the artist and teacher articulated initial hesitations to work across disciplinary boundaries and to collaborate, interview data suggest that by the end of the collaboration, both members had developed mutual respect, an important component in a successful collaboration. In the paper, we describe three factors that were important in supporting the development of this mutual respect: (a) opportunities for the artist to watch the teacher teach prior to the unit, (b) a pivotal moment where the artist’s respect for the teacher was made explicit, and (c) an artist-teacher liaison who was able to help facilitate collaboration between the artist and teacher. Given the success of this transdisciplinary collaboration, we encourage (mathematics) educators to think more broadly about opportunities and options for collaboration. By extending beyond disciplinary boundaries, collaborators can learn and benefit from varied and diverse perspectives.