Curriculum integration and teachers’ training – Romanian experience
Alina Ioana Constantin*1 and Maria Goga2
1Doctoral School of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania,
2Teacher Training Department, Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest, Romania.
*Corresponding Author Email: alina_constantin_2004(at)yahoo.com
Alina Ioana Constantin |
Maria Goga |
Romanian curriculum has a strong characteristic of being discipline-based, but due to the new legal curriculum framework, it is observed that decision-makers want to direct it towards an integrated approach. The implementation of an integrated curriculum is closely related to the teachers’ training. The present study explores the need for training secondary school teachers in the curriculum integration area. Our study tries to find out teachers’ choices regarding teaching an integrated optional discipline and teaching disciplines from the common core curriculum in an integrated manner. Another purpose was to identify the opinions of teachers and education specialists on the need for this kind of training and the nature of the training programs for making possible the implementation of an integrated curriculum. The research has been conducted in 34 Romanian secondary schools, on a sample of 176 teachers, 7 educational specialists, and 2 school inspectors. The results show that a small percent of teachers teach integrated optional disciplines, but a high percent manage to make connections between the content of the taught discipline and other disciplines and real-life or students’ experiences. For training prospective teachers to specialize in curriculum integration area, the universities must develop new courses and also allow them to have double/triple specialization, which contributes to their qualification and opening for integrated teaching. For teachers, there should be also exchanges of experience between teachers already familiar with this approach and the ones that are not familiar. Also, continuous training programs should include theoretical courses and debates, practically-applied exercises, and simulations.
Keywords:
Curriculum integration, integrated disciplines, secondary school, teachers training.
Constantin AI, Goga M (2021). Curriculum integration and teachers’ training – Romanian experience. Int. J. Educ. Pol. Res. Rev. 8(1):28-34.
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