Integrated Learning (Revisiting the Beginning)
Traversing is coming up on its one year anniversary and in honor of that event, I am going to be reposting some of the first issues, as we have a lot of new readers who were not with us in the beginning. These first posts outline the foundation of the blog and the educational philosophies that guide my work and the work of City of Bridges High School.
This week I will continue with my plan to spend the first weeks of publication building off of the six components of Progressive Education outlined by Tom Little and Katherine Ellison, in their book Loving Learning: How Progressive Education can Save America’s Schools. Here is the list again with the focus of this week in bold:
1. Attention to children’s emotions as well as their intellects.
2. Reliance on student’s interests to guide their learning.
3. Curtailment or outright bans on testing, grading and ranking.
4. Involvement of students in real world endeavors.
5. The study of topics in an integrated way, from a variety of different disciplines
6. Support for children to develop a sense of social justice and become active participants in American Democracy.
If you are new to Traversing and want to read my initial thoughts on why this list matters to me you can find the first issue here. If you want to hear about Martin Buber and Attention to Children’s Emotions, you can check out the issue, here, or Flow and Personalization here, or Testing and the Panopticon, here or Real World Endeavors here.
Integrated Learning
Integrated Learning is an interesting phrase and much like the phrase Real World Endeavors, that we discussed last week, it suggests something about how we understand the world of school. The need for Integrated Learning to be called out, noted, suggests that the standard form of learning that takes place in schools and other learning environments is not integrated. It could be described as isolated, siloed, separated or any number of other terms. As someone who lives in the world, I recognize that my experiences, my work and the tasks that I accomplish rarely require a set of knowledge, understanding and skills that are drawn from only one isolated school subject.
Even more importantly, in order to be able to participate in civic society and in community, one has to understand the ways in which different subjects connect, influence and shape each other. I will be the first to admit, the more elements of any given issue that are brought to the table, the more complicated and nuanced that issue becomes. Yet, in this time of simple solutions, slogans and headlines, a little more nuance and complication might be necessary in order to parse out what we need to do in order to support a more just, equitable and joyful world.
I won’t spend this issue on a soapbox, as much as I might feel so inclined. Instead, I would like to spend a little bit of time on what integrated learning can look like in the school setting.
There are plenty of ways to bake this cake, and in this case I am going to use the idea of Discipline as a framework. Keep in mind this is not the crime and punishment or restorative justice type of discipline, this is Discipline as defined by Oxford Language as, “a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education”. The Disciplines in school most often refer to English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Physical Education, Civics, Health, Foreign Language and sometimes other areas such as Environment. Disciplines in schools can be approached in a number of different ways.
1. In the Traditional model disciplines are learned independently and separately from each other. The Math teacher has no expectation of knowing what the English teacher is doing and both curricula progress at their own pace and with their own foci regardless of what is happening in the other class. The example here is very straight forward as the Math class studies linear equations and the English class reads modern short stories.
2. In the Thematic model disciplines are taught separately from each other but there is a common theme that stretches across the disciplines. As an example, a Social Studies class may learn about the history of ancient Egypt, while the Math class calculates the volume of the Pyramid at Khufu.
3. In the Interdisciplinary model disciplines are taught closely linked around a central topic. As an example, students learning about ancient Egypt might explore the building of the Pyramids, reading about the politics of the time, as well as the exploring the economics and physics that allowed them to be built.
4. In the Applied Integrated model disciples are explored as they relate to a problem or project for which they have direct application. As an example, students who want to address combined storm sewers in their communities apply policy, science, engineering and other disciplines in their work to make a proposal to the city council.
There are other ways to think about curriculum integration, but for the sake of this issue these are sufficient.
The Traditional model is still the dominant model of teaching and learning in both public and private schools across the country. In addition, in many ways, Traditional learning is the easiest way to build and implement curriculum. When you are able to separate any given discipline from the others and distill it to its core Knowledge, Understanding and Skills, it is easier to present and it is far easier to assess. It is also easier to educate teachers to focus on one area and become “experts” in a particular subject. At the same time, the Traditional model is the least representative of the world in which we all actually live and provides students with the fewest opportunities to build the complicated integrated skills that they will need in the rest of their lives.
The Thematic model is not radically or even substantially different from the Traditional model because the disciplines are still operating independently from each other. The theme may be the same, but Knowledge, Understanding and Skills from one discipline are not connected to those from another discipline in any way. This is not to say that Thematic curriculum can’t be fun! I clearly remember learning about Japan in elementary school, making kimonos in Art class, reading stories in English class and learning about the Geography of Japan in Social Studies. At the same time, English, Social Studies and Art were separate from each other and didn’t at any point reference the other class.
The Interdisciplinary model is where a majority of integrated curriculum takes place and it is at a level of complexity that makes it work well for many learning experiences and organizations. In the Interdisciplinary model the disciplines are explored in relation to each other around a central theme or topic and the different subject serve to support each other in exploring that theme. I facilitate a class called Utopia in Literature and History and we explore how communities manifest their values and beliefs in practice. The class incorporates many different disciplines, Economics, Civics, History, Mathematics, English, Art, Music and others all in service of exploring a Big Idea. The disciplines become the tools that help people to build Knowledge, Understanding and Skills around a topic or theme.
The Applied Integrated model is the most directly relevant and purposeful curricular structure. Students identify a real world problem or project and then undertake the task of using the disciplines as tools to help them work through that problem or project. It resembles most what we do every day as we navigate the opportunities and challenges of life. It is also by far the most difficult way to build and shape curriculum. How do you touch everything that students need to know? How do you build the expertise that you as an educator don’t have in subject areas that are new to you? I am going to ask that you wait on some of these questions and I’ll address them at length in another issue. For the time being, let us sit with this model as a purposeful, relevant and engaging way to build curriculum, and also one that can be difficult to achieve.
I hope you have found this exploration of Integrated Learning to be useful. Next week is the last of our components and then we can explore how they all support each other in Progressive learning environments.
See you next week!
People, Places and Things
In this section of the newsletter I share people, places and things that have inspired and taught me valuable lessons about rethinking learning.
This week I would like to share a reflective practice that I have been engaged in for many years. I wish I could remember where I first heard about this practice, I think it was a story on our local public radio station.
Each year around this time, I receive a set of questions and my answers to those questions that I locked away in a digital vault the prior year. The questions come from a project called 10Q, which,
….was inspired by the traditional ten days of reflection that occur between the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a period of time that’s long been considered an opportunity to look at where you're at, where you've come from, and where you're heading.
Over the course of those ten days, I receive a question in my email inbox each day and I take the time to reflect and share my thoughts before, at the end of time of reflection, my answers are locked away un accessible to me until the following year.
To be able to have a window into myself at the same time each year over the past decade of my life is illuminating and humbling, sometimes it makes me sad and sometimes it brings great joy at the events that have come to pass. I can watch the projects that I dreamed about become reality and I can examine the experience of the aging of my children as well as my own aging.