Benefits of Integrated Curriculum

I recently ran across a study article that emphasized the importance of increasing physical activity (PA) in public schools to help battle childhood obesity and type II diabetes. The coolest part about this study is how they decided to incorporate increased PA throughout the school. They used a little thing we learned about in our class called integrated curriculum. For those of you who have no idea what integrated curriculum is, the simple definition would be incorporating or integrating more then one subject (or within one subject) area through a culminating project or assignment. In this particular study the culminating project was having two grade 6 classes theoretically walk across the United Kingdom (UK) over 4 weeks using a pedometer. How is this an example of integrated curriculum you might ask? The answer is simple; it integrated the Physical Education, Math, Science and Social Studies curriculums together throughout the entire process. In math class students learned how to create mathematical graphs that were then used to view their progress, while also learning how to convert their steps into miles. In geography students learned how to take the collected data from math class and use it to geographically map out their global positioning and progress. In science class students learned how to calculate their daily energy expenditures using the numbers taken from their personal pedometers.

This picture shows exactly how connected different subjects and curriculums can be within schools    ------------>

Taken From: http://kellygolsby.wordpress.com/694-20y-mathsci/694-20y-mod-4/

This is an awesome example of integrated curriculum being used in schools today. It moves away from the old story of education that is teacher-centered and controlled, to a more student-centered approach that allows students to see the practical implications of integrating classes. It also helps educators from across fields work together to improve the overall learning experience of the students. I know through my personal experience of going through high school, each of my four subjects per semester were completely irrelevant to one another. It was obvious that teachers didn't have any multi-disciplinary meetings about what their students were learning in other classes. This style of education is hard on the student because it forces them to participate completely in each subject for an hour straight yet the minute that hour finishes they have to switch their thinking completely to a new subject that holds no relevance to what they were just working on for the hour prior.

In our philosophy of physical education course we learn about certain hierarchies within the education system that develop from certain educators thinking their subject areas are more important or essential than others. By implementing integrated curriculum within schools it would dissolve some of these hierarchical differences because all educators would need to work together to create a curriculum that covered all subjects while being practical to students. Of course I understand that sometimes it might be difficult to integrate all subject areas together for all projects, but I do believe it is possible to at least have some minimal integration for all projects. For example it would be extremely easy to integrate any subject area with the English or French curriculum.

In the secondary level it is also possible to have interdisciplinary integration instead of multi-disciplinary units. Interdisciplinary integrated curriculum units integrate different classes or concepts within a single subject area. An example would be integrating a culminating project that pulls from the chemistry, biology, and physics curricular documents because all of them fall under the science curriculum. This could also be the case in math by integrating data management, advanced functions, and calculus into one final culminating project. Of course you would still have one Big Idea that can be related to each strand of the subject area that connects them together but the culminating task would have direct and practical relevance to all three strands. Lastly I would just like to mention that the culminating task would be a summative form of assessment at the end of the term.

In conclusion I would just like to say that reading this article completely opened my eyes to the benefits integrated curriculum could play in our current education system. I’ve given some examples above about how it would completely change the school dynamic to hopefully improve the students learning environment as a whole. As a future educator this is something that I would like to strive towards to see if it can truly yield the results it has shown to have in this study.

Maybe it is time to change up your classroom a little bit and try something new. Feel free to ask around other departments and see if anyone else is willing to try some curricular integration. If you do please let me know how it goes! I would love to get some honest feedback.

Best of Luck

PS. The study I found is only one example of integrated curriculum but check out this video I found on youtube about a college prep school that uses integrated curriculum to get their students practical experience in their future fields!!!

Taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqGspo1S3Tg


Reference

Duncan, M., Birch, S., & Woodfield, L. (2012). Efficacy of an Integrated School Curriculum Pedometer 
Intervention to Enhance Physical Activity and to Reduce Weight Status in Children. European Physical 
Education Review, 18(3), 396-407.