In K–12 education, a field considered susceptible to fads, interdisciplinary teaching is notable for having held the interest of educators over time. After years of discussion and exploration, teachers remain attracted to the idea of integrating subject areas, for at least part of the school day, experts say. And many believe this interest is growing.
Interest in interdisciplinary teaching is "a wave that is gaining momentum in the United States, Canada, and Australia," says Robin Fogarty of IRI/Skylight Publishing, author of The Mindful School: How to Integrate the Curricula. "It's definitely a trend, not a fad."
When done well, interdisciplinary units enhance and enrich what students learn, experts say. For example, if students learn about the Revolutionary War while they also read a novel set during that period, they will learn more history and gain a better understanding of the novel.
Curriculum integration has taken root most firmly in the early grades, says Joan Grady, a senior program associate at the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL) in Aurora, Colo. "Many elementary teachers, in their self-contained classrooms, perforce do a certain amount of interdisciplinary teaching," Grady says. Teachers at middle schools—where team teaching and block scheduling are common—do "a fair amount" of it. At the secondary level, teachers are doing less across disciplines, but "there's interest out there," Grady asserts.
Over the past few years, the focus of debate has changed, says education consultant Heidi Hayes Jacobs, author of ASCD's Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation. Today, there is no longer as much discussion among educators about whether to blend the disciplines, as about when, to what degree, and how best to do it, Jacobs says.
What accounts for the continuing appeal of interdisciplinary education? The wide-spread interest is fueled by a number of forces, Fogarty believes, including brain research on contextual learning; state and provincial mandates that promote interdisciplinary efforts; the middle school movement with its emphasis on team teaching; and the whole language movement at the elementary level, which cuts across disciplines.
"Teachers are desperately looking for ways to engage kids," says Pat Wasley, a senior researcher with the Coalition of Essential Schools at Brown University, and author of Stirring the Chalk Dust: Tales of Teachers Changing Classroom Practice. By breaking through discipline boundaries, teachers can make the curriculum more relevant and contemporary, she says, because they can embed knowledge and skills in real-life contexts, rather than teaching them from a dry textbook. Concepts from biology and social studies, for example, could be taught through a focus on bioengineering—a topical focus that students would find interesting. This approach also helps students understand the real-world need for what they learn, which makes them willing to work harder.
Concerns About Content
Despite its popularity, interdisciplinary teaching raises concerns among some parents and educators. The concern voiced most often is that moving from a discipline-based to a theme-based approach will cause important content to fall by the wayside. Especially at the upper grade levels, teachers fear that the "purity" of their disciplines will be lost in integrated units, Fogarty says. Teachers worry they won't be able to go into depth in their subject areas because they're trying to meet a thematic focus.
Another common concern is that, in integrated units, one discipline will be allowed to overshadow another. Liz Orme, who teaches at Montgomery Junior/Secondary School in Coquitlam, British Columbia, notes that the chronological framework of the social studies curriculum can "smother" the English curriculum, which is less concrete and sequential.
Teachers also worry that one subject will be used as a "handmaiden" to another. Math might become merely a tool of science, for example—no longer studied for its own sake. "English is used a lot as a tool," says Grady of McREL, who trains teachers in a process for developing "chunks" of integrated curriculum. In planning these "chunks," teachers often ask students to make presentations or write papers, but they neglect to include novels and poetry, she says.
Some educators say they have learned from experience that these fears are well-founded. Kathleen Roth, an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University who also teaches 5th grade science, was dissatisfied with the results of a year-long unit in which she took part. The unit, which blended social studies and science, was organized around a "1492" theme. Roth felt that the unit did not do enough to help students grow as scientific thinkers. "Despite careful, collaborative planning, I was unable to create activities that fit the theme and connected with the social studies activities while simultaneously engaging students in active, meaningful scientific inquiry," Roth has written. "We called this unit integrated science/social studies, but it really felt like social studies."
Her experience was not unusual, Roth believes. Thematic units often fail to focus on powerful ideas or organizing concepts from the disciplines, she says. In selecting concepts for such units, teachers often choose what fits best with the theme, rather than emphasizing the ideas that are most important and useful within the discipline. As a result, content is "compromised or diluted." Teachers shouldn't just assume that curriculum integration is inherently a good thing, Roth says. They should explore what kinds of integration yield benefits for student learning.
Experience with interdisciplinary teaching led Suzanne Krogh of Western Washington University to a similar conclusion. When developing her book, The Integrated Early Childhood Curriculum, Krogh took a sabbatical to teach 2nd grade, so she could "try everything out" in the classroom. She was badly shaken when a visitor asked her class what they were learning in social studies, and the children just looked at her blankly. "They didn't know what `social studies' meant," Krogh realized. In trying hard to integrate content, she had failed to give her students any conception of the subject areas and their meaning—something she believes students should know and understand.
Since that time, Krogh has tempered her thinking about interdisciplinary efforts in general. She had assumed that the second edition of her book would take a more radical, far-reaching approach to integrating content than the first, she says. But in surveying the literature, she discovered a lot of concern (even among advocates of curriculum integration) that the integrity of specific subjects could be lost. Because she shared this concern, even at the early childhood level, she decided to retain the first edition's conservatism.
