A lingering question for middle school: What is the fate of integrated curriculum?

Childhood Education, Winter 2001/2002 by Caskey, Micki

On the one hand, some teachers are finding ways to align academic standards with their integrated units of curriculum. Wiggins and McTighe's (1998) "backward design process" guides teachers to consider the established standards and frame a set of essential questions for the unit of study. Pate (2001) records how teachers make sense of, and integrate, the standards in a responsive, relevant, and engaging curriculum. Vars and Beane (2000) recommend that teachers use sets of standards-based "common learnings" compiled by educational think tanks when developing curriculum. Nevertheless, teachers of integrated curriculum must cope with societal pressures for standards-based reform and state tests, while valuing the needs, problems, and concerns of young adolescents (Vars & Beane, 2000). As curriculum designers, these classroom teachers ultimately accept responsibility for addressing the standards within their planned, integrated curriculum.

On the other hand, standardsbased reform creates an uneasy relationship in schools. Hargreaves et al. (2001) caution that meeting the demands of standard-based reform may lead to a curriculum that is overstandardized, underresourced, deprofessionalized, and narrow in scope. Teachers face an overwhelming number of competencies listed for each subjectspecific standard. Two other questions arise: 1) How can teachers reconcile their open-ended classroom assessments with the state-mandated, high-stakes tests? 2) How should teachers report student learning from integrated curriculum on subject-specific report cards? These are the practical issues that confound middle level teachers as they work to integrate curriculum. Hargreaves et al. (2001) remind middle level educators that alongside this movement of standardsbased reform is growing concernworldwide about the apparent disengagement of many young adolescents from their schooling and about the risks they increasingly encounter in their lives.... Standards-based reform therefore appears to have an ambivalent relationship to the kinds of schooling and teaching that work best for young adolescents. (p. xii) Tensions created by the high-stakes tests and other aspects of standardsbased reform may ultimately undermine efforts to create relevant, integrated curriculum for young adolescents.

Final Thoughts Among the consequences of failing to provide young adolescents with an authentic, integrated curriculum may be further decline in student learning, poor academic achievement, and a loss of public confidence in the middle level school as an academic institution (Caskey, 1996). Some educators advocate replacing traditional subject-centered curriculum with integrated curriculum; others prefer the more conservative approach of enhancing the traditional approach with integrated curriculum. Regardless of the approach used for integrating curriculum and despite the effort required, integrated curriculum is warranted. For the sake of young adolescents, it must prevail.

The purpose of this column is to stimulate debate of timely issues affecting children, youth, and families. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Childhood Education or the Association for Childhood Education International.