This paper summarises the final report on a study first described to MERGA conference delegates in 1998. Following an extensive review of research on integration spanning the past 30 years, a number of middle school settings of integrated teaching and learning from across a range of demographic and socio-economic areas were studied over three years in order to provide data upon which a number of assertions related to curriculum integration were formulated. Using a number of approaches to data collection, the facts about curriculum integration were documented and six assertions were complied concerning what we believe we know about the process. Another five assertions about what we believe we still need to understand about this process were also compiled. Arguments for and against integration are discussed from the viewpoints ofthe students, teachers and administrators.

(2002). Curriculum Integration: Eroding the High Ground of Science as a School Subject? Studies in Science Education: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 43-83.

The integration of content from the science, mathematics and technology learning areas is well grounded in the philosophy of middle schooling. However, there is a notable absence of recent empirical research to show if and/or how students learn science and mathematics concepts in integrated settings. This paper presents a case study of a Year 9 class that participated in a technology project constructing a solar boat involving science and mathematics components on electric circuits, statistical analysis, critical pathways and the reading of sun charts. The case study focuses on three pairs of students in the class and the results consists of three learning episodes that made up part of the students’ learning experience. The discussion explores the nature of the students’ learning and concludes that learning was enhanced as a result of the students’ involvement in the solar boat project.

The culture of the middle years of schooling in Western Australia, as in many parts of the world, is predominantly discipline based. This paper focuses on exceptions to this norm by describing examples of integrated teaching of science, mathematics, and technology in seventh‐ to ninth‐grade classrooms. Several different forms of integration were found in the 16 Western Australian schools examined in this study, including thematic approaches, cross‐curricular approaches, technology‐based projects, and local community projects. Interviews with teachers in these schools raised several implementation issues, including the process of getting started, implications for teachers and students, implications for schedule structure, and implications for departmental structure. All the forms of integration observed in this study were through secondary means, in which the discrete subject discipline boundaries were being maintained. The deep culture of subject disciplines, underwritten by curriculum documents organized in terms of subjects, means that there may be few incentives for teachers to teach and students to learn in an integrated manner.