Curriculum integration in secondary schools

Abstract

Abstract From its foundation in 2004, Alfriston College has sought to be a school for the 21st century. Extensive research and reflection by the foundation staff have resulted in a number of different approaches to secondary school teaching and learning. This article explains how the school introduced a low-impact reorganisation of the planning of learning to enable students to understand what they learn in a coherent, big-picture sense, and regularly suspends the timetable to foster transforming learning that is collaborative, creative, and problem solving-a type of learning that helps prepare students for their 21st century future. Introduction The curriculum and pedagogy that characterised 20th century schools were not significantly different from those of the preceding century. The same cannot be said of 21st century schools. Secondary schools, in particular, face two major challenges to their fundamental purpose. The first relates to the changing nature of what is valued as knowledge, and the second concerns the shift in emphasis from schools as organisations that rank and sort, to learning organisations that deliver a high-quality curriculum for all students. This article begins with a brief description of the challenges listed above and then illustrates two ways in which one secondary school has responded to these opportunities by developing a curriculum and associated pedagogy that is focused on integrated learning and learning that involves problem solving that is closely connected to real-life circumstances. The changing nature of knowledge John Dewey's (1897) view of education was that greater emphasis should be placed on the broadening of intellect and development of problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. He also believed in the incorporation of the student's past experiences into the classroom. In this context, Dewey (1938, cited in Beane, 1997), commented: Almost everyone has had occasion to look back upon his school days and wonder what has become of the knowledge he was supposed to have amassed during his years of schooling ... but it was so segregated when it was acquired and hence is so disconnected from the rest of experience that it is not available under the actual conditions of life. (p. 6) In 1969 Postman and Weingartner had the following to say about the organisation of knowledge in secondary schools: English is not history and history is not science and science is not art and art is not music, and art and music are minor subjects and English, history and science major subjects, and a subject is something you 'take' and when you have taken it you have 'had' it, you are immune and need not take it again. (p. 21) At the time these observations were made, schools were following the traditional concept of education, which held that knowledge is a known body of ideas, skills, and information to be transferred by an expert from one generation to the next. However, traditional Western education has now passed a point of historical change in the perception of valued knowledge at secondary school level. Expert knowledge remains important in the 21st century, but it has been supplemented (or perhaps even supplanted) by knowledge that results from collaboration, experience, and experimentation. It is dynamic, growing, evolving, and unknown. Expert knowledge is transmitted by teachers to students; knowledge is continuously developed by students with teachers. Castells (2000, cited in Gilbert, 2005, p. 35), elaborates a little on what is termed new knowledge: Knowledge is no longer thought of as a thing, developed and stored in experts, and able to be organized into disciplines. Instead people now see knowledge as a form of energy. People treat it as something dynamic or fluid, something that makes things happen. …