Curriculum Integration in a Standards-Based World

Jim Paterson

As Gert Nesin prepared for the new school year, her thoughts were on Robert, a seventh grader who was entering her class at Caravel Middle School in Carmel, Maine.

Robert had been suspended from school 40 times since kindergarten, was unfocused, and sometimes disruptive—the sort of student who worries a teacher even before the school year begins.

Nesin was concerned about Robert’s reaction to her planned approach to integrated curriculum. Students would have a voice in what they studied and how. Their learning would leap the walls of traditional education to meet the world outside.

Surprisingly, Robert’s performance in this new environment helped to make Nesin, now an instructor at the University of Maine in Orono, a believer in integrated curriculum.

Robert began to pay attention and participate in classroom discussions. His grades rose and his attendance improved. But the real change came when he led his class to contact a relief agency as part of a wide-ranging project studying Asia, says Nesin. Robert created and organized a fundraiser that netted more than $600 for a village.

"He truly cared about this village we studied and what happened to its citizens….His behavior all over school became different. He became a leader everywhere," Nesin says. "It makes an incredible difference for kids. They get all the basic stuff and they get so much more. It is especially good for students like Robert who are at risk or who are not good learners and are typically left behind."

Conflicts of Interest
Typically, curriculum integration involves not only helping students make connections across content areas, but also promoting democracy in the classroom—letting students determine to a large extent what they want to study. Students ask questions about themselves and the world. A path is plotted based on student responses and teachers, with student input, devise a curriculum.

How curriculum integration—the basic tenets of which can be traced back to educational reform efforts from the 1920s and even earlier—is struggling in an era when standardized testing and mandated educational materials and topics are front page news.

James Beane, a professor at National-Louis University in Madison, Wisconsin, and the person most closely associated with curriculum integration, is the first to admit that.

"When this stuff is pulled together in the hands of really skilled and dedicated teachers, it is just dazzling. It works on so many levels. But now we seem to want a simplistic curriculum that is stripped of anything that does not agree with a certain agenda," he says.

Beane argues that integrated curriculum is more "rigorous and relevant" than traditional approaches because it challenges young people to think, learn, and tackle issues that are important to them personally.

Indeed, integrated curriculum does appear to be a powerful approach to student learning. Deborah Hartzler, now a principal at Greenstreet Elementary School in Newcastle, Indiana, authored a detailed study of the research on integrated curriculum. Her "meta-study" uncovered 30 research projects that consistently showed by any measure—including state or national standardized tests—that students in an integrated curriculum performed better than those in more traditional programs.

"The odd thing is that these students do better on standardized tests and this is probably an easier way to prepare them. But today we don’t see it that way," she says.

Bumping into Walls
"It isn’t just the standards that are a barrier," says Barbara Brodhagen, Beane’s wife and partner in the effort to spread the word about the benefits of integrated curriculum. Brodhagen, who is a curriculum coordinator at Sherman Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, believes "the bigger problem is that more often there is mandated curriculum material and that really narrows down what you can do with the kids."

Proponents hold firm to their conviction that integrated curriculum best meets the needs of students—particularly middle school students who struggle to explore their world, to find their place, and to be independent.

But even dedicated believers like Gordon Vars, a long-time vocal advocate for the approach, are worried. He is concerned about an atmosphere that he believes is too restrictive.

"I am very pessimistic. Integrative curriculum as Jim Beane and I define it, is directly opposed to the top-down, make-em-learn-or-else climate in education today," he says. He maintains that curriculum integration can be "blended with reasonable standards" if students "join with their teachers to look at the standards; identify their own needs, problems, and concerns; and then plan with their teachers the best learning experiences."

Thriving in Maine
Maine is one state where integrated curriculum seems to be thriving.

Nesin believes it has been embraced there because residents think about education differently and because strong proponents of curriculum integration have key roles in the middle school education structure. She also believes that Maine state standards don’t focus on "minutiae or dictate methods or timing of instruction," which hamper such efforts.

