Organization of concepts and learning, based on integration. The relation between removing subject boundaries, learning and organization of concepts

Abstract

A child’s thinking can’t be classified into subjects. Despite of this, in the teaching practice there are too many subjects, which divide and separate the science fields’ information. Tough, that these information, concepts can associate with each other. We heard a lot about the Nordic countries educational system and its efficiency, as Estonia or Sweden. It’s an interesting and popular question: what is behind this efficiency, why do the Nordic countries perform as well on the international surveys. In this study we present a pedagogical research, which starts from the presupposition that the Nordic countries efficiency lies in the integration and inderdisciplinarity based curriculum. We are assumed to find a great degree of integration and interdisciplinarity. With comprehensive document- and content analysis, we investigated the Estonian, Swedish and Romanian curriculum, and after this the Science subject programs. On the one hand, these informed us about the extent of interdisciplinarity and integration view; on the other hand, aid to create a subject block, which represent the above-mentioned views. For both, curricula and programs we have reviewed sections for the 10-11 year age group. To measure our presupposition – which is based on interdisciplinarity and integration teaching – we created a subject block that was tested in the experimental group in the above-mentioned age group. During the pre- and post-test, we made sure that – in the exercises where the students needed to create mind maps or should group concepts according to a free decision – after the intervention, students performed better. The results confirm our presupposition: by removing subject boundaries, the student’s performance (regarding the organization and acquisition of concepts) can be increased. This can contribute to the curriculum development.