In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) produced a report, A Nation at Risk, which was very critical about the quality of education in American schools. Among the issues raised by the report was concern that schools no longer produced graduates who met the challenges of the changing workplace. Vocational education came under criticism for producing graduates who were trained for specific jobs that no longer existed. A common theme in the report, and other commentaries in support of it, was that schools must yield graduates who could adapt to the changing workplace and face the competitive challenge being posed by other nations. The vocational community reacted to the NCEE's report by producing their own report, The Unfinished Agenda (National Commission on Secondary Vocational Education [NCSVE], 1984), providing strong points in defense of vocational education with appropriate solutions. One of NCSVE's recommendations was to integrate vocational with academic education because the former provided an applied setting that would make learning more meaningful to students. The NCSVE report stated the following:
What is really required today are programs and experiences that bridge the gap between the so-called "academic" and "vocational" courses. The theoretical and empirical bases as well as the practical and applicative aspects of academic courses and vocational courses must be made explicit and meaningful. (p. 14)
From a vocational education standpoint, the major initiative to come out of
the reform movement was the integration of vocational and academic education.
The primary aim of integration was to strengthen vocational education through
applied academics to improve the reading, writing, and computational skills of
noncollege-bound students. For college-bound students, vocational education
would complement academic education by providing an applied environment that
would make learning more realistic.
Several approaches have been used in implementing integration of vocational
and academic education in secondary schools. Grubb, Davis, Lum, Plihal, and
Morgaine (1991) used interview and observation techniques to identify the
following eight "models" of integration:
Roegge, Galloway, and Welge (1991) interviewed vocational teachers and
observed classes in ten Illinois schools. They found a variety of individual
and collaborative strategies being employed such as cross-teaching, consulting
(i.e., providing expertise on content and/or applications to other teachers),
student consulting (i.e., students providing assistance to other students), and
various formal and informal "content alignment" strategies.
Schmidt, Finch, and Faulkner (1992) analyzed the results of over 100
interviews with school personnel to classify vocational and academic
integration activities into six themes:
For several years, schools in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)
consortium have employed and evaluated integration approaches involving the
incorporation of academic content in vocational courses, administrative
policies to encourage integration, applied instructional approaches,
collaboration, and counseling (Bottoms, Presson, & Johnson, 1992).
The prevailing opinion appears to be that more complex and formal integration
approaches have the best potential for creating and sustaining meaningful
reform (Grubb
et al., 1991). As practitioners seek to introduce
integration strategies, they have often encountered resistance as well as
frustration in attempting to implement this rather nebulous concept.
Among vocational education practitioners, a common response to calls for integration is, "but I've been doing this for years." What do they mean by "this?" It has often been suspected that "this" means business as usual--an effort to find and justify integration in the status quo. But they may also be referring to an "infusion" strategy--that is, incorporating academic content into their vocational instruction (Grubb et al., 1991). The infusion strategy is believed to have limited capacity to stimulate broader reform and has, therefore, been largely passed over in recent integration efforts. There is no reason to doubt, however, that valuable insights into actually "integrating in the classroom" may be gained from those who practice infusion. Further, there is evidence to suggest that teachers often go beyond infusion and interact and collaborate with one another, on their own, to integrate vocational and academic instruction (Roegge et al., 1991). In search of large treasures, small individual gems are sometimes overlooked.
The purpose of this pilot study (Phase I) was twofold. The primary purpose
was to test and thereby refine instruments and procedures for use in a
multistate study of informal, teacher-initiated integration to be conducted
during the second year of the project (Phase II). In addition to testing
instruments and procedures, data gathered from Illinois teachers would comprise
the initial dataset for Phase II. Both phases of the study seek to examine
individual teachers who have successfully integrated vocational and academic
instruction on their own rather than as a part of a larger school, state, or
national initiative.
This study is framed in previously cited description and classification of
integration done by Grubb et al. (1991) and Schmidt et al. (1992). The study
focused specifically on two elements of those earlier NCRVE works, namely the
"infusion of academic content into vocational courses" model(s) identified in
the Grubb study, and the "instructional strategies" theme identified in the
Schmidt study. Within this framework, the objectives of the study follow: