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Gleanings: Integrating Academic and Vocational Curriculum

by Damaris Moore

Integrating academic and vocational education has received support from many sources. It's based on the common sense idea that for most people learning requires a context that matters to them, and that through practical application, ideas come alive for students. The following selections from NCRVE research discuss integrated curriculum as a way to restructure the entire high school; the various forms integrated curriculum can take, from less to more complex; and the challenges this reform still faces.

from Integrating Academic and Vocational Education
W. N. Grubb / MDS-760

Three approaches to integrating vocational and academic education in high schools are the academy model; occupational clusters, career paths, and majors; and occupational and magnet schools. In this passage, W. Norton Grubb outlines the ways reforms based on integrated curriculum can resound throughout the entire school.

Efforts to restructure the high school via career academies, occupational clusters, and magnet schools can be interpreted simply as ways of reforming vocational education. However, their greatest promise is that these initiatives can reshape the entire high school.

from Lessons Learned: Five Years in the Urban Schools Network
E. Nielsen Andrew, C. Dornsife, M. Flack, M. Tsuzuki Hallinan, L. Jackson, M. Raby, M. Harris Steadman / MDS-1110

This capstone report, in reflecting on NCRVE's five year school reform project, reveals broad lessons about how schools change. Described below are the levels of thematic integration, from subject area sharing to action-based projects, all aspects of the industry, and career pathways.

Thematic integration is one way of integrating academic and vocational curricula in which separate disciplines use the same themes in their courses. Academic and vocational teachers remain in their departments and retain responsibility for their specific subjects. The teachers collaborate to support a common theme and share information on how to support the theme in their disciplines.

Some schools use a form of thematic integration where core academic and vocational courses focus on an interdisciplinary project. A common format is the action-based project used in many career academies that combines course work from several disciplines to produce a product such as a report, videotape, or newsletter.

Other schools are developing more complex forms of thematic integration in which academic and technical content is not departmentalized but emerges from career topics or issues. At least two, but usually more, academic and vocational teachers align their curricula to teach related content at the same time during the school year. This approach often results in a curriculum that incorporates the Perkins II mandate that teachers instruct their students in "all aspects of the industry." All aspects of the industry includes planning; management; finances; technical and production skills; underlying principles of technology; and labor, community, health, safety, and environmental issues.

School configurations, such as career pathways and career academies provide crucial support to teachers trying to integrate curriculum. Career academies are particularly suited to integration because their school-within-a-school structure, teacher collaboration, and cohort scheduling are designed to foster interdisciplinary integration. Academies are developed around career themes such as health, business, or media. The course of study in academy programs consists of core academic classes--English, mathematics, and science--combined with occupationally related classes that focus on the academy's career theme.

Connecting urban students' classroom instruction to the world of work deepens their knowledge and sense of purpose. With improved teaching of rigorous academic and technical content, urban students can and do pursue both higher education and employment in high-performance workplaces. Benefits accrue to all, for they are graduating with an understanding of the work world and its requirements for lifelong learning, a background for career decision making, and preparation for lives of skilled work.

from School to Work, College and Career: A Review of Policy, Practice, and Results 1993-1997
M. Urquiola, D. Stern, I. Horn, C. Dornsife, B. Chi, L. Williams, D. Merritt, K. Hughes, T. Bailey / MDS-1144

This comprehensive report assesses the school-to-work movement over the last five years. The following passage outlines the history of integrated curriculum reforms, and their continuing challenges.

Although the absence of comprehensive data makes it impossible to draw precise empirical conclusions about prevailing trends, there does appear to have been some progression in the development of approaches to integrating vocational and academic curriculum in high schools. The concerns about underprepared vocational graduates that prompted the 1990 Perkins Amendments led first to efforts aimed at upgrading the academic content of vocational curricula, by enriching vocational courses and offering vocational students access to more rigorous academic classes.

