We investigate how an integrative approach can be applied to teaching of different disciplines at school. Interdisciplinarity can be defined as a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad to be dealt with by a single discipline. In addition to an integrated understanding of the topic the process going on inside the learner interests us. Unsuspected abilities, development of new views of the world and new commitment may emerge. Constructivism and narration, together with the socio-cultural theory of learning, form the background of the teaching and learning processes. The curriculum will integrate between subjects and recommends work in small groups in order to develop students’ social capacities. The collaborative problem solving approach, while including telling and re-telling features, allows students of natural sciences to hypothesize and test hypotheses using scientific methods. Our target audience is class teachers and subject teachers in comprehensive school (grades 1-9). Our research questions are: Do students that undergo integrative education work, think and problem-solve in different ways compared to when partaking in standard instruction? Can they develop a deep understanding of the topic they are studying? We plan to present a collage of stories and fragments of stories as texts as well as visualizations concerning the topic "eggs". Such a collage goes beyond realist storytelling. It is playing with ideas and reveals possible courses of future action. Our topic covers arts, foreign languages, mathematics, and science. Our approach strengthens the understanding of the disciplines themselves. The project group consists of three persons connected to teaching and/or education research and working on a voluntary basis since spring 2007.

Teachers perform action research of their own teaching. Observation and video recordings of lessons are used for data collection. Students’ documentations and reviews that are used for assessment also give useful background information.

We hope that our work can be useful for teachers that are interested to give their students a more holistic view of their life world.