Integration: An approach to Science in primary schooling

Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 2, Issue 1, Article 10 (Jun., 2001)
Peter J FENSHAM
Integration: An approach to Science in primary schooling

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INTEGRATION WITH LANGUAGE
- Integration : in whose interest?
I have over the last decade been involved in two very large international projects to assess student learning in the literacy areas of science and, mathematics in the first and science, mathematics and language in the second. In both cases, it was always the Science group who made the overtures for cooperation, or for dual use of items, that could assess both the interests of science and the interests of the other field. When I look at curriculum statements about language literacy and number literacy, I do not so readily find the references to integrative advantage (with science or with mathematics), that I can easily find in the science curriculum debate. I know also teachers, albeit not too many, who are implementing integrated teaching of science in their classroom practices because they have experienced its value. I hope, once again, that my knowledge of these other fields is not a good assessment of their proponents' recognition of the integrative advantage for their concerns in the teaching/learning in the primary years.