The passage of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act in 1994 challenged localities and states to broaden their view beyond vocational or work-bound students, by creating career majors that would be available to "all students," including the "academically talented." This meant thinking schoolwide about changing not only curricular content but also the structure of the school. By the mid-1990s, numerous high schools were exploring how school-to-work (STW) reform might fit with broader conceptions of school restructuring.

Efforts to incorporate the ideas of STW reform into schoolwide restructuring have met with major problems, including active resistance by some parents and teachers who see STW as a threat to the college-prep curriculum. . . . As we have suggested throughout this report, convincing parents and teachers of college-bound students that the STW approach has something to offer them is probably the most critical challenge the STW movement now faces. Once that challenge is met, many difficult problems still remain to be worked out. But these ensuing questions about how to integrate curriculum, and in particular who has the time to work on it, cannot be addressed productively at the schoolwide level until the question about whether to move in this direction has been resolved.

Damaris Moore, a member of the Dissemination Program, handles NCRVE's public information initiatives.

NCRVE New Products

The following new reports are available from the NCRVE Materials Distribution Service. You may order these documents by phone (800) 637-7652, by e-mail, NCRVE-MDS@wiu.edu, or by sending your request and/or purchase order to: NCRVE Materials Distribution Service, Western Illinois University, Horrabin Hall 46, Macomb, IL 61455.

Executive summaries and/or full text of recent NCRVE publications are available electronically on NCRVE's various online services. If a document is available at our Web site, the online location is listed underneath the pricing information in this article. To connect to NCRVE's World Wide Web site, point your WWW browser to <http://ncrve.berkeley.edu/>. (Note: electronic addresses given are enclosed in <angle brackets> to set them off from the text. Do not include the brackets when typing the addresses on your computer.)

MONOGRAPHS

Achieving Scale and Quality in School-To-Work Internships: Findings From an Employee Survey--T. Bailey, K. Hughes, T. Barr

Work-based learning, a key component of school-to-work programs, depends on employers who are willing to provide placements and to ensure that the placements are educational. This report compares employers participating in work-based learning programs with nonparticipating ones, and examines the relationship between participants' motivation and the quality of the placements they provide. The data suggests that the most important motivation for participation remains philanthropic. Among nonparticipating firms, most say they need more bottom-line oriented arguments to convince them to join up. The authors conclude that it will be necessary to collect solid data to support the claim that participating in work-based learning is in the firm's interest in order to promote the spread of these programs.

MDS-902, March 1998, $6.00

Toward Order From Chaos: State Efforts to Reform Workforce Development "Systems"--W. N. Grubb, N. Badway, D. Bell, B. Chi, C. King, J. Herr, H. Prince, R. Kazis, L. Hicks, J. C. Taylor

America's workforce development system is frequently charged with overlap, waste, duplication, and sheer confusion. Ten states are now reforming their workforce development programs. These programs include postsecondary vocational education, short-term job training, adult education, specific programs for welfare recipients and dislocated workers, state-funded training for specific employers, and the training that employers provide themselves. Through interviews with state and community officials, this report examines and assesses these states' strategies and progress, the challenges they've encountered, the effects of welfare reform, local responses to state policy, the complex roles of employers, and implications for state and federal policy. This is the first comprehensive evaluation of state efforts at reforming workforce development.

MDS-1249, January 1999, $10.50

REPRINTS AND WORKING PAPERS

Design of Work-Based Learning for Students in the United States--D. Stern, M. L. Rahn, Y.-P. Chung

Work-based learning (WBL) of the "learn-and-stay" variety prepares for specific occupations or industries, whereas "learn-and-go" WBL develops more broadly transferable knowledge and skills. Census data from California show that from the ages of 16 to 34, many workers move from industries with lower earning prospects to industries with higher ones. This natural flow might be facilitated by more learn-and-go WBL in low-wage industries and more learn-and-stay in high-wage industries. School-sponsored enterprises could play an important role in delivering additional WBL. Reprinted from the June 1998 issue of Youth and Society.

