The Importance Of Integrated Curriculum

Teachers generally look for teaching strategies to implement into their classes that will engage their students while also setting high expectations and standards for lessons. Engaging lessons captivate students’ attention, motivates them to learn, and allows students to collaborate with each other. Research has concluded integrated curriculum engage students in learning.

The integrated curriculum is an interdisciplinary approach that links different disciplines together (Martin, Colleen, & Franklin, 2014). Integrated curriculum requires students to study a topic in depth, read many resources and materials, and also participate in many activities (Martin, Colleen, & Franklin, 2014). Curriculum integration gives students a chance to meet

Integrated curriculum is a researched discipline discussed since the 20th century started (Drake & Burns, 2004). Many researchers recorded their findings on the impact of an integrated curriculum in the classrooms. Lakes (2016) researched that gravitating towards integrated curriculum meant that teachers were pulling away from instructing students to memorize and recite isolated facts. Teachers began to move toward teaching meaningful lessons that incorporated connections between more than one subject(Lakes,2016). Researchers Drake and Burns (2004) researched that theorists over the past one hundred years have presented three simple categories for integrated curriculum. The three categories proposed were the multidisciplinary approach, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary (Drake & Burns, 2004). The multidisciplinary approach creates standards around themes (Draghicescu, Gorghiu, Gorghiu, & Petrescu, 2013). The interdisciplinary approach is constructed a curriculum

Integrating curriculum into the classroom proved to take away valuable time from teachers (Oliver, Schofield, & McEvoy, 2006). Integrated curriculum also proved to be intellectually challenging (Caskey, 2002). Many teachers were not capable of integrating curriculum due to lack of knowledge of how to plan for the lessons. Principals were not able to provide adequate training due to conflicts in classroom schedules (Caskey,2002) Physical Education teachers complained that curriculum integration did not always align with material or content was taught in their class (Oliver, Schofield, & McEvoy,