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CHALLENGES TO TRADITIONAL SUBJECT ORGANIZATION
Subject is both a salient feature of high school teaching and a target of
criticism by those who advocate dramatic changes in secondary education.
Proposals to reconsider the nature of "vocational" and "academic" preparation
coincide with other challenges to the traditional subject organization of high
schools.[5] Vocational educators who have long
been advocates of "learning in context" resonate to the claims of the cognitive
scientists, who find the conventional curriculum and traditional modes of
instruction to be a poor fit with how children actually learn (Duckworth, 1987;
Lave & Wenger, 1991) or with the ways in which knowledge is generated and
employed outside the school (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Engestrom,
1991).[6] By this view, even "high status"
courses in the academic curriculum might be deemed intellectually or
cognitively impoverished; a transformation of academic learning would, in
principle, benefit all children (e.g., Newmann, 1988; White, in press).
Other criticisms center on the social, economic, and political consequences of
a differentiated and hierarchically organized curriculum: differentiated
access to the curriculum contributes to the reproduction of existing class,
gender, and race relations in the larger society. Curriculum tracking is the
most visible structure of differentiated opportunity, and one that persists
despite unfavorable evidence accumulated over several decades (Oakes, 1985;
Oakes, Selvin, Karoly, & Guiton, 1992).[7]
Those who advance a "critical pedagogy" ground their recommendations in an
appeal to more genuinely democratic schooling (Carlson, 1992; Simon, 1992;
Simon, Dippo, & Schenke, 1991). In part, their vision is achieved by
expanding the domain of what counts as legitimate knowledge in the subject
curriculum. All students would encounter the kinds of ideas, tasks, and
materials that engender intellectual power, social competence, critical
independence, and a commitment to social justice.
Criticisms of tracking arrangements come also from proponents of an economic
development position; they argue that the present tracking arrangements and
differentiated curriculum not only reduce the pool of well-educated workers,
but also reflect a misunderstanding of the knowledge demands of the present
workplace--including the knowledge demands required for the industrial trades.
One recent newspaper account reports,
At General Motors Corp., a carpenter now is required to know
algebra and geometry. A GM plumber needs algebra, geometry and physics; an
electrician needs algebra, trigonometry and physics; and a tool-and-die maker,
model maker or machine repairman needs algebra, geometry, trigonometry and
physics. . . . More and more companies will deny entry to high school graduates
unless they have the requisite science and technology skills. (Rigden, 1992,
p. A19)
Finally, criticisms arise from the pragmatic observation that students, even
those most absorbed in the agenda of schooling, are rarely engaged by its
dominant content and forms. In The Shopping Mall High School, Powell
and his colleagues (1985) detailed the "treaties" by which teachers and
students negotiated classroom order and cooperation at the expense of academic
rigor (see also Cusick, 1983; Metz, 1990, 1993; Sedlak, Wheeler, Pullin, &
Cusick, 1986). Similarly, Bruckerhoff's (1991) description of subject
specialism among two faculty cliques in a social studies department is anything
but encouraging when judged through the lens of the school's academic mission.
Even the clique labeled "Academics" persists in a narrowly conceived, canonical
view of subject matter, taught in a traditional lecture-recitation manner that
promises little genuine subject interest or mastery by students. One readily
concludes from such analyses that the academic curriculum is not only
intellectually barren, but also emotionally sterile and socially divisive.
In the wake of these challenges, schools have launched a spate of special
initiatives to restore rigor and utility to the curriculum, to seek more
meaningful connections among academic subjects, and to engage adolescents more
productively with adults and with one another. Three kinds of reform
initiatives dominate. Each is influenced by long-standing traditions of
subject teaching and subject organization.
Efforts to intensify or "beef up" the academic curriculum of vocational
education respond to persistent complaints regarding the meagre basic skills
demonstrated by graduates of vocational (and general education) courses and
programs. Public dismay over unacceptably low levels of school performance and
school completion helped to shape the terms of recent state and federal
legislation. Under the terms of the 1990 Amendments to the Perkins Act (U.S.
Congress, 1990), schools participating in federally supported programs of
vocational education are expected to supply "coherent sequences of courses so
that students achieve both academic and occupational competencies" (section
235). Some states have followed suit with special initiatives framed in much
the same language; in 1991, for example, California funded High School
Investment Grants whose main purpose was to place the integration of vocational
and academic education on the broader agenda of reform and restructuring in
local communities.
When viewed primarily as a remedy for poor performance, the intensification
strategy rests heavily on structured programs of remedial basic skills
instruction. Although common, the remediation response offers scant promise
for substantial change in the relation between vocational and academic studies.
