Integrated Subjects + Theme/Project-Based Learning (21st century education)

hi this is paul from patriot occasion and today i'm going to be speaking about integrated subjects which is part one of a continuing series on 21st century education integrated subjects is in the area of 21st century education and I'm particularly passionate about it's also an area that's not very well understood publicly the reverse reasons for this firstly there are different terms for integrated subjects such as subject integration interdisciplinary studies and even theme based learning or project-based learning also there are various levels of integration and this creates more complexity although Robert Fogerty presents ten different levels of integration and his book how to integrate the curricula and we have to bear in mind that the average individual has this ingrained mentality that subjects should be taught separately however I disagree with this and I hope you do too as you're watching this video so what do I mean by integrated subjects well firstly this definitely includes theme based learning this is level of knowledge that is required but we don't think about this knowledge in terms of a specific subject area is this knowledge that's required to understand a theme or a topic then at some point there's a project that takes place and this is an exploratory project one which requires skills and let us not forget higher level thinking skills all of those advocated by Bloom's taxonomy let's look at an example of a theme a simple one would be sustainability but actually when you start trying to apply this in education you realize that sustainability is a very very broad theme it encompasses everything so we have to look at a narrow theme within that what we could class is like a sub theme so we could go for something like resource sustainability when you look at the sustainability of Natural Resources you immediately start thinking about specific subjects without geography geology chemistry biology math and of course the language arts whatever your theme is and whatever your sub-theme is it needs to be broad enough to utilize as many different subject areas as possible does that mean that we exclude certain themes I have to say yes think about this way the thing that you want children to study is only useful within that one subject area then what is the purpose of study in that one example would be calculus the average individual is highly unlikely to ever use calculus in real life unless they're moving into occupations such as economy astrophysics or engineering unless the students are able to study the higher level application of calculus in some form or another to make it relevant so for example if you were studying a theme related to space travel then you could incorporate calculus within that but could also incorporate other subject areas as well including history and politics as well as things like physics language arts again then as part of this theme you need the application and the application comes from creating projects so as we mentioned before this project is an exploratory project where the students as you get to apply the knowledge and apply skills but think about it this way it's like a university paper with projects based learning you actually do more than that you create things you make thing and you definitely look at many different subject areas as part of your project another theme would be globalization again this is a very very broad theme so let's look at a narrow example like food globalization immediately I start thinking about geography and math which would include economics biology chemistry of the kind of earth sciences sociology history politics math again but more connected with things like physics so applied math language as so what about something like art where does art come into this for me unless you're studying the history of art I don't really see how art should be studied as a separate subject art is an expression of an idea what you want to communicate and so if you're studying art in isolation you're detaching it from what you're trying to express you can study the skills of art but it's not just about trying to imitate someone else's art form it's about finding your own way of expressing your ideas about that specific theme students should be taught and encouraged to use as many different art forms as possible its includes performing arts which again expressions of ideas expressions of feelings emotions and ways of communicating ideas to an audience and I feel the same way about technology technology is not a separate subject area technology is a tool that's to be used to express or to be able to research within the theme and to be integrated with all those other different subject areas it's not something to be studied in isolation because then you detach technology from what is useful and what about knowledge when knowledge is definitely necessary but at the moment it seems to stop from birth and then just continue forever with no transition whatsoever into the high level thinking skills that we've been talking about because it seems like the moment young people learn one thing we seem to find something else equally important for them to learn next this is never time given towards as you applying the knowledge that they learn before so therefore there has to be a balance between knowledge and application and there has to be a transition in this as well so we're not flicking a switch we're not saying to educators okay today's your first day at high schools so now it's time to start using higher-level thinking skills no it's not like that at all we have to be able to say that when you first start learning that there is an element of application but because of your age and because of your knowledge that you're not able to apply that knowledge very well so therefore you need to put greater emphasis on learning facts at the younger age and then gradually make a transition where you learn less facts but you do more application you never eliminate fact learning because it's something like we can do forever but as this graph shows you see that transition where at some point where the application takes over the fact-based learning as the priority of Education now there's no specific age for this to take place it's based on the developmental ability of the child some children may not be capable or very good at applying knowledge but that doesn't mean to say that you eliminate this because of their age they should still be learning to apply knowledge anyway that wraps up today's video I hope you enjoyed it if you did please give us a rating and if you'd like to watch more videos like this please subscribe if you haven't already done so the next video I'll be bringing out will be about technology this is Paul from Petri Education thanks for watch

Channel: Pear Tree Education Inc.

Views: 31,766

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords: 21st century, education, learning, theme-based, project-based, integrated subjects, integrated learning, interdisciplinary studies, interdisciplinary, holistic learning, holistic education, integrating subjects, integrated school subjects, changes needed in education, 21st century education

Id: 0Ql1kAlACyI

Length: 6min 38sec (398 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 14 2013