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| Solving the
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school principals and teachers have not always been convinced. The best
primary school teachers in New Zealand have been "child-centered" facilitators
for many years, but many traditional high school and university teachers have been
"one-subject lecturers". Integrating several subjects together means change, and
change often brings fear and stress.
But it may well be the computer that forces the
"integration" changes that so many reports have urged. Most computer programs of
course are very specialized. But every sensible business now integrates many of those
programs to solve interconnected problems. A finance director uses computer spreadsheets
to compile a company's annual report; a designer uses the same raw database to produce
graphics for the same report, and uses other computer programs to produce allied artwork
and camera-ready pages. Entire business plans, and quick product changes, now emerge from
the bar-codes flashing through thousands of different supermarkets - charting market
research trends on suppliers' data bases on the other side of a continent. Customer
order-forms are instantly translated into production schedules and raw-material purchase
orders.
Business revolves around integrated specialists, both
self-acting and working in groups. The information revolution now integrates that
specialist work. And Nolan says that the real world demands changes in traditional
subject-by-subject schooling. He believes changes are demanded even more by the shortage
of jobs that previously required no skills.
"In the past," he says, "people
who have been relatively unsuccessful at school - relatively unskilled, relatively
unknowledgeable - have been able to walk out in days of plenty and pick up a job and do
well enough. Those days are now gone - but, not only that, the days of narrow vocational
training have also gone."14
So Nolan's integrated studies program has linked Massey
University educational research with field-trip study projects, IBM-sponsored computer
studies and the New Zealand national high school curriculum. His pilot program started in
1986 with sixth form students at Freyberg. The first integrated studies course combined
biology, computer studies, English and geography. The elements were drawn together around
a central theme: preservation and management issues confronting New Zealand National
Parks. That theme was the common thread that bound the subjects together in a coherent
program. Out-of-class field research trips were a major part of the project. In Nolan's
words: "These national park field trips confronted students not only with physical
adventure and
Contents Page Preface
Introduction
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