Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation

by Heidi Hayes Jacobs

unabridged book

Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs is an author and internationally recognized education leader known for her work in curriculum mapping, curriculum integration,and developing 21st century approaches to teaching and learning.
Jacobs is President of Curriculum Designers, Inc. and Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute. She works as an education consultant with schools and districts K–12 on issues and practices pertaining to: curriculum reform, instructional strategies to encourage critical thinking, and strategic planning.

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical guide with case studies and clear explanations. The most important idea I garnered from this book was that the integrated units or projects need to be chosen because there is some new understanding or interesting similarity or difference between the disciplines to be explored. For instance, learning about arguing from evidence. What kinds of evidence is valued in Science, Math, English, Social Studies, and why? How do you "prove" something in each of these disciplines? There is rich learning available by comparing and contrasting the disciplines in this way (meta-curriculum).

In contrast, you could build an interdisciplinary unit around kites, but is there new learning that happens by studying kite velocity in Math class, while you're reading The Kite Runner in English class, and exploring the history of kites in Social Studies class? The connections are there, but a deeper, richer "aha" moment needs to be further thought-through to make it worth it to integrate this unit.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine look at interdisciplinary teaching--the last chapter was the best, but of course you needed the foundation to get there.

Take away: Skill-oriented integration is much better than content-oriented.

[Adam Gutschenritter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suggestion and selling the idea of creating interdisciplinary units or even a completely interdisciplinary theme for a school. It focuses on many of the common complaints and problems. People would have in completing that task.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Commonsensical reiteration of the importance of interdisciplinary integration for making meaning

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teams of teachers attempting to integrate curriculum have their hands full with challenges from developing meaningful frameworks and maps of the curriculum to the pedagogy involved in bringing students into the interdisciplinary learning environment. Heidi Hayes Jacobs along with others, most notably James Beane, presented good foundational and often pragmatic support for the effort. This reading is a classic from that era and of that thinking- still useful today

[Pashew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise, good, but not sufficient source for students of curriculum studies.
What are the options in Curriculum designing? the types? advantages and disadvantages of each? why interdisciplinary is very important? how do we design and implement is?