Integrated education

1. Construction of a curriculum environment which will best enable students to relate meaningfully their school experiences with each other, with out-of-school experiences, and with their own personal needs and interests. The two major dimensions of educational integration are: the degree to which the various subjects or content experiences relate to each other; and the relevance of the content to the meaning structure of individual students. Types of integrating scheme include: correlation, in which teachers of different subjects provide a common referent or theme which, in effect, correlates any two or more subjects; fusion, in which two separate courses (e.g. history and literature) are scheduled into the same block of time; and the curriculum approach consisting of broad pre-planned areas from which the teacher-pupil interaction evolves specific study in terms of the special needs, interests and problems of students.

2. A synthesis, or at least a cross-referencing, of existing knowledge within present-day educational disciplines. The conceptual matrix used emphasizes the disparate nature and essential autonomy of the disciplines so integrated. Such integration takes place within an existing model.

3. A fundamental distinction can be drawn between integration in the sense of synthesizing presently accepted postulates with their attendant corpus of knowledge, methodologies, and modes of behaviour, and a type of integration (for which the term integrative has been proposed) in which a new conceptual model is constructed for the express purpose of developing a holistic educational philosophy and methodology capable of understanding and documenting the philosophical principles inherent in the natural and social sciences, together with the humanistic systems of mankind.

4. Integrated education may also be used to refer to the integration of different phases of education (primary, secondary, post-secondary, out-of-school, and adult education) as a continuing process.