Curriculum Integration in Senior High School Physics Courses

Curriculum integration has become an important theme in discussions on school reform during the past ten to fifteen years. It has been proposed that integration can help students to understand and appreciate the complexity of the world that they are living in and the relevance of their education. The purpose of this work was to examine the impact of integrating a unit in Physics 11 with history of science, language arts and social studies on the academic achievement, attendance and attitudes of high school students. A second purpose was to assess whether it is feasible to provide curriculum integration without restructuring the current high school organization. Significant gains were realized in student attendance, unit and test marks. There was a clear impact on achievement and attitudes of students through integration. Analysis of individual student writings not only demonstrated that integration had occurred, but also gave interesting insights into student learning and perceptions of science content. Interview data with participating teachers and reflections by the action teacher revealed that a simple model of integration was viable in the current school structure.