[An alternative program] for some fifty high school students was begun as a noble attempt to address academic [and vocational] disciplines through a self-contained, integrated, crosscurricular, experiential approach to the curriculum. The students would learn math, in part, through building a post and beam barn on the school property, and then running a small construction business; they would learn history, in part, through participating in the archaeological dig, and researching courthouse records to uncover information about the families buried in a local graveyard. Though the program had an undeniably positive impact on the self-esteem of several of the students for whom little in the school to that point had been rewarding, academics, as so often happens in this kind of effort, got shortchanged. By the end of the first year, the conclusion of most involved was that the effort had fallen short of the expectations: "The planning had been inadequate, and the sought after integration of disciplines was uneven. . . . Students, unless highly motivated, fell into patterns of storm and rest. Many did more resting than storming."--Eliot Wigginton
Founder of the Foxfire Approach
Different types of integration were frequently discussed by teachers we interviewed: within academic subjects (i.e., algebra, geometry, and logic); across academic disciplines (i.e., math and science); and between vocational and academic subjects. The integration process was often driven by projects, themes, or common skills. Integration provided a "real" context for students to learn abstract concepts while helping them to understand applications, as illustrated in the above quote. The purposes for integrating often varied: contextualizing learning, making connections between subject areas explicit, or enforcing certain skills across subject areas. As the statement above illustrates, integration is not without its own set of pitfalls; it requires careful planning. These pitfalls, or dilemmas, will be illustrated throughout this section.
Dilemmas
In talking with teachers from complementary reforms about integration, several questions or dilemmas cropped up: "What happens when the integration of various disciplines and certain subject areas does not fit?" "Is there a point at which integration can be taken too far?" and "How often should we integrate?" These issues are parallel to those experienced by teachers restructuring around AAI as they redesigned courses in a broader, more integrated fashion.
A related issue that practitioners mentioned was balancing the integration of instruction without letting integration be too limiting. Some teachers felt frustrated about using a theme for integration of subject areas. At times, they found themselves forcing things into a context to establish unnatural connections. For example, connecting history and math was not that easy--as making a lesson plan in geometry connect to one on World War II does not always come that naturally. Furthermore, contextualizing an academic area such as science into a business curriculum is not that simple either. As one business teacher joked,
Some of the areas are really easy for me to integrate with, but we've had discussions with the science department--we can't see a connection. . . . There were jokes about teaching the chemical breakdown of White Out! There is some limitation in terms of theme integration. Does there have to be a connection between every academic area and every vocational area? Maybe we need to look at [theme] integration where it makes logical sense--I'm all for it, but I don't think we need to rack our brains to see how areas fit.Another teacher highlighted this point by explaining that her school tries to choose general themes with which to integrate in an effort to avoid teachers the feeling that they are shoving things in unnaturally. She gave an example: debates were used as a theme to integrate history and English when students studied the legal system. After the students read Of Mice and Men, two teachers thought they should put the character George on trial. Two other teachers felt that was stretching things--they had done trials in civil and criminal issues and thought this was pushing the connection a bit too much. The resolution for these teachers was to teach debates through Inherit the Wind, and when they taught Of Mice and Men, they would focus on the Depression and relationships, as opposed to criminal issues. Thus, teachers have learned to lend a certain amount of flexibility with themes--they should be broad enough to incorporate several different areas and, at the same time, flexible enough to put aside, if necessary. According to this teacher, themes should never be limiting to the point that teachers must throw subject matter away because it does not fit the theme, or that they must force it in somehow.
Clearly, the larger and underpinning issue here is the question of how often curriculum should be integrated. This question has greater significance in the case of schools-within-schools. Integration, in this case, can help teachers move beyond thinking about how two, or even four, years of their particular discipline connect and create coherency for students. Teachers contemplate how four years of all of the disciplines connect and add up to provide coherency to the usual "shopping mall high school." Given this, the following is another set of dilemmas for teachers to consider:
One of the ways in which teachers get involved in their school and learn about what happens in other classrooms is through governance, committees, and site-based management teams. These structures help teachers to voice their input, as well as reflect on their own practices and the practices of the school. However, isolated committees are not always the solution to sharing information, according to one teacher whose school has used them. A multiple committee structure depends on coordination among the various committees in order to facilitate coherent and comprehensive change. One principal explained how the process at his school has addressed this issue:
We have a steering committee and we have department chairs and vocational cluster coordinators. We raise an issue, and each member goes back to their departments or clusters and presents the issue and finds out what people think. The member then brings the information back to the steering committee and we get a sense of where everybody is at. Or we just have an open conversation and anybody with a concern can come.Another principal explained that because they have a small staff at her school, they use weekly faculty meetings, as well as retreats, to reflect on issues going on in the school to determine if and how things need to be changed. Reflection, once again, is the key:
We have weekly three-hour faculty meetings; I can't say that they are always reflections. We have a retreat--we spend about half a day reflecting just on our own practices. We go overnight and spend time on different issues. We spend time on a very personal level--what goals did we set for ourselves and what's our evidence that we've helped kids in learning and what goals have we met and where do we need to work through things. We have everybody spend time writing [to] themselves and then everybody shares. Curriculum teams meet once a week as well and then what happens is generally they'll say, "Wow, we've kind of gotten away from where we said we are going to go because the idea also is that we plan the curriculum." The broad strokes are established in July but then you get kids and of course it changes the ball game--"What do you mean you don't find this interesting? We thought it was fascinating!" And if it isn't working we have the flexibility to change things.Some practitioners felt that as transformational plans were created, staff needed to come together in frequent meetings to discuss events and practices throughout the school, and to assess their progress. However, many practitioners said that, regardless of the frequency of meetings that take place during the week, it is difficult to work through critical issues because there are too many immediately pressing issues. Inservices, trainings, and workshops were recommended to help with this task as staff members need concentrated amounts of time to work through complicated issues. Some of the more effective trainings identified by practitioners have been those that use experiential learning methods themselves--ones that help practitioners to internalize the processes and principles. One teacher described a Foxfire workshop that she went through in which teachers themselves led the program. They went through community building exercises and, unlike most workshops, were not expected to sit and take notes, but, rather, designed the workshop themselves and searched for answers on their own. After sharing an experience like this, most of the teachers had a similar understanding of what a set of core principles really meant. Only after all of this were they then ready to think about the core questions of integration identified above.
Others approached the question, "How much sense do four years of high school make to our students?" through a focus on whole-school assessment--assessment that extends beyond the day-to-day functioning of the school to how students were doing in general. They cautioned us that assessment needs to extend to what happens to the students once they have graduated, if this question is to be answered. As one practitioner voiced,
Part of the problem is we don't hear enough about how the kids are doing when they leave. There is very little follow-up. We have no way of judging ourselves as a school and our program if there is no feedback. The only thing I can do is check up on those students graduating from my advisory group and see how they are doing.Issues To Consider
Regardless of the approach teachers take, as the previous section illustrates, integration demands new ways of working for teachers--for example, within and across subjects and within and across grade levels. With an integrated approach to schooling, teachers must engage continually in a problem-solving process in order to figure out how to redesign curriculum and course sequences. They begin to consider new balances of content and coverage as they consider thematic or project-driven curriculum crossing discipline boundaries. Here are a few questions to consider during the planning and implementation process: