According to the changes that the education environment undergoes now, the importance of a well-rounded approach to knowledge acquisition is acknowledged more intensively. Conventional approaches to education have implied academic performance as an end result which effectively amounts to a cramming and testing culture, and subject based compartmentalization.
However, a child-centered curriculum therefore recognizes children as holistic beings who learn both cognitively and affectively and physically. The shift to this more interconnected model is particularly problematic for educators, schools, systems of education and even whole nations. However, the advantages of integrated approach –the promotion of students’ well being, their interest in the learning process and the acquisition of lifelong learning skills – are worth the challenges.
The current article looks at the general difficulties that are encountered when adopting a transformation to the coherent curriculum and comes up with precious tips to help teachers address these concerns.
Strategies to follow
- Knowledge of the Holistic Curriculum
● Definition and Scope: Holistic curriculum involves education of the students through a curriculum that has academic as well as social/emotional/physical/moral development aspects. One of them is that it has different branches and helps students learn them in combination, meaning that they can draw some parallels between branches.
● Definition and Scope: Holistic curriculum involves education of the students through a curriculum that has academic as well as social/emotional/physical/moral development aspects. One of them is that it has different branches and helps students learn them in combination, meaning that they can draw some parallels between branches.
● Beyond Knowledge Acquisition: It includes values like critical thought, effective emotions management, creativity, teamwork, other than the content knowledge.
2. Knowledge of the Holistic Curriculum
● Ingrained Educational Practices: In this regard, there may be countless educators and school leaders who are unfamiliar with the decentralized model and feel frustrated with a shift from subject-focused teaching to a global approach.
● Curriculum Rigidity: Such prescribed learning packages and structures also foster some externally induced resistance through predefined paradigms of curricula and other standardized testing regimes.
● Lack of Awareness: In some cases the educators may not fully grasp what constitutes the benefits or even how a holistic curriculum exposure is applicable hence they shy off from it.
Strategy for Overcoming Resistance
● Professional Development: Suggestions for the continuous training and the workshops that would focus on the rationale of the approach to holistic learning, can really assist the educators to gain a better understanding of this form of learning as well as aid in enthusing them the more on the necessity of embracing the approach to holistic learning.
● Gradual Implementation: Should holistic practices not be able to be implemented at once across schools, service providers can first begin to incorporate the aspects of emotional and social learning into lessons.
● Showcasing Success Stories: With a focus on previously published case studies and successful stories from other schools or districts where most likely the new approach to curriculum is integrated, the process of change is easier to lead.
3. Insufficient resources and assistance
● Insufficient Training and Expertise: Few teachers are trained to use integrative approaches and many may feel helpless when educating in a way that requires comprehensiveness.
● Limited Materials and Tools: Moving towards an integrated style of teaching is a learning that calls for the acquisition of new teaching aids, teaching/learning resources, and teaching aids that may not be available in several schools.
● Inadequate Time and Personnel: Change in school management from the traditional orthodox model to a more comprehensive system may face time & or staff constraints in the implementation of change strategies mainly in large conservative education systems that operate financially.
Strategy for Overcoming Resistance:
- Collaboration and Shared Resources : Teacher education institutions and schools can liaise with other educational institutions, organizations, schools, universities, NGOs and other stakeholders in order to triangulate resources for the provision of a consistent and well-coordinated integrated Development Curriculum.
- Peer Learning : As for the solution, the effective method is to develop peer mentorship programs that imply the opportunity for advanced teachers to help integrate holistic practices into the school environment.
- Leveraging Technology : Web-based technologies can offer less expensive, easily-sustainable solutions for learnership and skills development for harmonic social and emotional development as well as technologies that support computer-supported collaborative learning to enable the development of project based information.
4. Harmonizing Academic and Holistic Education
● Curriculum Overload: Incorporation of holistic elements in an already congested curriculum can cause issues of how to supplement a good academic program without overloading the student’s developmental experience.
● Assessment Challenges: Unfortunately, concepts such as classwork, emotional intelligence, responsible behaviors, social skills, or creativity are very difficult, if not impossible, to incorporate into letter grading or grade point averages, and thus do not translate easily as elements of success.
● Pressure to Perform Academically: Students, parents and at times educators become inclined to focus on the ‘achieved’ aspect and excel in that area instead of developing the whole man/woman concept as proposed by the holistic approach.
Strategy for Balancing Academics and Holistic Learning:
● Integration, Not Addition: This means that holistic development should not be the extra curriculum or one extra layer rather it should form the integral part of each curriculum subject. Such as presenting mathematics in its application through solving complicated problems, which particularly involve group work and brainstorming.
● Emphasizing Lifelong Skills: Schools need to promote and advocate for such skills as flexibility, writing, or the ability to control one’s emotions as valuable aspects as knowledge itself.
5. Individual Needs and Student Diversity
● Varying Learning Styles: As observed above, a conceived notion of a composite learning environment entails an approach that considers fitting learning modalities to learner differences; thus, it is not always easy to address individual differences within classrooms.
● Social and Emotional Factors: Some of the students experience one type of disability or another, or may be going through tough times in their homes or suffering from trauma, anxiety or depression affecting their learning.
● Cultural Sensitivity: Making sure that the content of the curriculum has a positive portrayal of culture, of the children, that there is adequate representation of cultural minority groups, can be difficult as educators because you never know all the stories that are out there.
6. Including Community Members and Parents
● Lack of Parent Understanding: Parents brought up in conventional systems of learning may find it a little hard to embrace a well rounded curriculum, such parents may be worried about the academic progress of their child.
● Community Support: There are always difficulties in mobilizing the local community to participate in the educational process while embracing the principles of the indicated model in the event that the community is not knowledgeable and experienced in the embracing of such a model.
Conclusion
The process of moving to an integrated perspective requires time, effort, and lots of cooperation and flexibility can be a great challenge but very fulfilling if implemented correctly. Educators need to deal with barriers to change, scarcity of resources, conflicts of goals and developments, as well as students’ heterogeneity.
But it is possible as the case of this article shows that by using such measures as professional development, methods of differentiating instruction, and firm cooperation with the members of the community, the schools like DiYES International reach the goal and provide the children with the education that will help them to become the successful learners as well as personalities with proper social, emotional, and personal development.