Semiotics Theory of Borders: Proposal of a Theoretical Model for Interdisciplinarity in STEAM Education

Abstract

This paper proposes the semiotics theory of borders (STB) as a theoretical framework for understanding interdisciplinarity in STEAM education. While existing research often conceptualises disciplinary boundaries as sites of integration, STB focuses on borders as semiotic spaces in which meaning is actively constructed through interaction. The study illustrates the framework through the analysis of an interdisciplinary workshop involving 45 STEAM teachers, centred on a modelling task connecting mathematics and physics through the Fibonacci sequence. The analysis, guided by Habermas’s rationalities and semiotic functions of borders, shows how interdisciplinary collaboration unfolds through processes of differentiation, mediation, and transformation. The findings highlight how teachers initially rely on discipline-specific approaches, then negotiate meanings through dialogue, and finally develop shared understandings that reconfigure disciplinary knowledge. The contribution of the paper is threefold: it provides a theoretical lens for analysing meaning-making at disciplinary borders, offers design principles for interdisciplinary tasks, and contributes to understanding teacher professional development in STEAM contexts.