Beyond Subjects: The Case for Phenomenon-Based Learning

A student may learn about energy in science, graphs in mathematics, climate in geography, persuasive argument in English, and technological systems in computing.

Each lesson may be successful.

But does the student ever have to bring those forms of knowledge together?

Schools divide knowledge into subjects for good reasons. Science, mathematics, history, geography, languages, technology, and the arts give students powerful concepts, methods, vocabulary, and ways of thinking. Disciplines help us organize knowledge and examine the world with greater precision.

The world itself, however, does not arrive divided in the same way.

Climate change is not only science. Migration is not only geography. Artificial intelligence is not only technology. An earthquake is not only geology.

Understanding complex phenomena often requires us to look through more than one disciplinary lens.

That is the space phenomenon-based learning is trying to occupy.

Phenomenon-based learning, or PhBL, has attracted considerable international interest, particularly because of its association with Finnish education. But PhBL is better understood as an educational approach than as a single learning theory or standardized teaching method. Wolff (2022) describes it as an approach with multiple theoretical roots and varied interpretations, while Schaffar and Wolff (2024) show how its Finnish development draws on several educational and philosophical traditions.

That variation makes it important to look beyond labels.

The more interesting idea behind PhBL is that students should sometimes have opportunities to take knowledge that schools have separated into subjects and put it back together in order to understand something larger.

That does not mean abandoning subjects. It means asking what becomes possible when students begin connecting them.

Start With Something Worth Understanding

Imagine an earthquake.

Students could learn about tectonic plates in science. They could locate fault lines in geography. They could study magnitude and graphs in mathematics.

Each lesson could remain separate.

Now change the question:

Suddenly, knowing about tectonic plates is not enough.

Students need geology to understand what happened beneath the Earth’s surface. Mathematics helps them interpret magnitude and data. Geography helps them examine location, population, and physical environments. Engineering helps students examine how structural design and construction influence damage. Technology helps students examine monitoring, communication, and early-warning systems. Economic and social perspectives may help explain differences in preparedness and recovery. Language and media literacy become important when students evaluate information and communicate what they have learned.

The subjects have not disappeared.

They have become useful for understanding something that none of them can adequately explain on its own.

That distinction is central to understanding PhBL.

What Do We Mean by a Phenomenon?

The terminology can make PhBL sound more abstract than it needs to be.

For classroom purposes, a phenomenon can be thought of broadly as something in the world or human experience that students can observe, experience, investigate, question, or try to understand.

An earthquake is a phenomenon. Migration is a phenomenon. Urban heat is a phenomenon. Animal communication is a phenomenon. The spread of an epidemic is a phenomenon. Artificial intelligence changing how people work and learn can become a phenomenon for investigation.

A phenomenon does not need to be enormous or dramatic. Why bread rises, why some objects float, why leaves change color, or why traffic jams can appear without an accident can all provide starting points for investigation.

The important difference is between simply naming a topic and identifying something worth understanding.

The first gives us a topic. The second gives us something to investigate.

Students might need chemistry to understand contaminants, biology to investigate microorganisms, engineering to explore filtration, mathematics to analyze data, geography to examine water distribution, and social or economic perspectives to understand access.

Those subjects are not being included simply because somebody decided the lesson needed to be interdisciplinary. They are being included because understanding the phenomenon requires them.

That gives us a useful planning question:

If the answer is no, an interdisciplinary PhBL approach may not be necessary. Not every lesson needs to cross subject boundaries.

The Ideas Behind Phenomenon-Based Learning

Although the contemporary language of PhBL is relatively recent, many of the ideas associated with it are not.

Wolff (2022) identifies constructivism, pragmatism, and phenomenology among PhBL’s theoretical foundations. Schaffar and Wolff (2024), examining its development in Finland, place it within a wider set of educational and philosophical traditions that includes constructivism, problem- and inquiry-based learning, phenomenology, existentialism, Bildung, and Didaktik.

These influences should not be treated as a single unified theory of PhBL. They are better understood as overlapping traditions that help explain different features of the approach.

At classroom level, the central idea can be expressed more simply.

Students need disciplinary knowledge. But they also need opportunities to connect and use that knowledge when trying to understand something that crosses disciplinary boundaries.

Inquiry contributes questioning, investigation, evidence, explanation, and revision.

Disciplinary teaching provides concepts, vocabulary, methods, and ways of thinking without which serious inquiry can become superficial.

