Categorie
Educazione Primaria

Separate subjects

Separate subjects are extracts or selections from the different disciplines of knowledge,  that are given in isolation. This selection represents the ideals and the pattern of the  dominant culture, reflecting a single reality. 

In them, knowledge is decontextualised from social issues, because it does not connect  learnings to such situations. This makes it impossible for children to adapt properly to  the society. Moreover, this produces a lack of significance, since it is impossible a  connection between acquiered and previous knowledge. 

Separate subjects are the knowledge, which students must achieve, being a unique and  closed answer, not giving place to exploration and creativity. 

From this perspective, there is a great concern for the amount of content, so there is a  confrontation between learning and teaching. In addition, there is a hierarchy of  subjects, and because of that, some subjects become more important than others. Finally, what we want to reflect with the video is that the existing frontiers between the  different disciplines should be blurred.

References 

Beane, J. A. (2005). La integración del currículum y las disciplinas del conocimiento.  En J. A. Beane, La integración del currículum, pp. 61-71. Madrid: Morata.

Authorship

Yarina Alonso Mediavilla, Alicia Castanedo Cubas y Sara Gestera Aramburu, 2020.