Criticisms and Shortcomings of Interdisciplinary Teaching Methods
Scholars that advocate for curriculum integration argue that the topics studied should originate with students and their teachers, and not from district-imposed curriculum packages. This raises the important issue of accountability (Stevenson, 1998). As school districts often have decision-making panels that consist of stakeholders such as teachers, parents, and students, curriculum integration may take away their agency to make curricular choices. In addition to issues of local control, truly integrated curricula may or may not prepare students for the high-stakes tests that have become a reality for most high schools around the world, depending on whether they cover the same material. Finally, there is also concern that integrated teaching discounts the value of deep subject-specific knowledge, which is essential for specialization in areas such as medicine, law, and engineering (Gatewood, 1998).
Thematic units can also fall short of teaching in-depth content to students. Often a theme, such as apples, is used to link unrelated subjects, with little deference to students’ prior knowledge or interests. This superficial coverage of a topic can give students the wrong idea about school, perhaps missing the idea of curriculum integration in the first place (Barton & Smith, 2000). Thematic units can contain pointless busywork and activities created solely to create a link to a theme; for example, the alphabetizing of state capitals in a social studies unit, attempting to integrate it with language arts (Brophy & Alleman, 1991).
Read more about this topic: Interdisciplinary Teaching
Famous quotes containing the words criticisms, shortcomings, teaching and/or methods:
“I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Mrs. Zajac knows you didn’t try. You don’t just hand in junk to Mrs. Zajac. She’s been teaching an awful lot of years. She didn’t fall off the turnip cart yesterday. She told you she was an old-lady teacher.”
—Christine Zajac, U.S. fifth-grade teacher. As quoted in Among Schoolchildren, “September” section, part 1, by Tracy Kidder (1989)
“Parents ought, through their own behavior and the values by which they live, to provide direction for their children. But they need to rid themselves of the idea that there are surefire methods which, when well applied, will produce certain predictable results. Whatever we do with and for our children ought to flow from our understanding of and our feelings for the particular situation and the relation we wish to exist between us and our child.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)