ABSTRACT
Teachers who practice integrative pedagogy acknowledge that a holistic view of students and teachers demands a varied and extensive repertoire of teaching strategies. These strategies are grounded in the awareness that students and teachers enter classrooms as whole and complex people, that learning happens most successfully in the context of caring relationships between students and teachers, that empowering students requires that they test classroom knowledge in the wider world. Teachers may also develop integrative assignments, which ask students to bring together their experiences, readings, and class discussions and connect these to their own identities and vocational goals. The practice of self-reflection is crucial for students to learn and grow from their experiences by integrating them with classroom materials and background knowledge. Integrative thinking also permits students to integrate ethical and moral values with scholarly perspectives from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, leading to a more interdisciplinary approach to learning and to knowledge creation.