Remedial materials and activities, typically oriented to "skill and drill,"
show uneven results at best and tend to be "only weakly connected to vocational
skill training" (Grubb, Kalman, Castellano, Brown, & Bradby, 1991b, p. 43).
Further, when schools rely heavily on basic skills remediation as a way to
expand the academic content of vocational programs, they may simply confirm the
existing status hierarchy in which vocational programs acquire those students
who are the least academically successful. According to Grubb and his
colleagues, "When the purpose of integration becomes the enhancement of basic
skills among vocational students, [integration] becomes a form of remediation"
(p. 43; see also Carlson, 1992). The dominance of remedial academics signals a
larger dilemma: Where vocational programs are targeted at entry level
positions in occupations that themselves present relatively few academic
demands, the level of academic instruction in those programs seems fated to
remain low (Grubb et al., 1991b, p. 44).
When viewed not as remediation but as a remedy for inequitable allocation of
resources, the intensification strategy assumes a rather different significance
and requires a different set of practices. In this view, intensification
responds to criticisms surrounding the equity of tracking arrangements that
concentrate instructional resources on those designated most able--reserving
the most advanced and highly regarded subject knowledge for those at the top of
the system.
The intensification strategy is more ambitious--and more controversial--when
it pursues quite a different configuration of vocational and academic
instruction within defined vocational programs. Least controversial are
attempts at selective "infusion" whereby teachers revise existing vocational
courses to incorporate appropriate academic concepts or skills; thus, a math
teacher expresses interest in helping a graphic arts teacher escalate the
mathematics content of graphic arts classes beyond "simple measurement." In a
more sweeping change, established programs of vocational instruction propose
academic course offerings that are closely aligned to the vocational specialty
but that traditionally fall within the purview of academic departments. Such
arrangements impinge directly upon the established subject boundaries. When
vocational agriculture teachers at one rural school proposed to offer classes
in "plant science," for example, they justified their plan by referring to the
knowledge of botany and biochemistry that is arguably essential to any work
beyond basic labor in the agricultural field. When they sought academic credit
for the course--for purposes of high school graduation or college
admission--they found themselves embroiled in a dispute with science teachers
over the content of credit-bearing biology classes and the certification of
science teachers. The science chair voiced reservations about the "standards"
met by such a class. He protested, "I can bring the real world into my class
without creating another 'practical' class," and he illustrated by saying that
he teaches combustion by asking students to describe and assess a fireman's
options for putting out a fire. Implicit in his arguments are two claims:
first, that any science content offered in vocational agriculture is likely to
be weak, "watered down," or even erroneous; and second, that vocational
teachers are ill-prepared to teach science, while science teachers are
adequately prepared to demonstrate the vocational uses of scientific
concepts.[8]
Debates over the limits of academic intensification become more heated at the
point where established patterns of student enrollment are threatened.
Competition over student enrollment has strained the relations between
vocational or other "electives" teachers and academic teachers in recent years
(Little & Threatt, 1992). Competition centers both on the total number of
students taught by a department (hence, the number of full-time equivalent
staff and course sections supported) and on the distribution of "good"
students. The science chair who responded skeptically to the proposal for a
plant science class in vocational agriculture speculated that the availability
of such classes would erode enrollments in biology as students elected "easier"
courses to satisfy their science requirements. His comments paralleled those
reported by Oakes et al. (1992), reflecting a view that students' abilities and
motivations were relatively fixed by the time they entered high school, and
that teachers and counselors were in a position to accommodate rather than
alter them. Such a view induces competition among teachers for a fixed
commodity--the academically able and motivated student.
Efforts to intensify the academic content of vocational offerings appear to be
most readily supported when they do little to challenge the hegemony of the
academic subjects and the college preparatory curriculum or to threaten the
class enrollments that ensure academic teachers their preferred instructional
assignments. Such efforts court opposition where they are seen as encroaching
on the curricular boundaries of established departments, altering course
enrollment patterns among the "good" students, and requiring a shift in the
instructional assignments sought by academic teachers.
Controversy regarding the academic legitimacy of curriculum content and
competition over student enrollment may both be mitigated when traditional
programs of vocational education (especially those in the industrial trades)
are replaced by a new breed of vocational offerings that stand to attract the
participation of academic teachers. Such offerings (e.g., in the health
occupations, air and space industries, or graphic arts and communications) are
conceived in ways that hold out a wide range of occupational and future
educational possibilities. Their elaborated academic requirements derive from
their broader vision of occupational entry points and postsecondary options.
