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CONCLUSION

This essay places proposals for integrating vocational and academic education in the context of subject specialism in the comprehensive high school. Certain aspects of subject specialism prove especially salient to the intersection of vocational and academic aims. Some strategies more than others promise to modify the status hierarchy in which academic subjects dominate over those deemed "practical" or "vocational." Some more than others actively construct more permeable boundaries (or more durable ties) among the "different worlds" that now demarcate school subjects. To integrate vocational and academic purposes, programs, and personnel will require that advocates capitalize on the range of challenges to the subject organization of secondary schools that undergird present reforms.

The arguments developed here stem from extended field research in five "ordinary" high schools where vocational and academic aims remain quite separate and traditional vocational education is in decline; and from preliminary site visits to several "innovating" schools in which the relationship between academic study and work preparation is more fluid. Systematic comparisons between the two would be premature. Nonetheless, four provisional conclusions seem warranted. They express our present understanding of the materials at hand and serve as the point of departure for subsequent work.

* The subject organization of secondary schooling is well-buttressed and highly resilient.
There is no instance--even in schools experimenting with career paths or career clusters--in which schools have displaced the traditional subject disciplines as the organizing focus for teacher and student assignment. The subject organization--usually in the form of departments--either continues to dominate the school structure or exists as a kind of parallel structure alongside houses, divisions, or clusters. It is unlikely that the intended integration of vocational and academic education will succeed in the absence of the other remedies entailing a reconceptualization of secondary schooling and the place it accords to the subject disciplines. That is, the integration agenda will be advanced only by coming to terms with the status hierarchy that exists among subjects, departments, and teachers in secondary schools (Ball, 1987; Burgess, 1983; Little, 1990, 1993; Neufeld, 1984). Further, it will be advanced when teachers begin to confront the "addiction to coverage" that persists despite demonstrably negative consequences for learning (Newmann, 1988, p. 346).
* Teachers' commitments to the subject disciplines, and their response to subject reform proposals, are mediated by their beliefs about students.
Despite the power of the subject stereotype, subject is not the whole story. It may not be the most important story, even though subject-related rationales figure prominently in the explanations teachers offer for their support or opposition to particular reform proposals. Embedded in teachers' accounts about what they teach, or what they should be teaching, are commentaries about whom they teach. The resilience of a hierarchical and differentiated subject curriculum can be rationalized on the basis of subject disciplinary traditions and paradigms, but it may be better explained on the basis of firmly held beliefs about the abilities, motivations, and dispositions of high school students. Like Oakes and her colleagues (1992), we were struck by the apparently widespread belief that students' abilities and motivations are relatively fixed by the time they reach high school. Thus, the integration agenda may proceed most steadily and surely in schools where such beliefs are genuinely open to question.
* Multiple reform efforts, to greater or lesser degrees compatible with one another, compete for teachers' time and attention.
Multiple reforms compete for teachers' time, attention, and interest, and for the professional development resources of a school and district (see Little, in press). Most visibly, efforts to enhance the rigor and credibility of vocational education ("intensification" strategies) sit alongside efforts to enrich the teaching of the academic subjects. Of the two, the subject reforms are currently the more powerful: more visible to teachers and administrators; more advanced in development of exemplars; and more readily aligned with teachers' existing capacities, commitments, and circumstances. Nonetheless, they present difficulties. For example, secondary teachers are pressed to participate in interdisciplinary curricula at precisely the time they are asked to reconsider their approaches to subject matter teaching--the latter reinforced by new state curriculum frameworks, standardized test protocols, textbook design, subject-specific university admission requirements, and teacher licensure policies. State and local policymakers continue to judge the success of reform efforts on the basis of standardized test scores even while they urge the development of alternative assessments. Reforms targeted to increase "critical thinking" sit in tension with the basic skills reforms that began in the 1960s and that remain a prominent part of the school improvement landscape (Carlson, 1992). Into this mix one adds the goal of integrating vocational and academic education. The sheer magnitude of the reform agenda and the multiplicity of reform "projects" requires us to consider not only the direct consequences of formal vocational education programs, but also the indirect benefit that accrues to work education from other transformations in secondary schooling--in particular the benefits that arise from improvements in academic instruction.
* Persuasive exemplars are in short supply.
Vocational and academic pursuits have been so separated and so differently valued that persuasive models of integration are hard to find. Everywhere we go, educators are either grasping for good models or are struggling with the furor that results when a school is labeled a "model." Meanwhile, both vocational and academic teachers express a general uncertainty about what they are called upon to do by the various reforms--about what content and methods might replace conventional curriculum and instruction in specific subject areas, about what form "integrated" or "interdisciplinary" curricula might take, or about what the "infusion of careers" might mean. Some of the proposals for the integration of vocational and academic education require little change in teachers' perspectives or practices; others imply dramatic shifts in what it means to attend or teach in high schools. Despite the genuine uncertainties and difficulties, however, many teachers share a sense of urgency. They do plunge ahead in planning and in pilot programs, convinced that business as usual will not suffice. Ideas and programs proliferate, and the number of innovating schools continues to grow. Our task is to learn from them and with them and to avoid the temptation to anoint them prematurely as "models" while they struggle to re-invent the established traditions of high school.