According to Greg Goodyear, a principal at Shapleigh Middle School in Kittery, Maine, the state has high standards but allows local schools to determine their own methods of appraisal.

"The standards are there, and you can’t ignore them. But this curriculum can be just as effective at meeting them. You are able to teach students, not subjects."

Teresa Kane and Sharon Littlefield, who had worked together with multi-age classes at Warsaw Middle School in Pittsfield, tried out their integrated approach on a class of seventh and eighth graders a few years ago.

"We both always believed that to get the students interested in learning they need to have a say in it," Littlefield says.

In spite of large and small successes right away, they say, others in the school were skeptical.

"We did not have a very positive reputation. Others thought our kids just played all day. But everyone discovered that in these classes you do a lot of work."

Parents liked what they saw and so did their principal. Littlefield claims, however, "It was the students who sold the program. They were excited and they wanted to come to school. They were doing interesting, challenging projects."

Students' Choice
Last year, the students in Kane and Littlefield’s classes spent about two weeks talking about the curriculum integration process and proposed potential topics, eventually settling on the war on terrorism. Then Littlefield and Kane got out the list of state standards and with the students determined how their work could help them meet the requirements.

For instance, they learned geography by studying the countries involved, math by dealing with distances and statistics, and social studies by considering the countries affected by war, demonstrating what they knew with an oral report and a variety of projects. Others learned by filling in a matrix about the countries during student presentations.

But Littlefield says the study of biology was the most interesting. Students learned about the human body and bacteria by studying biological weapons, which was understandably an expressed major concern at the beginning of the school year.

The two admit that not every theme adequately addresses all subject matter, and they continue to work on improving the challenging math element, commonly supplementing it with the more traditional lessons.

Beyond the Basics
Susan Quirk and Jessica Larson, teachers at Shapleigh Middle School, began integrating their curriculum for 37 eighth graders last year.

"If you are a teacher who likes to fill out your planning book over the summer, you are not going to like this approach," Quirk warns. "But it is very exciting, and after seeing what I have seen this year, this is right for the students."

Larson had been bored and frustrated in a traditional setting where she previously taught. "I was very disconnected from the kids and they were not connected to the subject matter," she explains.

She echoes a familiar theme of those who have tried the integrative approach. "The students get the basics, but they also get so much more."

Quirk warns that students who are accustomed to "spitting out information" struggle initially, but eventually adjust. "It allows all students to be successful all the time," she says. She believes she can spend more time with students with this type of teaching, and students learn in a different, deeper way.

"My feedback to students is better," Larson states. "I’m not just marking up papers. I can more easily see what they are doing and look for positive things."

After one year with a pilot project at Maranacook Middle School in Readfield, Maine, so many parents expressed an interest in Sally Beaulieu’s integrated curriculum approach that it was eventually implemented school wide.

What stands out for Beaulieu now is not so much the positive experience at her school as the need for the approach elsewhere.

"A few weeks ago I went to another school where there was total isolation of the subject matter. In social studies, they were watching the movie "The Diary of Anne Frank" and the play was on the school’s reading list. But there was no effort to coordinate the two or connect them to the world today or involve the students. What a missed opportunity."

On the Homefront
Nesin and others say parents are pleased with curriculum integration because the students are motivated and, as a result, work hard. The parents see that students are learning and they, themselves, are more aware of what the students are learning. As a result, parents can be more involved.

Susan Mason whose daughter Khristine had been very successful in school, was skeptical about trying the new approach with Nesin.

"To be honest, I felt unsure how their approach would affect the kids. But once she got involved, she wanted to stay after school all the time to learn more. Now I don’t have any worries about state standards or adjusting to high school. I think getting kids more involved in their work and research is teaching them to work on their own. I kept her in the program on into seventh grade because I thought she was doing very well."

Jim Paterson is a writer in Olney, MD.