ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the nature of school knowledge, how it is organized in curricula and the status attributed to knowledge that is structured in different ways. Deciding on which knowledge counts and which doesn’t is a sociopolitical process, steeped in the history and tradition of schooling and curriculum. In almost all educational jurisdictions, the dominant view of knowledge is that it is made up of disciplines such as science, language, history and mathematics, and that this structure is the most suitable way to organize the school curriculum. People who think outside this status quo, however, have presented strong arguments that knowledge in the real world is not compartmentalized into disciplines. They further argue that using this disciplinary approach to curriculum alienates students from understanding the way the real world works and prevents them from being able to apply their understandings to complex, authentic problems and issues of interest to them and the broader community. This chapter builds on the discussion of learning in the previous chapter and delves more deeply into the outcomes of disciplinary and integrated curricula. We explore the reasons why a disciplinary structure dominates school curricula, examine two case studies about alternative, integrated ways that school knowledge can be structured, and pose questions about the potential of integrated curricula to deliver knowledge that counts in a global community.