This is why PhBL should not become an argument against subject knowledge.

Students cannot think seriously about earthquakes without relevant scientific knowledge. They cannot analyze an epidemic intelligently without biological and mathematical knowledge. They cannot investigate climate change meaningfully without scientific concepts.

Interdisciplinary activity without sufficient disciplinary depth can easily become a collection of activities connected by little more than a common theme.

The goal is not to make learning less disciplinary. It is to help students recognize when one discipline is not enough.

Finland: Subjects and Interdisciplinary Learning Can Coexist

Finland has become closely associated internationally with phenomenon-based learning, although the relationship between PhBL and Finland’s formal curriculum requirements is more nuanced than that reputation sometimes suggests.

Finland did not abolish school subjects. It retains subject-based teaching while also requiring multidisciplinary learning modules. Every school must provide at least one clearly defined multidisciplinary learning module each school year. Pupils participate in planning, while assessment of learning within the module is based on the objectives of the contributing subjects (Finnish National Agency for Education, n.d.).

Finland’s curriculum requires multidisciplinary learning modules, not a standardized teaching method called phenomenon-based learning. The two should not be treated as interchangeable. Schaffar and Wolff (2024) note that the literal term phenomenon-based learning does not appear in the original Finnish-language curriculum in the simplistic way it is sometimes presented internationally.

This makes Finland more interesting, not less.

It demonstrates that interdisciplinary learning does not necessarily require dismantling disciplinary structures.

A student can learn mathematics as mathematics and later discover why that mathematics matters when interpreting a real phenomenon.

A student can develop scientific knowledge and later need to connect it with geography, technology, economics, or another discipline.

Disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning do not have to compete. They can perform different functions.

Learn From Finland—Do Not Simply Copy It

There is always a danger when an educational idea becomes internationally fashionable.

The method can travel faster than the conditions that made it possible.

Curricula differ. Assessment systems differ. Examinations differ. Teacher preparation differs. School timetables, resources, languages of instruction, parental expectations, and assumptions about teacher and student roles differ.

Educational culture matters too.

Research on PhBL and related approaches points to contextual factors, teacher development, assessment, and systemic barriers as important implementation considerations (Walker & Nouri, 2025).

These differences mean that implementation needs to be responsive to context rather than assumed to transfer unchanged from one system to another.

The question therefore should not be: How can another school become more Finnish?

A better question is: Which principles are worth carrying with us, and how should their implementation change in a different context?

In one school, PhBL might become a substantial multidisciplinary module. In another, two departments might coordinate a sequence of lessons around a shared phenomenon. Elsewhere, teachers may identify only a few carefully chosen points during the year where disciplinary knowledge naturally intersects.

None of these is automatically the better version. The scale should fit the students, curriculum, teachers, and educational context.

Project, Problem, or Phenomenon?

PhBL shares considerable territory with project-based and problem-based learning.

All three can involve inquiry, collaboration, authentic contexts, student agency, and interdisciplinary learning. Their boundaries are not rigid.

Project-based learning commonly organizes sustained learning around a project, often involving inquiry, collaboration, autonomy, reflection, and real-world practices (Kokotsaki et al., 2016). Problem-based learning centers learning on a complex problem, with students identifying what they need to learn, engaging in self-directed learning, applying that knowledge, and reflecting on the process (Hmelo-Silver, 2004).

A useful way of seeing the difference is therefore to compare their emphasis and organizing logic, rather than treating them as mutually exclusive categories.

Return to earthquakes.

A project-based experience might ask students to design and test an earthquake-resistant structure.

A problem-based experience might begin with: How should a city prepare for a major earthquake?

A phenomenon-based experience might begin with: Why do earthquakes happen, and why can similar earthquakes affect communities so differently?

The PhBL investigation could eventually contain both a problem and a project.

What distinguishes the emphasis is that the phenomenon remains the organizing focus: students draw upon the disciplinary perspectives necessary to develop a more connected understanding of what is happening.

As a simple distinction in emphasis—not a rigid definition:

Projects can give students something meaningful to create. Problems can give students something meaningful to solve. Phenomena can give students something meaningful to understand.

Strong project- and problem-based learning can also produce deep interdisciplinary understanding. This is a distinction, not a hierarchy.

Why PhBL and STEM Fit Naturally Together

The relationship between PhBL and STEM is particularly interesting because integrated STEM education already asks students to make connections across disciplinary boundaries.

