Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation by Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation Reviews

• 
  Ruth

  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

  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.
• 
  Pashew Majeed

  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?