Curriculum Integration and the Semicentennial of Basil Bernstein’s Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge

Abstract

In 1971, Basil Bernstein presented his thesis on the packaging and distribution of educational knowledge, a curricular arrangement in which its classification and framing into disciplinary categories benefited those within the hierarchical structures. In the 50 years since Bernstein’s proposition, there has been a growing awareness and rejection of such disciplinary approaches in favour of integrating curricular knowledge across disciplines, not only through areas of science, math, and technology, but also across all school subjects, whereas Bernstein, and a certain strand of literature building on Bernstein’s thesis, asked why and who benefits from curriculum framing, a parallel strand in the curriculum integration literature. In the following article, we re-visit Bernstein’s hypothesis by examining selected interests involved in curriculum framing, but here, we specifically investigate who stands to gain when curriculum is integrated. From an extensive and persistent literature review, analysis, and collegial discussion, we cluster support of curriculum integration into six broad categories, scrutinizing each according to their major premise, aims of education, main curriculum interest(s), understanding of knowledge, and key supporters for each. We then extend this analysis by examining what interests are most salient, where and how these interests overlap, and where support for particular forms of curricular packaging is conspicuously silent. In our synthesis, we highlight a “Worldly Perspective” to curriculum delivery, an approach with potential to both deepen and broaden student learning, and which, unlike a singular disciplinary or integrated approach, is not similarly beholden to narrow interests.

Evaluation of “Online and Offline” Integrated Teaching Model of Ideological and Political Courses in Colleges and Universities in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

“…Their college educations are jeopardised, and their course work becomes more difficult because of this. All parties participating in the political and social education of higher education students should feel more at ease with the framework now in place [7]. Students at the world's most prestigious higher technical schools must have a thorough understanding of network issues as well as the advantages and disadvantages of a blended learning environment.…”

Differential effects of subject‐based and integrated curriculum approaches on students' learning outcomes: A review of reviews

“…• The framework of subjects provides access to a set of knowledge and experiences that help assure students' entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum (Hopkin, 2012) • For the sake of social justice, all students should have access to the same powerful knowledge 'regardless of whether they reject it or find it difficult' (Young, 2013, p. 109; also see Hopkin, 2012) • The link between subjects and disciplines provides the best guarantee that students acquire knowledge that does not depend on the authority of individual teachers but instead on the authority of a teacher that is part of a specialist subject community (Young, 2013) • Subjects are sources of national and international coherence (Young, 2013) • CI supports economic growth by getting learners workplace or vocationally ready (for a review, see Pluim et al, 2021). Similarly, CI better prepares students for life in the 21st century as it helps students develop 21st century competencies which transcend the disciplines such as communication, critical thinking and creativity (Drake & Reid, 2018) • CI provides a coherent core of life skills essential for all citizens in a democracy.…”

Creating the Desire for Change in Higher Education

“…The authors do note that to allow students to solve sustainability problems, the connectivity between the different sustainable development goals and past context, historical events and contemporary opportunities for application requires being explicitly stated and clarified. Pluim, Nazir, and Wallace (2021) stress the diversity in what they call the environmental perspective on education, around a core focus of teaching students to think of the Earth more as a series of interdependent systems of which humans are only one part, compared to the previous more anthropocentric ways of thinking.…”