Multidisciplinary Mavens: Experts Recommend Integrated-Studies Resources
Champions of cross-curricular learning share their ideas.
by Douglas Cruickshank
Education consultant Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Larry Rosenstock, founding principal of San Diego's High Tech High, featured in the Edutopia.org article "Kaleidoscopic Learning: An Overview of Integrated Studies," recommend some favorite resources for teachers interested in learning more about integrated studies:
Heidi Hayes Jacobs
Schools that implement best practices in interdisciplinary curriculum
"I really like what's going on with the MET schools. There's a great deal of innovation in schedules. I think schedules are curricular destiny.
"New York State's social studies program is unique in the United States. New York is the only state that has two years of global studies. It's like a two-year curriculum map. And in it, there's not only tremendous integration of where people live and different peoples; often, you will also see the arts and literature and some of the great discoveries in science woven into this."
Books
Ideas That Changed the World, by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
"It's just rich with interdisciplinary possibilities. This is a knockout book."
Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities and Mapping Interdisciplinary Studies
"Julie Thompson Klein is one of my favorites, a very sophisticated writer."
Web sites
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
Larry Rosenstock
Schools that implement best practices in interdisciplinary curriculum
Web sites
"There's a new effort called CK12.org. They offer open source textbooks, where, for example, all of our field guides are digitized. It's an open storage environment where you can create your own science textbook, keep it digital, keep it soft -- for free, forever -- or modify it. Kids can build it; teachers can build it. It's a fascinating resource."
This article originally published on 10/7/2008
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