A 2024 systematic review of 27 papers examining frameworks for integrated STEM education found substantial agreement around five recurring principles: integration, real-world problems, inquiry, design, and teamwork (Portillo-Blanco et al., 2024).

Those principles overlap considerably with the kinds of learning that PhBL can support.

Consider a student walking from a tree-lined area into a large paved courtyard on a hot afternoon.

That observation can become a phenomenon for investigation. Students might measure temperatures in different locations.

Science helps them understand radiation, heat transfer, vegetation, evaporation, and material properties.

Mathematics helps them organize measurements, compare differences, visualize patterns, and judge what the data can support.

Technology might provide sensors, mapping tools, satellite imagery, or data visualization.

Engineering can change the question from Why is this happening? to What could we do about it?

Students might investigate shade, vegetation, surface materials, building design, or other possible interventions.

Now the STEM disciplines are not merely sitting beside each other. They need one another.

This conceptual overlap helps explain why STEM contexts can provide particularly fertile ground for PhBL. It does not establish that combining STEM and PhBL automatically improves learning. The value depends on whether the disciplinary connections actually help students understand the phenomenon.

And some phenomena quickly take us beyond STEM.

Urban heat may lead toward urban planning, economics, or human behavior. Artificial intelligence raises questions about language, ethics, work, creativity, and society alongside computing and mathematics. Migration might require history, geography, economics, statistics, literature, and language.

The phenomenon helps determine which disciplinary lenses become useful.

Connecting the Curriculum May Require Teachers to Connect First

If students are expected to connect knowledge across disciplines, somebody needs to design those connections.

This creates one of the most interesting possibilities of PhBL. It can also change how teachers work together.

Traditionally, a science teacher plans science. A mathematics teacher plans mathematics. An English teacher plans English.

Even when schools organize an interdisciplinary week, teachers can remain largely independent: What can I do in my subject around this year’s theme?

PhBL invites a different question:

The science teacher might identify concepts students must understand before meaningful investigation can begin.

The mathematics teacher might identify data students genuinely need to interpret rather than adding a graph simply so mathematics appears somewhere in the project.

The geography teacher might help students understand spatial relationships.

A language teacher might help students evaluate sources, construct explanations, develop arguments, or communicate findings.

Technology teachers may help students collect data, model systems, or build solutions.

The collaboration is no longer about making every subject visible. It is about deciding which disciplinary contributions make the understanding stronger.

In a small qualitative case study involving five teachers from three Finnish schools, teachers described collaboration and opportunities for professional development alongside difficulties and considerable variation in how integrative teaching was implemented (Haapaniemi et al., 2021).

The small sample matters. The study provides an illustration of possible experiences rather than representative evidence about Finnish teachers generally.

PhBL should also not depend on several teachers somehow finding hours of additional planning time every week.

Collaboration can exist at different levels. Teachers might coordinate the timing of related units. Two departments might jointly design one investigation. Several teachers might agree on a central phenomenon and learning goals while continuing to teach largely within their own lessons. Or a school might create a substantial multidisciplinary module.

The depth of collaboration should fit the capacity of the school.

Collaborative PhBL planning may also create opportunities for professional learning as teachers encounter how colleagues in other disciplines frame knowledge, evidence, explanation, and inquiry.

From a Hot Courtyard to Connected Learning

Consider the urban heat example more fully.

Students notice that different parts of their school grounds feel noticeably different in temperature.

Instead of immediately explaining why, the teacher begins with observation.

Where does it feel hottest? Where does it feel coolest? Why might that be?

Students make initial predictions.

Perhaps trees matter. Perhaps concrete matters. Perhaps buildings block wind. Perhaps the color of a surface matters. Perhaps their perception is misleading.

Now they need evidence.

Students measure temperatures at selected locations. They record surface type, shade, time, and other relevant variables.

Mathematics becomes purposeful because they need to decide how to represent and interpret their measurements.

Scientific concepts become necessary because measurements alone do not explain why the differences exist.

Technology can extend what students can observe. Engineering can eventually ask whether the environment could be changed. Geography can help students examine whether similar patterns occur at a larger scale.

Other perspectives may emerge depending on the investigation. The teacher still teaches.

Students may need explicit instruction about heat transfer before they can explain their results. They may need to learn how to collect more reliable measurements. They may need help interpreting graphs or evaluating evidence.