(Career academies frequently emphasize that they are "college bound" programs,
for example.) Designed in this manner, such programs may more readily
attract academic teachers and more readily legitimate the award of academic
course credits. They may prompt a professional conversation in which teachers
join forces to alter curriculum and pedagogy in ways that expand the number of
students judged academically able and motivated.
At its most fully developed, then, the intensification strategy promises to
achieve both intellectual and social aims--to generate more academic content in
vocational courses, to embed more practical connections in academic coursework,
and to assure a more equitable distribution of instructional resources.
Reforms to deepen and enliven the teaching of academic subjects form the
counterpart to the vocational "intensification" strategy. In part, these
reforms of academic teaching arise out of the public laments about the
inadequate work preparation demonstrated even by college preparatory students
and college graduates. That is, the press for a more credible link between
schooling and work takes the form of pressures on the academic curriculum to be
more directly, deeply, and imaginatively connected to genuine occasions of
knowledge use.
Three elements of subject matter reform absorb the attention of academic
teachers. First, reforms in subject matter teaching envision a constructivist
approach to student learning. Such an approach is grounded in the claim that
"There are general cognitive skills; but they always function in contextualized
ways . . ." (Perkins & Salomon, 1989, p. 19). It challenges the
conventional canonical views of curriculum and didactic modes of pedagogy:
"Many methods of didactic education assume a separation between knowing and
doing, treating knowledge as an integral, self-sufficient substance,
theoretically independent of the situations in which it is learned and used"
(Brown et al., 1989, p. 32). In an alternative view, learners' conceptual
understanding arises out of structured opportunities to make connections
between formalized, abstract knowledge and real-world phenomena. Such
opportunities are observably rare in schools.
Illustrative of this shift in subject matter teaching are some of the recent
advances in math and science instruction. These developments respond to
criticisms that traditional modes of instruction in these subjects equip
students to apply formulas, but leave them unable to articulate basic
principles or the conditions under which they might be used. Conventional
modes of physics instruction enable students to match characteristics of a
problem with the appropriate algebraic equation(s), but leave many students
still puzzled by basic principles of physics in action. For example, students
are unable to predict the trajectory of a ball when it is kicked off a cliff or
emitted from a spiral tube lying flat on a table. White (in press) explains
that "such questions do not call for computation or the algebraic manipulation
of formulas; rather, they require understanding the implications of the
fundamental tenets of Newtonian mechanics." White traces the difficulty of
instruction grounded in "constraint-based formulations and the corresponding
algebraic approaches to problem solving [that] obscure underlying causal
principles" (p. 3). She replaces conventional forms of physics instruction
with structured activities in a progressive series of computer microworlds (the
ThinkerTools curriculum). Activities in the microworlds, in written exercises,
and in classroom discussion lead students to a progressively more sophisticated
grasp of basic physical principles and tenets of scientific inquiry. White's
eleven- and twelve-year-old students outperformed conventionally taught high
school students on tasks requiring an understanding of the relations of force
and motion. Comparable developments might be readily located in other subject
fields: for example, students come to understand not only history but
historiography through simulations, the examination of primary materials, and
collaborative investigation of contemporary problems. Approaches such as these
offer a powerful alternative to traditional instruction, but also place
substantial demands on the beliefs, knowledge, skill, and confidence of
teachers.
Second, reforms in subject matter teaching seek more permeable boundaries
between subject disciplines. This aspect of subject teaching reform responds
to the criticisms that subject learning is overly segmented and fragmented; the
secondary curriculum mirrors the disciplinary organization of higher education,
but obscures the kinds of integrative and synthetic knowledge required in work
or other domains outside of school (Hargreaves & Macmillan, 1992; Sizer,
1984, 1992). Selected special projects suggest an alternative form of high
school organization. The Coalition of Essential Schools promotes an
interdisciplinary curriculum that prepares students for culminating
"exhibitions" that require concepts and skills drawn from several subject
disciplines (Sizer, 1992). On the whole, however, those teachers who express
an interest in interdisciplinary teaching and assessment are left largely to
their own devices; their interest is not yet well-supported in the development
of actual courses or materials, and the available examples are not widely known
or studied. In schools we visited, teachers were intrigued by the
possibilities for portfolio assessment and for student "exhibitions," but were
uncertain what forms they might take. Subject-specific curriculum development,
if not exactly proceeding at a whirlwind pace, nonetheless far outstrips the
comparable interdisciplinary developments. Yet it is precisely these
boundary-spanning, or boundary-weakening, activities that are particularly
compatible with the intent to integrate academic education with work
preparation.
