The Goals of a Multidisciplinary Integrated Curriculum
Delivering a standards-based multidisciplinary inte-grated curriculum is a strategy that addresses many of our national, state, and local objectives around high school improvement. This approach is de-signed to reach high school students at all academic achievement levels, to facilitate learning for students with diverse learning styles, to replace academic tracking with placement based on students’ interests, and to close the achievement gaps across groups of
students. By focusing on mastering standards in technical and core classes, students can apply what they have learned and, therefore, remember more of it. Teachers, principals, and school district adminis-trators who support this approach indicate that they have used it to accomplish the following:
• Shift classroom instruction from passive to ac-tive, thereby engaging more students in learning. Students become the center of the learning experi-ence by collaborating in real-life, career-focused projects and problems that are connected to their
current interests and future pursuits. The work is teacher-directed, not teacher-centered.
• Identify the specific skills and lessons that students
are not mastering by having administrators and teachers review the test data. Then teachers can
incorporate those skills into the projects for addi-tional student reinforcement.
• Help students develop effective education and
career planning skills. By participating in profes-sional work and engaging with employees who
address exciting and challenging problems in their jobs, students can recognize the need to perform well in high school, understand the educational pathways leading to a variety of rewarding careers, and pursue postsecondary education and/or train-ing to achieve their personal career goals.
• Reach out to the diverse group of students who come to class with widely different backgrounds and levels of academic preparation. Students who participate in an integrated curriculum can express their own interests, demonstrate their unique skills, and master high-level academic and technical mate-rial by applying a variety of learning styles
• Provide students with knowledge of a wide variety
of career-related fields by creating research oppor-tunities and career connections with professionals in many jobs within a career area.
• Build community support for improving highschools through partnerships with industry, postsecondary education, and local community representatives. By engaging key industry, educa-tion, and community-based stakeholders in their local communities, these educators are creating support for schools and proactive education im-provement policies and are providing future em-ployment opportunities for their students.
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