PhBL does not require students to discover everything independently. The inquiry creates a reason to need the knowledge. Eventually students might propose changes to the school environment.

But the proposal is not the central purpose. The learning lies in what students can now explain and support with evidence.

The distinction matters.

A beautifully designed poster recommending more trees tells us relatively little unless the student can explain why, using appropriate concepts and evidence.

Other Phenomena Worth Investigating

Clean water: Why can safe drinking water be difficult to provide even when water appears abundant?

Food systems: What actually happens between a farm and our plate?

Animal communication: Can humans and animals really understand each other?

Migration: Why do people leave one place and build a life somewhere else?

Earthquakes: Why can similar seismic events produce dramatically different consequences?

Artificial intelligence: What changes when machines can produce work that previously required human thinking?

The point is not to build an enormous interdisciplinary project around every interesting question.

The point is to recognize when understanding something creates a genuine reason for different forms of knowledge to connect.

A Practical Cycle for Designing PhBL

Teachers still need a way to turn the idea into a lesson or unit.

The following cycle is a practical synthesis for planning. It is not an official Finnish model or a validated PhBL framework. It is offered here as a usable design heuristic.

Phenomenon

What is worth understanding? Choose something students can experience, observe, encounter, question, or recognize as meaningful—and that has enough intellectual richness to justify investigation.

Wonder

What do we notice? What do we want to understand? Student questions matter, but complete openness is not always necessary. Teachers can help students move from initial curiosity toward questions capable of supporting worthwhile learning.

Knowledge

What do students need to know before they can investigate intelligently? This step is crucial. PhBL should never become an excuse to stop teaching. Students may need concepts, vocabulary, procedures, models, background knowledge, worked examples, or direct explanation. Sometimes the most useful thing a teacher can do during an inquiry is simply teach something clearly.

Investigate

What evidence do we need? Students might collect data, conduct experiments, compare sources, observe environments, analyze texts, interview people, build models, test designs, or examine competing explanations.

Connect

How do different forms of knowledge help explain what is happening? This is where multidisciplinary learning becomes more than thematic learning. Students deliberately connect perspectives.

Create or Apply

What can we now do with what we understand? Students might construct an explanation, develop an argument, design something, propose a response, build a model, communicate findings, or apply their understanding to a new situation.

Reflect

How has our understanding changed? What did we initially believe? What does the evidence now support? Which ideas changed? What remains uncertain? What would we investigate next?

The sequence does not need to be perfectly linear. Students may return to knowledge when investigation exposes a gap, revisit questions when evidence challenges an assumption, or investigate again after making a new connection.

What matters is that activity eventually produces better-supported understanding.

Then AI Changes the Investigation

Research specifically examining generative AI within phenomenon-based learning is still emerging. The ideas that follow should therefore be understood as instructional-design propositions rather than established findings about AI-supported PhBL.

The design problem, however, is already difficult to ignore.

Phenomenon-based learning asks students to question, investigate, connect, explain, and create.

Generative AI has become remarkably good at producing something that looks like the result of all five.

A student can enter a phenomenon into an AI system and receive questions, explanations, disciplinary connections, research summaries, arguments, possible solutions, presentation outlines, and reflections within seconds.

That creates an uncomfortable question:

The answer cannot simply be to exclude AI from every investigation.

AI can expand what students and teachers are able to explore. But its role needs to be designed carefully.

During Wonder, students might ask AI to propose alternative questions or explanations—and then judge which are actually worth investigating.

During Knowledge, AI might provide another explanation of a difficult concept, which students compare with authoritative sources.

During Investigation, AI might help generate hypotheses, identify variables, suggest search terms, or highlight patterns that students then examine.

During Connect, students might ask how several disciplines could interpret the same phenomenon—and then evaluate whether those connections are legitimate or superficial.

During Create, AI might critique an argument or challenge an explanation rather than produce the final work.

During Reflect, students could compare their evidence-based explanation with an AI-generated explanation and identify what the system gets right, oversimplifies, or cannot adequately support.

AI also creates possibilities for teachers. It can help teachers explore curriculum connections, anticipate misconceptions, generate differentiated supports, consider possible phenomena, or begin conversations between subject areas.

But AI can also generate connections that sound convincing without being educationally worthwhile.

The teacher still needs to decide what matters. And the student still needs to think.

If a polished presentation can be generated in minutes, the final product becomes a weaker proxy for learning.

