How Should the Curriculum Be Organized?
Three broad approaches to organizing curriculum content are discipline based, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. A discipline-based curriculum is described by Jacobs (1989)
The discipline based content design option focuses on a strict interpretation of the disciplines with separate subjects in separate time blocks during the school day. No attempt for integration is made, in fact, it is avoided. Traditional approaches subjects such as language arts, mathematics, social studies, music, art, and physical education are the usual secondary programs, these general academic and arts areas break down into more specific fields, such as algebra under mathematics or American history under social studies. There are some variations of block scheduling and the way the week or cycle is programmed. Nevertheless, knowledge is presented in separate fields without a deliberate attempt to show the relationships among them. (p. 14)
Because of its emphasis on breaking learning down into discrete segments of traditional content to be learned in specified blocks of time, the discipline-based approach is best suited to a curriculum with the purpose of transmission. This approach clearly has been the dominant curriculum organization pattern in the United States.
In an interdisciplinary curriculum, common themes connect traditional content areas. For instance, different aspects of an instructional unit on transportation might be taught in science, math, social studies, language arts, art, music, and physical education, or a set of common concepts or skills(for example, technology or problem solving skills) might connect different subject areas throughout the year. Figure 19.2 illustrates an interdisciplinary curriculum. A curriculum organization of this type requires extensive team planning. Since the interdisciplinary approach encourages students to discover relationships and make applications across existing content areas, it is most appropriate for a curriculum with the purpose of transactional learning (jenkins, 2005)
In a transdisciplinary curriculum, traditional disciplines do not exist. The entire curriculum is organized around common themes, skills, or problems. Daily learning activities are built around the topic being studied rather than conforming to academic disciplines or class schedules. For example, while studying the concept of commerce, students could spend all of their school time developing, managing, and analyzing their own in-school “marketplace." Students might study selected content from economics, math, sociology, communication, politics, ethics, history, and other academic disciplines but only as such content become relevant to the commercial community they were developing.
Transdisciplinary curricula usually begin with very broad intended leaning outcomes. The integration into the curriculum of contemporary problems from the real word and students’ interests and concern become part of an ongoing curriculum development process. This type of curriculum organization can be successful.