Cross boundaries through integrative learning model

It is a direct response to the educational problem of excessive fragmentation of subject matter and overly abstract educational material unconnected to the real world.

Integrative learning is fundamentally about crossing boundaries and making connections among the academic, personal, and community realms. It is inherently interdisciplinary in nature. 

Integrative learning is also about integrating theory and practice and curricular with co-curricular learning such as a music club.

I would now like to share concrete examples of integrative learning at different levels of education from kindergarten and pre-school to university studies. 

Several years ago I was asked to do a demonstration kindergarten class at a remote public school in Isaan as a way to illustrate student-centred learning in line with the 1999 National Education Act mandating educational reform. To teach the class that day I used integrative learning covering such diverse subjects as comparative zoology, geography, English, demography, and dance.

I first asked the students in the local Isaan language where their parents were at the moment as a way to connect right away with the students and their families. Several students had fathers working overseas, reflecting the new cosmopolitan northeasterner emphasised by Prof Charles Keyes.

The classroom had a world map, so the students had to locate on the map the country where parents were working such as Brunei or Libya. They then had to pronounce the name of the country correctly in English.

All the exercises I did that day were highly interactive. Another example of an activity we did was to ask students to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different animals. Fortunately the classroom had numerous colourful pictures of animals. 

Here I was drawing on the powerful idea of the late Dr Kowit Vorapipatana, khit pen (to be able to think), as I asked the students to compare and contrast animals. There were no right answers. Again they had to learn the names of the animals in English and pronounce them correctly. 

It was an exciting day for both the kids and me, and they really became engaged with learning. The next day one of the students called me on her teacher’s cellphone and asked why I wasn’t teaching them again that day and when would I return to teach them again. It was extremely gratifying to see that integrative learning could be highly effective at the kindergarten level.

An impressive example of integrative learning at the kindergarten level is the Little Scientists’ House project, which involves creative collaborations between the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Foundation and a German foundation, as well as six diverse local public and private organisations. The project effectively integrates science activities with children’s daily lives.

Now I would like to share an example from Grade Four. By the end of Grade Four students should be able to do long division. Using the tool of long division, the students are asked to compute an index for each of the world’s nations assessing how much energy they use to achieve their level of income per capita. 

To do this they divide a nation’s income per capita by the amount of energy they consume per capita and rank the countries of the world. They compare the rankings based on income per capita and this new index constructed by the students using long division. With this new ranking, countries which are energy guzzlers drop down in the rankings and energy efficient nations such as the Netherlands and Denmark go way up. 

This exercise also relates directly to HM King Bhumibol’s concept of setakitpopieng (sufficiency economy) and it gives students the chance to apply long division to a crucial issue related to global warming and sustainable development.

This next example is from a project at Jefferson Middle School in Eugene, Oregon. A Grade Eight class devoted the entire year to the interdisciplinary study of the Mekong River and the countries along it such as China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. 

The students did extensive research under the guidance of the faculty as catalysts and mentors. They even produced, using Page Maker software, a newsletter to share findings from their many discoveries. The project was both reading and writing-intensive. The African-American principal of that school, Dr Bob Bolden, has won many major educational leadership awards.

Recently Finland, renowned for its success in both education and innovation, has decided to reform its educational system by emphasising critical topics, not traditional subjects.

At the university level, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has sponsored a three year project with 10 universities in the US to foster integrative learning (see http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org/ilp/).

From its inception a number of decades ago Evergreen State College in Washington has been organised around major problems areas, not academic disciplines. Thus, its academic structure epitomises integrative learning.

An example of integrative learning at the University of Oregon was language across the curriculum, supported by a major grant from the Ford Foundation. Under this project students had the opportunity to use their foreign language skills in regular classes. 

One section of a Japanese history class was conducted in Japanese. A class on economic development in Latin America was taught in Spanish and I taught a Thai-Lao comparative politics class in Thai. This integrative learning project enabled students to apply actively the languages they had been studying.

Also, the Oregon State System of Higher Education developed an IE3 (International/Education/Experience/ Employment) study abroad innovation which integrated study abroad followed by work abroad. The programme proved highly successful. 

As seen from these examples at all major levels of education, integrative learning has great potential to engage students in active, dynamic, innovative, and constructivist learning. We need to move away from the rigid fragmentation in education which limits students’ ability to creatively integrate knowledge and understanding from diverse disciplines and experiences. 

 

Gerald W Fry

Distinguished international professor

Department of Organisational Leadership, Policy and Development 

University of Minnesota

[email protected]