The questions students ask, evidence they select, connections they justify, decisions they make, explanations they revise, and understanding they can defend become increasingly important.

Assessment Has to Follow the Learning

This leads directly to assessment.

If students are connecting several disciplines, what exactly are we assessing?

A polished final product can conceal weak understanding. A confident group presentation can conceal very different levels of individual learning.

An AI-assisted report may tell us relatively little about what an individual student can actually explain.

Assessment therefore needs to remain anchored to the intended learning.

The Finnish curriculum provides one useful example: assessment in multidisciplinary learning modules is based on the objectives of the contributing subjects (Finnish National Agency for Education, n.d.).

Recent Finnish research involving 15 primary-school teachers also illustrates that teachers can understand the purposes and practices of multidisciplinary assessment in different ways (Hietamäki et al., 2026).

A shared phenomenon does not require vague assessment.

A science teacher might assess scientific explanation. A mathematics teacher might assess interpretation of data. A language teacher might assess evidence-based argumentation or communication.

Teachers may also choose to examine whether students can make justified connections and use disciplinary knowledge appropriately in a new context.

The multidisciplinary experience can be shared while the evidence of learning remains clear.

When Does Connecting Subjects Actually Improve Learning?

Interdisciplinary learning sounds inherently positive. It isn’t necessarily. Several subjects can be involved without students developing deeper understanding.

A phenomenon can become so broad that students learn very little about anything.

Students can spend hours searching for information without enough background knowledge to judge what they find.

Connections between subjects can become decorative. A complicated project can introduce demands that distract from the intended learning.

Teachers can spend substantial time coordinating activities that add little educational value.

Groups can hide individual misunderstanding. The final presentation can become more important than the investigation. AI can make all of this harder to see because weak thinking can now produce polished outputs.

Research specifically focused on PhBL remains comparatively limited. A 2025 systematic review examined 24 selected articles on PhBL and storyline approaches in K–12 science education. The review reported promising findings around student engagement and scientific reasoning while also identifying important research and implementation gaps (Walker & Nouri, 2025).

A small Finnish case study of integrative teaching similarly illustrates how multidisciplinary work can involve challenges as well as opportunities (Haapaniemi et al., 2021).

That is an important warning. More subjects do not automatically create more learning. More student choice does not automatically create deeper inquiry.

More technology does not automatically create better investigation. And a bigger project does not automatically create a better phenomenon-based experience.

Good PhBL should make the intellectual purpose clearer, not bury it beneath complexity.

PhBL Does Not Have to Take Over the Curriculum

Schools do not need to choose between subject teaching and phenomenon-based learning.

Finland itself provides one example of multidisciplinary learning operating within a curriculum that retains individual subjects and subject-based objectives (Finnish National Agency for Education, n.d.).

For many schools, selective integration may be more sustainable than attempting to redesign the entire curriculum.

Teachers can continue teaching the disciplinary knowledge students need. Students can continue developing subject-specific skills. Schools can continue meeting curriculum and assessment requirements.

But teachers can identify carefully chosen moments when knowledge naturally intersects.

Sometimes that might involve two connected lessons. Sometimes it might involve several subjects coordinating part of a unit. Sometimes it might become a dedicated multidisciplinary module.

The important question is not: How can we turn everything into PhBL?

It is:

That question also makes PhBL adaptable.

A school with significant examination requirements may implement it differently from one with greater curricular flexibility.

A primary school may approach teacher collaboration differently from a secondary school organized into departments.

Different educational cultures may require different balances between teacher direction and student agency.

The implementation changes.

The underlying idea remains:

Putting Knowledge Back Together

Schools need subjects. Students need scientific knowledge. They need mathematics.

They need languages, history, geography, technology, the arts, and the distinctive ways of thinking that different disciplines provide.

Phenomenon-based learning should not weaken those foundations. Its value may lie in giving students carefully chosen opportunities to use them together.

A student who learns a scientific concept has learned something important.

Connecting that concept with mathematical evidence, geographic context, technological possibilities, and human consequences gives the student an opportunity to use school knowledge as a set of intellectual tools for understanding something larger.

Projects can support that process. Problems can drive parts of it. STEM can provide powerful methods of investigation.

Teachers can design the connections together. AI can extend what students are able to explore.

But none of these should obscure the central purpose: understanding something worth understanding.

The world students are learning to understand does not arrive divided into mathematics, science, geography, languages, technology, history, and the arts.

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