Interdisciplinary approach to teaching physics to students majoring in agrarian engineering and agronomy

This study reports on interdisciplinary approach to teaching physics to the students majoring in agrarian and mechanical engineering. Physics plays a crucial role in mastering major disciplines by students of technical universities. Ukrainian higher education provides primarily mono-disciplinary approach to teaching academic and major subjects, so called teaching isolated disciplines. The interdisciplinary aspect of teaching physics corresponds to the requirements of modern society to educate competitive and qualified specialists in agricultural and engineering spheres. The study aims at defining the essence of interdisciplinary links between physics and major subjects, at specifying the peculiarities of job-focused physics tasks, at demonstrating the necessity of implementation the professional context in the process of studying. The paper investigates this issue by analyzing, comparing, systematizing the pedagogical literature.The study is based on monitoring and pedagogical experiment that proved the insufficient level of professional orientation of physics course. Pedagogical experiment was carried (out from 2014 to 2017). The students of State Agrarian and Engineering University in Podilya, Tavriyskiy State Agrarian University majoring in Agrarian Engineering and Agronomy and the students of Sumy National Agrarian University majoring in Agricultural mechanization took part in the survey. The sample involved 150 students. The study demonstrated such advantages of interdisciplinary approach to teaching physics through occupation-based task scenarios as student engagement and highly qualified specialists, subject interaction. The results of the experiment showed the insufficient level of professional competence of physics course. The material in this article, he patterns of physics course tasks accompanied by illustrations for students of mechanical engineering and agrarian departments, in particular, can be used in educational process