Third, reforms in subject matter teaching require comparable shifts in
practices of student assessment. "Alternative," "authentic," or "performance"
assessments promise a more credible match with students' cognitive processes
and actual performance on complex tasks than have been achieved through
conventional standardized measures. Progress is steady, if uneven;
developments unfold in quite different forms and different arenas. Teachers
individually and collaboratively explore the local possibilities of "portfolio
assessment," largely independent of the efforts being made by cognitive
scientists and statisticians to develop psychometrically sound methods of
performance assessment that might be pursued on a large scale. One large
project supported by the National Science Foundation, for example, seeks to
develop "a principled basis for constructing and scoring conceptually rich
performance tasks" that might range from various thought experiments ("What
would happen if . . .") to collaborative research projects carried out by
students (Frederiksen, White, Campione, & Brown, 1991). The burdens
assumed by such assessments are several: to communicate learning goals of the
sort encompassed by the various state curriculum frameworks or by evolving
national standards; to serve as a source of instructional feedback for students
and for teachers; and to satisfy the public demand for reliable and valid
appraisals of student learning. The move toward performance assessment, like
the increasing interest in interdisciplinary connections, is highly compatible
with the aim to integrate vocational and academic education. At present,
however, teachers' expressed interest in alternative forms of assessment far
exceeds their professed skill and confidence in constructing, evaluating, or
incorporating such alternatives--and also exceeds the resources presently
available from the research and test development communities.
The transformation of teaching in the academic subjects, if successful, should
render the world of adult work more visible and more meaningful in the
secondary curriculum. However, these subject teaching reforms are not
themselves explicitly vocational, even though they are compatible--in their
general disposition toward teaching, learning, and assessment--with rationales
for integrating vocational and academic education.
The anticipated changes in vocational education thus reside in a broader
context of multiple and related reforms in secondary and higher education.
Subject matter associations (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
[NCTM], National Council of Teachers of English [NCTE], and National Science
Teachers Association [NSTA]) have promulgated new standards of subject matter
teaching that challenge traditional views of the subject content, incorporate
more inventive pedagogies, and require a broader range of assessment practices.
The Coalition of Essential Schools, meanwhile, advocates integrating curriculum
across traditional subject boundaries and engaging students in school tasks
that more closely approximate the intellectual, social, and practical demands
of genuine work and complex problem-solving. The Coalition holds out the image
of the "student as worker" as one of its nine guiding principles. These and
other reforms affect the priorities and preoccupations of administrators,
counselors, and academic teachers; they can be expected also to affect the ways
in which those educators view the integration of vocational and academic
education. Some of the most ambitious programs to invigorate vocational
education are embedded in larger programs of school restructuring, in which
school administrators, department chairs, and other teacher leaders are
grappling with unfamiliar perspectives and arrangements.
The two dominant reform strategies--(1) intensification of academic study for
all students and (2) transformations in the nature of subject matter
teaching--inevitably draw attention to the conventional structures that
organize secondary schooling. Some teachers, vocational and academic alike,
find new structures such as academies, houses, and career clusters an exciting
remedy to the shopping mall high school. They believe the structures will
provide meaningful links across subjects, will add to the "personalization"
that students experience in schools, and will blur the existing dichotomy
between college preparation and work preparation. Other teachers are concerned
that subject integrity and depth will be compromised and that an increasing
emphasis on interdisciplinary connections or on work education will mean an
overall "lowering of standards."
In each instance, however, enduring structures of the secondary school stand
demonstrably in conflict with the recommended strategies for improving
conditions of school learning. To some extent, both the "vocational
intensification" strategy and the "subject transformation" strategy founder on
an insular departmental structure, fifty-minute instructional slots, the
differentiation of "college-bound" from "noncollege-bound" students (and the
stigma attached to the latter), a hierarchically organized curriculum, and
narrowly defined criteria for evaluating student achievement. Both strategies
would be well-served by a more flexible schedule, the elimination or
modification of tracking arrangements, more permeable subject boundaries, and
more meaningful student evaluation schema.
Nonetheless, the alternative structural configurations suggested by the two
strategies do not necessarily coincide. Schools appear preoccupied by one or
the other, or pursue the two along parallel, nonconverging paths. Ambitious
efforts to enhance academic instruction for students who are outside the
academic mainstream might be achieved through the development of career
academies; academies incorporate academic teachers and a sequence of academic
courses, but otherwise leave the basic departmental structure of the school
untouched. A more comprehensive shift from departmental structure to career
paths or career clusters highlights the intersection of vocational and academic
aims, but may make the pursuit of reforms in the subject disciplines more
difficult by limiting contacts among subject specialists. Similarly, an
organizational structure that most readily facilitates the development of
interdisciplinary curricula may bring related subject disciplines (and
specialists) together without any explicit provision for vocational
specialists. "Houses" are commonly staffed by interdisciplinary teams of
teachers representing the core academic domains of English, math, science, and
social studies. Other subjects (and purposes) including the arts, languages,
and various vocational specialties remain literally and figuratively on the
margins.[10] Students' experiences remain
clearly differentiated, especially at the upper grades.
