1. Content Integration and meaningful teaching

1.4. Technologies and meaningful learning

integrated curriculum is realised by individuals rather than the school philosophy. Integration is not an easy step, it needs careful planning, discussions about the ways how to integrate each teacher’s curriculum what is sometimes connected with changes in timetable.

Content and language integrated learning has been in European schools for 30 years. CLIL refers to “dual-focused methodological approach that embraces both language and non-language content, focusing mainly on ‘meaning’” (Marsh 2002, p.65).

Recently, an interdisciplinary approach integrating science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is being intensively discussed. It is not only the reaction to “employer demand for STEM qualifications and skills” and job market change (What is STEM?) but it also aims to “improve how students comprehend and apply science” and make connections between the classroom and the world around them” (Roberts et al., 2018).

STEM is a subject of both, formal and informal education. The study focused on students’ perceptions of STEM learning (STEM Education). The authors claim that “informal STEM learning experiences have the potential to support students’ learning and engagement in a formal STEM learning environment” (p. 2). Their research showed that the use of project/problem-based learning allowed students to connect to real-world issues. In the westerm countries the experimental studies have been recently conducted on integrated STEM and arts (STEAM).

Subject or content Integration is often connected with authentic and meaningful learning. "In order for students to learn meaningfully, they must be willfully engaged in a meaningful task. In order for meaningful learning to occur, the task that students pursue should engage active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative activities. Rather than testing inert knowledge, schools should help students to learn how to recognize and solve problems, comprehend new phenomena, construct mental models of those phenomena, and, given a new situation, set goals and regulate their own learning (learn how to learn). In order to help students accomplish those goals, we have organized the book around meaningful learning activities, not technologies" (Howland, et al., 2014, p.2).

The authors define the following roles for technologies in supporting meaningful learning:

  • Technology as tools to support knowledge construction:

           o   for representing learners’ ideas, understandings, and beliefs

           o   for producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases by learners

  • Technology as information vehicle for exploring knowledge to support learning by constructing:

           o   for accessing needed information

           o   for comparing perspectives, beliefs, and worldviews

  • Technology as authentic context to support learning by doing:

o   for representing and simulating meaningful real-world problems, situations, and contexts

           o   for representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments, and stories of others

           o   for defining a safe, controllable problem space for student thinking

  • Technology as social medium to support learning by conversing:

           o   for collaborating with others

           o   for discussing, arguing, and building consensus among members of a community

           o   for supporting discourse among knowledge-building communities

  • Technology as intellectual partner (Jonassen, 2000a) to support learning by reflecting:

           o   for helping learners to articulate and represent what they know

           o   for reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it

           o   for supporting learners’ internal negotiations and meaning making

           o   for constructing personal representations of meaning

           o   for supporting mindful thinking