Proposals for the closer integration of vocational and academic studies offer one promising and ambitious avenue to the revitalization of secondary education. Such proposals gain currency by virtue of the escalating sense of urgency that surrounds the high schools--especially those in urban areas, but not exclusively so. They also engage teachers, individually and collectively, in confronting the essential purposes of schooling and the ways in which their daily work advances or frustrates those purposes. The discussions or debates that ensue reveal the contours of belief and practice within a school, sometimes locating the grounds for common action and sometimes giving expression to enduring and deeply felt differences. Perhaps more than other reform proposals, those centered on the vocational purposes of schooling also engage teachers with individuals and institutions--counselors, parents, employers, social services agencies, postsecondary institutions, and the students themselves--whose choices directly and indirectly shape the structure of opportunities for students. It is true that these proposals place at issue the traditional images of the subject specialist, the traditional definitions of the subject curriculum, and the traditional forms of subject organization. It is also true that the traditional stereotypes surrounding "subject" have never been adequate to account for the rich diversity of perspective and practice among teachers. The campaign to integrate vocational and academic pursuits makes visible the complexities surrounding subject affiliations and the place they occupy in defining what is worth knowing.

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*				The subject organization of secondary schooling is well-buttressed and highly resilient. There is no instance--even in schools experimenting with career paths or career clusters--in which schools have displaced the traditional subject disciplines as the organizing focus for teacher and student assignment. The subject organization--usually in the form of departments--either continues to dominate the school structure or exists as a kind of parallel structure alongside houses, divisions, or clusters. It is unlikely that the intended integration of vocational and academic education will succeed in the absence of the other remedies entailing a reconceptualization of secondary schooling and the place it accords to the subject disciplines. That is, the integration agenda will be advanced only by coming to terms with the status hierarchy that exists among subjects, departments, and teachers in secondary schools (Ball, 1987; Burgess, 1983; Little, 1990, 1993; Neufeld, 1984). Further, it will be advanced when teachers begin to confront the "addiction to coverage" that persists despite demonstrably negative consequences for learning (Newmann, 1988, p. 346).
*				Teachers' commitments to the subject disciplines, and their response to subject reform proposals, are mediated by their beliefs about students. Despite the power of the subject stereotype, subject is not the whole story. It may not be the most important story, even though subject-related rationales figure prominently in the explanations teachers offer for their support or opposition to particular reform proposals. Embedded in teachers' accounts about what they teach, or what they should be teaching, are commentaries about whom they teach. The resilience of a hierarchical and differentiated subject curriculum can be rationalized on the basis of subject disciplinary traditions and paradigms, but it may be better explained on the basis of firmly held beliefs about the abilities, motivations, and dispositions of high school students. Like Oakes and her colleagues (1992), we were struck by the apparently widespread belief that students' abilities and motivations are relatively fixed by the time they reach high school. Thus, the integration agenda may proceed most steadily and surely in schools where such beliefs are genuinely open to question.
*				Multiple reform efforts, to greater or lesser degrees compatible with one another, compete for teachers' time and attention. Multiple reforms compete for teachers' time, attention, and interest, and for the professional development resources of a school and district (see Little, in press). Most visibly, efforts to enhance the rigor and credibility of vocational education ("intensification" strategies) sit alongside efforts to enrich the teaching of the academic subjects. Of the two, the subject reforms are currently the more powerful: more visible to teachers and administrators; more advanced in development of exemplars; and more readily aligned with teachers' existing capacities, commitments, and circumstances. Nonetheless, they present difficulties. For example, secondary teachers are pressed to participate in interdisciplinary curricula at precisely the time they are asked to reconsider their approaches to subject matter teaching--the latter reinforced by new state curriculum frameworks, standardized test protocols, textbook design, subject-specific university admission requirements, and teacher licensure policies. State and local policymakers continue to judge the success of reform efforts on the basis of standardized test scores even while they urge the development of alternative assessments. Reforms targeted to increase "critical thinking" sit in tension with the basic skills reforms that began in the 1960s and that remain a prominent part of the school improvement landscape (Carlson, 1992). Into this mix one adds the goal of integrating vocational and academic education. The sheer magnitude of the reform agenda and the multiplicity of reform "projects" requires us to consider not only the direct consequences of formal vocational education programs, but also the indirect benefit that accrues to work education from other transformations in secondary schooling--in particular the benefits that arise from improvements in academic instruction.
*				Persuasive exemplars are in short supply. Vocational and academic pursuits have been so separated and so differently valued that persuasive models of integration are hard to find. Everywhere we go, educators are either grasping for good models or are struggling with the furor that results when a school is labeled a "model." Meanwhile, both vocational and academic teachers express a general uncertainty about what they are called upon to do by the various reforms--about what content and methods might replace conventional curriculum and instruction in specific subject areas, about what form "integrated" or "interdisciplinary" curricula might take, or about what the "infusion of careers" might mean. Some of the proposals for the integration of vocational and academic education require little change in teachers' perspectives or practices; others imply dramatic shifts in what it means to attend or teach in high schools. Despite the genuine uncertainties and difficulties, however, many teachers share a sense of urgency. They do plunge ahead in planning and in pilot programs, convinced that business as usual will not suffice. Ideas and programs proliferate, and the number of innovating schools continues to grow. Our task is to learn from them and with them and to avoid the temptation to anoint them prematurely as "models" while they struggle to re-invent the established traditions of high school.