Interdisciplinary Instructional Approach to the Theme "Air, Water, Soil And Food Pollution And Its Prevention"

The paper presents an elaboration of the theme “Air, water, soil and food pollution and its prevention” in the seventh grade of primary school (students aged 13). Our aim was to examine the possibility of using the potential of this theme in order to integrate students’ knowledge acquired in separate subjects (chemistry, physics, biology), as well as to make students aware of the importance and possibilities of such an application of knowledge for achieving a better understanding of the environment they live in. Additionally, we aimed at the development of students’ active and participatory attitudes towards environment, as well as of a sense of responsibility for the conditions in their environment. To achieve these aims we organized four workshops. The effects of the approach were examined in a pedagogical experiment, which included one experimental group and a parallel control group. The interdisciplinary approach and the workshop technique were used with the experimental group, while the control group was submitted to traditional frontal forms of teaching and in-class discussions. The students of the experimental group showed better results at the post-testing, and the arithmetic mean difference was statistically significant at the 0.01 significance level