Despite the growing prominence of interdisciplinary education in international debates related to twenty-first-century skills (Scott, 2015; UNESCO, 2022), curriculum structures (Dussel, 2020), and teacher professionalism (McGrath, 2023), research on initial teacher education (ITE) remains fragmented in explaining how future teachers are prepared for interdisciplinary work. While existing studies and reviews have documented benefits, challenges, competences, and curricular approaches associated with interdisciplinarity (Bourke et al., 2022; Tonnetti & Lentillon-Kaestner, 2023; Wang & Sang, 2024), less attention has been paid to the formative mechanisms through which these orientations are produced, mediated, and sustained within teacher education programs. This gap is particularly salient in secondary education, where ITE faces the challenge of preparing future teachers for interdisciplinary work within training contexts shaped by a strongly disciplinary organization of knowledge (Flores, 2016; Bourke et al., 2022). By synthesizing empirical research through a systematic literature review, this study reframes the field by shifting the analytical focus from outcomes and models to the mechanisms that structure interdisciplinary preparation in ITE.

The literature has documented persistent tensions between interdisciplinary goals and existing formative structures. Recent systematic reviews depict that interdisciplinary initiatives frequently encounter obstacles such as teachers’ insecurity when working beyond disciplinary boundaries, difficulties in establishing shared goals, and assessing integrated learning outcomes, and limited opportunities for sustained collaboration across subject areas (Tonnetti & Lentillon-Kaestner, 2023). These challenges are not confined to school contexts, but also emerge within initial teacher education (ITE), where programs often reproduce discipline-centered logics, offering limited integrative experiences and weak orientations toward collaborative work (Imbernón, 2019).

Beyond documenting these challenges, recent reviews have contributed to systematizing different approaches to interdisciplinary education and curriculum integration, albeit with a partial focus on ITE. Tonnetti and Lentillon-Kaestner (2023) primarily examine school-level practices; Bourke et al. (2022) identify integrated curricular approaches within ITE programs; Wang and Sang (2024) synthesize research on teachers’ interdisciplinary competences; and Agudelo Rodríguez et al. (2024) characterize models of integration in STEM teacher education. Taken together, these reviews tend to emphasize outcomes, competences, or models, rather than systematically examining the formative mechanisms through which ITE programs configure opportunities for interdisciplinary preparation. As a result, the field lacks an integrated understanding of how such preparation is produced and mediated within teacher education, limiting both theoretical accumulation and the development of more coherent policy and programmatic responses.

To contribute to this discussion, the question framing this literature review is: What mechanisms have been adopted by initial teacher education programs to prepare future secondary school teachers for interdisciplinary teaching? The concept of mechanism is used here as an analytical category to identify the factors, processes, and conditions that mediate professional teacher learning (Sims et al., 2021). This notion allows ITE to move beyond the description of isolated practices and analyze how these opportunities are configured in specific institutional contexts.

From a theoretical perspective, this review brings together two complementary approaches. On the one hand, it draws on contributions from the field of educational interdisciplinarity, which conceptualize the integration of knowledge as a process that goes beyond thematic juxtaposition and requires the reorganization of disciplinary knowledge for pedagogical and curricular purposes (Klein, 2017). On the other hand, it draws on Bernstein’s theory of pedagogical recontextualization (2000), which conceives ITE as a space where academic knowledge is selected, transformed, and hierarchized in accordance with institutional purposes. This articulation is particularly relevant in contexts where teacher education is shaped by global reform dynamics that reconfigure curricular structures and professional expectations.

This study adopts a systematic literature review design aimed at identifying and analyzing formative mechanisms through which initial teacher education (ITE) programs prepare for interdisciplinary education at the secondary level. The review followed the PRISMA framework (Moher et al., 2015) to ensure transparency and methodological rigor throughout the process. The literature search was conducted in April 2025 using two bibliographic databases: Web of Science (Core Collection) and Scopus, selected for their coverage of peer-reviewed educational research. The search strategy, developed in English, combined keywords related to two main dimensions: (a) interdisciplinary education and integrated curriculum, and (b) initial teacher education. Search strings included terms such as “interdisciplinary teaching”, “interdisciplinary education”, and “integrated curriculum”, combined with “initial teacher education”, “teacher education”, and “pre-service teachers”. No restrictions were applied regarding publication year or language. The selection process was guided by predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies were included if they: (1) were empirical and published in peer-reviewed journals; (2) addressed the preparation of teachers for interdisciplinary education; (3) focused on initial teacher education; and (4) referred explicitly to secondary education. Studies were excluded if they: (1) did not address interdisciplinary education as an object of analysis; (2) focused on in-service teacher development or other stages of professional learning; (3) addressed primary, early childhood, or non-university teacher education; or (4) were theoretical papers, conceptual essays, or literature reviews. The initial search yielded 1,819 records (1,027 from Scopus and 792 from Web of Science). After removing duplicates, 1,485 records were screened by title and abstract. Full texts were retrieved for 183 studies, of which 61 met all inclusion criteria and constituted the final corpus. The selection process was documented using a PRISMA flow diagram. Data extraction included national context, disciplinary fields, research design, participants, and formative settings. Findings were synthesized through inductive thematic analysis (Nowell et al., 2017), enabling the identification of recurring patterns and divergences in the formative mechanisms documented across studies.

The results show that preparation for interdisciplinary education in ITE is characterized by fragmentation, uneven development, and weak articulation rather than by coherent or consolidated models. Furthermore, interdisciplinary preparation is commonly addressed through isolated initiatives, without being articulated as a sustained or program-wide dimension of teacher education. Within this fragmented landscape, the analysis distinguishes four types of formative mechanisms through which interdisciplinary preparation is addressed: curricular experiences, re-signification of the professional role, development of specific competences, and institutional conditions. These mechanisms capture recurring ways interdisciplinary education is approached across heterogeneous contexts and research designs. Most importantly, their identification does not imply that they systematically coexist within teacher education programs, nor that they form coherent or integrated formative arrangements. Empirical studies frequently document curricular mechanisms, typically materialized in specific courses or integrative assignments. While these initiatives often generate meaningful learning experiences. Mechanisms related to the re-signification of the professional role appear mainly in studies emphasizing collaboration, reflection, or identity work that challenges discipline-bound conceptions of teaching, yet they are seldom supported by stable curricular or institutional structures. Competence-oriented mechanisms focus on epistemic, pedagogical, or collaborative capacities required for interdisciplinary education. Finally, institutional mechanisms shape the conditions under which interdisciplinary preparation becomes possible or constrained, with organizational arrangements, disciplinary structures, and forms of curricular recognition often operating as limiting rather than enabling factors. Taken together, these findings suggest that interdisciplinary preparation in ITE is better understood as a field of partial and unevenly connected formative practices than as a coherent system. The relationships among mechanisms remain largely potential and contingent on local configurations, underscoring the need for future research that examines how such mechanisms may interact over time and across institutional contexts to support more sustained approaches to interdisciplinary education in teacher preparation.

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