Oksana Lihareva

Modernization of the current education system involves both updating its content and the active use of innovative technologies and techniques. As international experience shows, integrated learning or an interdisciplinary approach can increase learning motivation and achieve better learning outcomes. Interdisciplinary lessons became a part of the Russian teaching system long ago. However, there are certain difficulties in introducing interdisciplinary teaching, since the Russian system trains subject teachers, and the rigidity of curricula is also an obstacle. The purpose of this article is to analyze the problems of introducing interdisciplinary education in Russian schools in the context of global trends in education. Based on the analysis of domestic and foreign studies, the article examines the use of integrated methods in Russia and abroad, the Finnish experience of integration in education, as well as the experience of individual schools and interdisciplinary programs in the United States and other countries. The analysis of foreign and domestic literature has shown that some models and assessments of interdisciplinary learning are based on the unconditional recognition of the advantages of interdisciplinary learning, while others are skeptical about the final results in comparison with traditional subject learning, noting the limited didactic possibilities of using integration. The survey data of young teachers, whose experience does not exceed 5 years, showed that more than 10% of respondents do not conduct integrated lessons. In the teaching community, when introducing interdisciplinary lessons, they have the same problems as their foreign colleagues – lack of time for preparing interdisciplinary lessons, poor cooperation or lack of cooperation in the teaching staff, lack of textbooks and teaching aids for conducting integrated lessons, the limiting framework of teaching programs and curricula, etc. The theoretical provisions of this work can become the subject of discussion, exchange of experience at seminars, conferences of teachers and methodologists.