Curriculum Integration and the Semicentennial of Basil Bernstein’s Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge

Abstract

In 1971, Basil Bernstein presented his thesis on the packaging and distribution of educational knowledge, a curricular arrangement in which its classification and framing into disciplinary categories benefited those within the hierarchical structures. In the 50 years since Bernstein’s proposition, there has been a growing awareness and rejection of such disciplinary approaches in favour of integrating curricular knowledge across disciplines, not only through areas of science, math, and technology, but also across all school subjects, whereas Bernstein, and a certain strand of literature building on Bernstein’s thesis, asked why and who benefits from curriculum framing, a parallel strand in the curriculum integration literature. In the following article, we re-visit Bernstein’s hypothesis by examining selected interests involved in curriculum framing, but here, we specifically investigate who stands to gain when curriculum is integrated. From an extensive and persistent literature review, analysis, and collegial discussion, we cluster support of curriculum integration into six broad categories, scrutinizing each according to their major premise, aims of education, main curriculum interest(s), understanding of knowledge, and key supporters for each. We then extend this analysis by examining what interests are most salient, where and how these interests overlap, and where support for particular forms of curricular packaging is conspicuously silent. In our synthesis, we highlight a “Worldly Perspective” to curriculum delivery, an approach with potential to both deepen and broaden student learning, and which, unlike a singular disciplinary or integrated approach, is not similarly beholden to narrow interests.