Amid the restructuring landscape, radical transformations that touch the heart
of the educational enterprise--the vision of what schooling is about, the
nature of students' intellectual, emotional, and social experiences, the
choices regarding what and how to teach--seem relatively rare. Compared to
restructuring that centers on school governance and formal teacher decision
making, we have found it hard to locate restructuring initiatives centered on a
reconsideration of basic conditions of teaching and learning. In part, this
means a relative scarcity of observable "trials" or "experiments," a tendency
to advance structural solutions without attending seriously to matters of
purpose and culture, and a propensity to seize upon early pioneers as models.
In one of the few detailed accounts of the development of alternative
structures in high schools (in this instance, house structures), Oxley (1990)
examines the difficulties that schools encounter in simultaneously taking
subjects (and good subject teaching) seriously while attempting to grant other
purposes and experiences parity in the organization of the school. She
concludes, with some important caveats, that "house systems constitute a more
effective form of high school organization" (p. iii). At its best, the house
organization pursues two aims simultaneously: (1) a more personalized
relationship between adults and adolescents and (2) a more focused and
purposeful curriculum. In Oxley's sites, however, the change to houses from
departments was motivated and justified in large part by concerns regarding
student engagement, responses to student diversity, school orderliness, and
dropout prevention. It represented a deliberate move toward "personalization"
of the school experience, and a response to the increasing anonymity of large
high schools. Justifications that centered on conditions of learning and
standards for students' academic and practical achievements--though the case
might readily be made--were less prominent and more ambiguous. At the same
time, the organization of academic specialties, accompanied by a structure of
student tracking and a proliferation of special programs, formed the major
obstacle to the implementation of the house concept.
Oxley's investigations were among the first. Others now begin to emerge:
Fine's (1992, in press) study of the charter schools experiment in
Philadelphia; the national study of school restructuring being conducted by
Fred Newmann (1993) and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin; the case
studies being produced collaboratively within the Coalition of Essential
Schools (Muncey & McQuillan, 1993; Wasley, 1991); and the studies of
"destreaming" efforts in Canadian secondary schools led by Hargreaves
(Hargreaves et al., 1992). Together, these studies should not only exemplify
the difficulty of undertaking (and understanding) changes in secondary
schooling, but also underscore its importance. We have little in the way of
close observation and detailed record to inform our grasp of how structural
alternatives advance or impede the integration of vocational and academic
education. We have enough, however, to suggest that the consequences of
structural changes--to houses or career clusters, for example--are anything but
clear. It is one of the aims of our unfolding field studies to shed some light
on these developments.
[5] Attacks on subject specialism and departmental
organization are most widely associated in the United States with Sizer (1984,
1992) and in Canada with Goodson (1988a, 1988b) and Hargreaves (Hargreaves
& Macmillan, 1992).
[6] This is not to claim that the forms of
"learning by experience" that one witnesses in vocational classrooms always
approximate the conditions envisioned by contemporary cognitive scientists or,
indeed, by John Dewey, but to observe that there is a convergence of basic
principle regarding the conditions of cognitive development.
[7] The Oakes et al. (1992) monograph is the
first analysis of tracking focused specifically on patterns of vocational and
academic course-taking. Its findings are consistent with other accounts. For
example, see Cicourel and Kitsuse, 1963; Gamoran, 1987, 1992; Garet and DeLany,
1988; Oakes, 1985; Oakes, Gamoran, and Page, 1991; Rosenbaum, 1986.
[8] This is not to deny that the matter of
teachers' qualifications to teach--the depth of their subject matter
expertise--is an important one and that there are important and largely
unexamined implications here for teacher education. In particular schools, it
is also an empirical matter. Through their curriculum planning, instructional
practice, and student assessments, teachers can demonstrate the nature and
extent of their subject-pedagogical knowledge.
[9] This section is confined to commentary that
links reforms in social organization of schooling to those bearing directly on
the integration of vocational and academic education. For more comprehensive
reviews of the school restructuring movement, see Murphy (1991) and Prager
(1992).
[10] In some, though not all, house
arrangements, bilingual and special education also remain outside the house
structure, and may in fact become more isolated (see Oxley, 1990; also
Hargreaves & Macmillan, 1992).
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