Cross-Disciplinary Curriculum

From my point of view, Anderson (1995) highlighted key considerations that are important in curriculum development. First, in attempting to develop and implement a cross-disciplinary curriculum, classroom teachers confront the dilemma of ensuring that important topics are covered and exploring the different topics in depth. Time constraints and resource limitations may prevent classroom teachers from achieving both objectives at the same time (p. 35).

Second, in the development of a cross-disciplinary curriculum, teachers must possess the ability and knowledge to integrate the topics based on their similarities in concepts and themes. Therefore, they will be able to design an appropriate curriculum that challenges students to apply their learning to interesting projects. Many teachers who have been trained solely in their respective disciplines have difficulties with creating this new type of curriculum (Anderson, 1995, p. 34).

Finally, classroom teachers also need t

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ning and thinking objectives of the curriculum, McGehee (2001) asserted that classroom teachers can create an effective interdisciplinary curriculum. The principles in this article, which are important to my understanding of curriculum development, are the emphases on the teachers' degree of expertise in their respective disciplines and their understanding of a metacurriculum. In developing a new curriculum that connects diverse disciplines, teachers from each of the content area must be able to exhibit their understanding and perspective of their specific disciplines. Essentially, they must be able to demonstrate how their subject matter can be incorporated into the interdisciplinary curriculum (McGehee, 2001, p. 381). At the same time, these classroom teachers must go beyond their knowledge of the disciplines and their instructional methods to identify the specific learning skills and techniques that should be taught to enable the students to acquire the knowledge from the curriculum and develop critical thinking skills. This latter aspect is the metacurricular approach that is critical in helping classroom teachers to reorient their perspective of curriculum development (McGehee, 2001, p. 381). In this article t
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Approximate Word count = 1573
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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