Integrated curriculum approaches
An integrated curriculum approach is a curriculum that connects several study areas and
focuses on subject-matter and creating emphasis on concepts that unify. It focuses on building
connections between students, facilitating them to engage in meaningful and relevant practices
that are of much importance to their real life. Having an understanding of the importance of the
integrated curriculum as well as how to have the curriculum well integrated can increase the
success of students and teachers in their classroom work (Drake, 2007). We seek to reflect on the
models of integrated curriculum and the benefits they that accrue to the students and teachers
utilizing the approaches.
Use of the integrated curriculum does not only create connections between student and
classroom activities but also ensure that the students are actively engaged in their work to achieve
success (Schumacher,1995). The curriculum ensures that trainers are charged with the
responsibility of designing meaningful task and challenging fun that seeks to help learners create
connections to the pieces of information.
Though Murdoch's inquiry model of the integrated curriculum a trainer makes inquiry in a
classroom with the intention of making learners learn from the questions about the content. Then
question involves classroom design, curriculum coverage, assessment and planning (Murdoch,
2019). It focuses on student’s attention and therefore making learners are more engaged in their
activities. With Fogarty's model teachers are the designers of the curriculum, they may decide to
put instructions and curriculum together depending on the way they find it appropriate (JAFARI,
KARAMI & PAKMEHR,2013). This model provides expansion of the other models of curriculum
integration and draws clear differences between various approaches ("JOTS v25n2 - Models of
Curriculum Integration", 2019). It improves on the other models thus has an added advantage to