The concern over losing important content is "very reasonable," says Jacobs, who emphasizes that teachers should fuse the disciplines only when doing so allows them to teach important content more effectively. By providing a context for the knowledge and skills students learn, interdisciplinary teaching can improve students' retention, Jacobs notes. But if teachers feel that a particular effort to integrate content is "sabotaging" their work, they simply shouldn't do it.
Teachers might want to reflect on why they feel that way, however. Often, when teachers begin to blend the disciplines, they feel "a nagging fear that they're not doing their job," says Wasley. Trained as single-discipline teachers, they worry that they may be "shirking their curriculum responsibilities."
This fear stems from the old conception of learning as simply the acquisition of content knowledge, Wasley says. If a teacher believes that students should learn a great deal of vocabularly in Biology I, for example, then using an interdisciplinary approach focused on broad concepts might constitute "shirking." But for many teachers today, Wasley notes, the goal is to ensure that students understand what they know. A teacher who wants students to understand interdependence within biological systems, for example, might better achieve that goal by using an integrated approach that pays less attention to vocabulary.
In a well-designed integrated unit, less is more, says Jane McGeehan, a former teacher who now works for the consulting firm Susan Kovalik and Associates in Kent, Wash. Although some topics will not be addressed, the most powerful skills and concepts from the disciplines can be woven into a year-long theme that is relevant to young people's lives, she says. This approach gives students opportunities to apply knowledge—instead of just "going through the motions" of memorizing and then forgetting information.
Teachers can't be sure students really understand what they've learned unless students apply it in a different context, Jacobs believes. For example, a math teacher could find out what students truly know about statistics, she says, by asking them to apply statistics to demographic patterns in immigration.
Avoiding the Pitfalls
In revising the curriculum to focus on themes or problems, how can teachers prevent essential learnings from winding up on the cutting room floor?
Team planning is "vital" to ensure subject integrity, says Orme. When two or more subject-area experts plan curriculum together, "each person is going to protect her discipline," she says. When Orme, an English teacher, planned and taught a two-hour Humanities course with a social studies teacher, she was able to teach the same number of novels and poems as she had in English, but "what we got across was richer," because the literature was placed in a historical context. Now, as a teacher solely responsible for teaching Humanities, she gives "a real English slant" to social studies, she concedes, because English is her area of expertise.
The benefits gained when teachers represent—and defend—their disciplines during planning have been demonstrated in the Bellingham, Wash., schools. According to Peggy Taylor of the district's central office, a committee of Bellingham educators worked three months to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum framework, which is now being used in 75 classrooms.
Initially, the framework focused on math, science, social studies, and reading, Taylor says. It took only "a brief swipe" at music and physical education, listing songs and activities such as square dancing. This "cursory endorsement" did not satisfy some music and physical education teachers, who wanted to see "depth, and a spiral of skills" in their disciplines. At their own request, specialists in music and physical education, and a media technician, have been added to the interdisciplinary committee.
Teachers' defending their disciplines can be a two-edged sword, however, says Grady. Although teachers should protect the content that is integral to their subject areas, they shouldn't try to make their own disciplines dominant. Teachers also need to appreciate that sometimes another subject might take the lead, Grady says. "Next time it might be yours."
Another way to avoid losing important content in interdisciplinary units is by paying explicit attention to standards and outcomes, experts say.
Because teachers in Bellingham were concerned about coverage of important content in interdisciplinary units, Taylor says, the district has emphasized the need for unit outcomes that are well articulated from the beginning. The "driving force" in planning, she says, is to ensure that "critical content" is clearly identified. Otherwise, "you can have cutesy activities, but what do they add up to?"
The process for curriculum planning that McREL promotes pays close attention to standards and benchmarks, says Grady. Typically, teachers select a theme or topic focus, then identify the standards—from their district or state, or from national subject-area groups—that must be embedded in instruction.
Teachers feel comfortable with the McREL approach because it yields curriculum strongly founded in standards, Grady says. Teachers don't feel "my subject is losing out," she says. And the standards basis makes the new curriculum easier to sell to parents, because educators can show that it's "not just a lot of fun activities that kids like to do."
Like discipline-based courses, interdisciplinary courses benefit from clearly defined performance expectations, says David Ackerman, superintendent of the Catalina Foothills School District in Tucson, Ariz. Teachers should be able to state, "By taking this course, students will be able to..." The performance expectations should make clear the "value-added dimension" of the interdisciplinary approach, Ackerman says, which should "help make the case for it."
Doing interdisciplinary teaching well is very powerful—but very difficult, Roth says. Although she was not happy with the "1492" unit, she had better success with another effort to merge science and social studies. In science, she taught her students about things that dissolve; in social studies, she taught about farming in the United States. Then she pulled the two subjects together by teaching about farmers' use of pesticides and insecticides, including what dissolves in rain water. Because interdisciplinary connections were made after students had a base of understanding in both subjects, they were "easier for the kids to grasp," she believes.
In planning integrated curriculum, teachers need to ask, "Is it a natural connection, or a forced and superficial one?" Roth says. "Naturally occurring links are extremely powerful."
