Curriculum integration and the disciplines of knowledge

As an advocate for curriculum integration, Mr. Beane wants to set the record straight: in the thoughtful pursuit of authentic curriculum integration, the disciplines of knowledge are not the enemy, but a useful and necessary ally. At a conference on curriculum integration, a speaker who admitted that he had only recently been introduced to the concept said, From a quick look at various readings, it seems that the disciplines of knowledge are the enemy of curriculum Unwittingly or not, he had gone straight to the heart of perhaps the most contentious issue in current conversations about curriculum integration. Simply put, the issue is this: If we move away from the subject-centered approach to curriculum organization, will the disciplines of knowledge be abandoned or lost in the shuffle? As an advocate for curriculum integration, I want to set the record straight. In the thoughtful pursuit of authentic curriculum integration, the disciplines of knowledge are not the enemy. Instead they are a useful and necessary ally. What Is Curriculum Integration? Curriculum integration is not simply an organizational device requiring cosmetic changes or realignments in lesson plans across various subject areas. Rather, it is a way of thinking about what schools are for, about the sources of curriculum, and about the uses of knowledge. Curriculum integration begins with the idea that the sources of curriculum ought to be problems, issues, and concerns posed by life itself.(1) I have argued elsewhere that such concerns fall into two spheres: 1) self- or personal concerns and 2) issues and problems posed by the larger world.(2) Taking this one step further, we might say that the central focus of curriculum integration is the search for self- and social meaning. As teachers facilitate such a search within a framework of curriculum integration, two things happen. First, young people are encouraged to integrate learning experiences into their schemes of meaning so as to broaden and deepen their understanding of themselves and their world. Second, they are engaged in seeking, acquiring, and using knowledge in an organic - not an artificial - way. That is, knowledge is called forth in the context of problems, interests, issues, and concerns at hand. And since life itself does not know the boundaries or compartments of what we call disciplines of knowledge, such a context uses knowledge in ways that are integrated.(3) Notice that, in order to define curriculum integration, there must be reference to knowledge. How could there not be? If we are to broaden and deepen understandings about ourselves and our world, we must come to know stuff, and to do that we must be skilled in ways of knowing and understanding. As it turns out, the disciplines of knowledge include much (but not all) of what we know about ourselves and our world and about ways of making and communicating meaning. Thus authentic curriculum integration, involving as it does the search for self- and social meaning, must take the disciplines of knowledge seriously - although, again, more is involved than just the correlation of knowledge from various disciplines. What Is the Problem? Theoretically, defining the relations between curriculum integration and the disciplines of knowledge is easy. But that act does not resolve the tension over how those relations work in the practical context of curriculum integration. Part of the reason is that the problem is not with the disciplines of knowledge themselves but with their representation in the separate-subject approach to the curriculum. Put another way, the issue is not whether the disciplines of knowledge are useful, but how they might appropriately be brought into the lives of young people. And more than that, do they include all that might be of use in the search for self- and social meaning? A discipline of knowledge is a field of inquiry about some aspect of the world - the physical world, the flow of events over time, numeric structures, and so on. …