MDS-1256, January 1999, $2.50

State "Systems" of Workforce Development and the Workforce Investment Act--W. N. Grubb

W. Norton Grubb, director of the NCRVE site at U.C. Berkeley, analyzes the efforts of ten states to coordinate their workforce development programs. These programs include postsecondary vocational education, short-term job training, adult education, specific programs for welfare recipients and dislocated workers, state-funded training for specific employers, and the training employers provide themselves. The article also outlines major provisions of the Workforce Investment Act that may contribute to greater system coordination. Reprinted from Workforce Investment Quarterly, vol. 5, issue 4. The full report on this project is available as Toward Order From Chaos: State Efforts to Reform Workforce Development Systems.

MDS-1246

EDUCATIONAL BRIEFS

BRIEFS

Each brief and case study may be ordered separately. All nine together are sold as MDS-1265.

Changing Work, Changing Learning: The Imperative for Teacher Learning in Workplaces and Communities
--L. Allen Phelps
MDS-1208

Innovative Professional Development Opportunities: Key Elements for Successful Development
--Victor Hernàndez-Gantes
MDS-1209

Educator Internship Programs: Providing a Quality Learning Experience
--Thomas Sargent and Judy Ettinger
MDS-1210

The Use of Professional Development Schools to Inform Educators About the School-to-Work Initiative
--Christine Maidl Pribbenow
MDS-1267

CASE STUDIES

Professional Development in Support of School-to-Work: Jackson-Hillsdale Counties, MI
--Christine Maidl Pribbenow and Thomas Sargent
MDS-1268

Montpelier High School: Restructuring the Educational Experience: Montpelier, VT
--Christine Maidl Pribbenow and Thomas Sargent
MDS-1269

Bringing the World Into the Classroom: Business Education Compact: Portland, Oregon
--Christine Maidl Pribbenow and Thomas Sargent
MDS-1270

The Advanced Technology Environmental Education Center: A Global Effort: Bettendorf, IA
--Thomas Sargent, Christine Maidl Pribbenow, and Francisco Castelan
MDS-1271

Building and Sustaining a Commitment to Improving Learning Through Staff Development: The Miami-Dade Community College Journey: Miami, Florida
--George H. Copa
MDS-1272

New Products Online

by David Carlson

Full text of many recent NCRVE publications are available on the NCRVE website. You can search titles and abstracts at <http://ncrve.berkeley.edu/Abstracts/QuickFind.html>, or browse the available full-text items by title at <http://ncrve.berkeley.edu/fulltext.html>. New items are added regularly, so check back often, or subscribe to the ncrve-www-announce electronic mailing list (see below for details on how to join). (Note: electronic addresses given here are enclosed in <angle brackets> to set them off from the text. Do not include the brackets when typing the addresses on your computer.)

Ten items went online in November-February:

Keep Up with the NCRVE Website

Would you like to get a short email message whenever new publications and features become available on the NCRVE website? If so, send an email message to ncrve-www-announce@ncrve.berkeley.edu, and put the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of the message.

David Carlson manages electronic communications for NCRVE's Dissemination Program.

Teaching in Community Colleges: Honored But Invisible

by W. Norton Grubb

Community colleges have become crucial institutions. Nearly half of all students entering postsecondary education begin at community colleges. Community colleges provide special opportunities for older students, dislocated workers, "experimenters" unsure of their options, and other non-traditional students. They now provide the majority of occupational education, which is of particular interest to those concerned with workforce preparation, including NCRVE. They serve a bridging role, linking job training to education, economic development to workforce preparation, and academic purposes to occupational goals, that no other institution provides. And they pride themselves on being "teaching colleges" in ways that most postsecondary institutions are not.

In NCRVE research on innovation--including the integration of academic and occupational education, tech prep, and work-based learning--we have uncovered a variety of exceptional teaching practices. But we also found many colleges where these reforms were not taking root, and we began to wonder why. We also discovered that there was little empirical work on teaching in community colleges, particularly in subjects-- like occupational education and remedial or developmental education--important to NCRVE. To answer our questions, my research associates and I began observing classrooms and interviewing instructors and administrators in 30 colleges across the country. The result, based on about 260 observations and 320 interviews, is a book published by Routledge in March 1999 entitled Honored But Invisible: An Inside Look at Teaching in Community Colleges. The title comes from two instructors, one who noted that teaching is indeed honored in colleges, even if is sometimes neglected, and another who acknowledged the sad fact that community colleges are invisible to the general public despite their importance.

Honored But Invisible intends to make the inner workings of classrooms visible and the influences on teaching comprehensible. Most of the book describes actual classes, relating how instructors and students interact in subjects ranging from modern novels to basic grammar, from business to dairy herd management, from calculus to cosmetology. The practices that are of special concern to NCRVE--the teaching of occupational subjects, the integration of academic and occupational material, the special literacy and mathematical practices required in high-level occupations, the influences of the world of work within the classroom--are all part of this mosaic. The voices of instructors (and administrators) themselves, drawn from interviews, comment on teaching practices, on the ways instructors have developed their approaches to teaching, and on the ways colleges themselves influence (or fail to influence) teaching. And so the book is drawn entirely from practice: it describes classes and how instructors see their own classes and their students, not as others imagine them to be.

Not surprisingly in institutions as varied as community colleges, the quality of teaching varies from the sublime to the embarrassing. In the best occupational and academic classes, students are highly engaged; they draw on reading, lecture, personal and work experiences, and workshop activities to elaborate sophisticated ideas and abilities including not only verbal and mathematical competencies but also visual and kinesthetic abilities, interpersonal skills, the "lore" of work, problem-solving and other higher-order abilities often referred to as "SCANS" skills. In other cases, students are disaffected and the material presented is dismally low. The abilities of instructors are crucial: the ways they handle questions and answers, their approaches to lecture and discussion, the structure of workshops and the nature of problems used, and the range of competencies explicitly taught all matter a great deal to the extent of learning. The descriptions of classrooms in Honored But Invisible enable readers to see precisely when classes work well and when they "collapse," undone by inept teaching.

Understanding why instructors teach as they do is another issue. A few colleges truly deserve the label of "teaching institutions:" they use all the institutional mechanisms under their control to emphasize the quality of teaching. They base their hiring on information about teaching; they provide mentors to new instructors, and monitor their development as teachers; they base promotion and tenure on observations of teaching. They make sure that staff development is organized around the teaching problems their faculties face, and they provide on-going support to faculty rather than "one-shot" seminars with visitors. Some have teaching/learning centers to support faculty; some provide grants to develop new courses, or to collaborate in learning communities, or to experiment with alternative technologies. And instructors in these colleges uniformly report that administrators (especially presidents) are knowledgeable about instruction and enhance teaching through all their decisions.

Unfortunately, many colleges fail to use these institutional mechanisms to support teaching. Hiring is driven by political concerns, promotion and tenure are perfunctory, staff development is unfocused, and administrators seem to be "bean counters" concerned with enrollments and finances but not with learning. In such colleges, faculty describe their own development as due to trial and error. Good teaching seems to be random and idiosyncratic, standards are low because instructors don't know how to elicit strong performance from students, and innovation--including such powerful approaches as learning communities and integrated instruction--is rare. The inattention to teaching helps explain why some NCRVE research has found strong examples of innovative practice without innovation being widespread.

Fortunately, community colleges have much to build on. Many instructors are dedicated to their students and to teaching. The ethic of being "teaching institutions" is widely accepted, and can justify reforming all the institutional mechanisms described in this book. State policy can easily support changes--like more active forms of staff development, teaching/learning centers, pre-service education for instructors, research and technical assistance--that would improve the quality of teaching, and federal policy plays a role in supporting good practice as well. Through these improvements, all community colleges can become the teaching institutions that some already are.

Honored But Invisible: An Inside Look at Teaching in Community Colleges (ISBN 0-415-92165-1), is available for $24.99 from Routledge, 29 West 35th St., New York NY 10001; (800) 634-7064.

W. Norton Grubb is the David Gardner Chair in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the site directors of NCRVE.

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