Achieving Integration with Larger Structures

The three criteria are easiest to satisfy at the right scale. Continuity and sequence need larger units stretched over years; integration needs subjects close enough to link. This article is about the practical truth that the structure a curriculum chooses makes integration either easy or nearly impossible.

Why many small pieces hurt integration

Achieving integration is difficult when the organizing structure is cut into specific pieces. Integration requires arranging the elements of each piece into a unified form, and developing relationships among and between all the pieces. The more pieces there are, the harder this becomes, because the number of relationships to manage grows fast.

A concrete case: an elementary school organized around eight or nine separate subjects finds integration difficult, simply because there are too many separate things to relate to each other. The fix is to identify broad fields and integrate the subjects within them, reducing many pieces to a few. Subjects that can be combined into broad fields include language arts, social studies, health and hygiene, and physical education.

Flashcard

Why do many small pieces make integration hard, and what helps?

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Answer

Each piece must relate to all the others, and the links multiply fast; broad fields help

Eight or nine separate subjects are hard to integrate. Grouping related subjects into a few broad fields, like language arts or social studies, cuts the number of pieces and the links to manage.

Core curriculum and daily life

A core curriculum poses even less difficulty for integration, because it lowers the boundaries between subjects in the first place. And it integrates naturally with the daily life experiences of learners, because the issues learners face in life, the situations where they must apply what they learned in school, tend to cut across narrow subject lines. A real-life problem rarely respects the boundary between science and social studies, so a curriculum built around such problems is integrated by its nature.

The suggestion that follows is direct: use broad groupings for organization, such as broad fields or core programs, instead of narrow units like single subjects and courses.

The advantage of larger blocks of time

Structure also shapes time, and time shapes integration. Any structural arrangement that provides larger blocks of time has an advantage over one that cuts the total time into many specific units. When time is sliced into many small units, each unit must be planned with transitions and with consideration of the work of the other units, which adds friction.

There is a balance to strike, though. A completely undifferentiated organization of the school day also creates problems, because various types of teacher competence are needed and learners need to move from one activity to another before they tire. These facts call for a school day divided into periods of varied activity with interaction with more than one teacher, which is harder to arrange in a fully undifferentiated structure. The aim is larger blocks than a fragmented timetable, but not a single undivided block either.

Flashcard

Why is a completely undifferentiated school day also a problem?

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Answer

Learners need varied activity and more than one teacher, which it cannot easily provide

Larger time blocks beat a fragmented timetable, but a single undivided block struggles to offer the varied activity and multiple teachers that learners need. The aim is larger blocks, not one block.