Blueprints for building curriculum.

INTEGRATING ACADEMIC AND VOCATIONAL CURRICULA CAN BE A DAUNTING TASK, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE STARTING FROM SCRATCH AND YOU NEED TO FACTOR IN ACADEMIC AND SKILL STANDARDS. THE "CURRICULUM INTEGRATOR," DESIGNED BY A NETWORK OF EDUCATION GROUPS, AIMS TO GIVE TEACHERS A FRAMEWORK.

Curriculum integration can be a lot like building a house. Even the best materials and skills cannot produce a sturdy structure without a sound blueprint to follow. To help educators make sense of the mountains of government, association and industry standards, a group of education organizations joined forces to create the Integrated System for Workforce Education Curricula (ISWEC). Led by the Center for Occupational Research and Development in Waco, Texas, ISWEC has developed the Curriculum Integrator, a blueprint educators can use to systematically integrate curriculum while including academic and vocational skill standards. To make that possible, the Curriculum Integrator includes "Integrated Curriculum Standards" synthesized from three categories of standards - employability, occupational and academic. So far, CORD has released 149 integrated standards in three career clusters - Business, Marketing and Management; Engineering and Science; and Manufacturing and Production Technology. About a third of the standards are applicable to all three clusters and are identified as core standards. Examples of these include: listening, oral communication, teamwork, written communication, leadership and problem solving.

Schools in 27 states participated in the system's development, and 14 pilot sites are testing sample curricula developed for the clusters.

The big first step

Take the Business, Marketing and Management cluster, for example. A comprehensive high school taking the big first step toward integrating academic and vocational skill standards in its marketing education program could employ the Business, Marketing and Management standards to build curriculum or apply the Curriculum Integrator to its own standards. The entire integration process takes eight steps. (See box on the next page.)

First educators must establish a curriculum integration team. In this case team members might be the high school marketing education teacher, an English teacher, a guidance counselor, the principal, a marketing teacher from the local community college and a representative from a local business specializing in producing commercial brochures. Together they will identify occupational areas of interest to students. The Curriculum Integrator further breaks down the Business, Marketing and Management cluster into five career majors - management, finance, administrative services, marketing and computer network systems. Under the marketing subhead, there are five occupational fields - advertising, public relations, real estate, fashion merchandising, sales and insurance. Team members can stick with the Curriculum Integrator model, which suggests projects that the teachers can use to bridge their curricula, or apply their own career majors or occupational fields to the cluster structure. If the team chooses to introduce more factors, then it will take the next step in the implementation process, which is to augment the standards database by localizing the integrated standards. The team will have to develop its own standards for any additional occupational fields.

If the team chooses or is able to stick with the Curriculum integrator model, then it can skip step four entirely by using the standards provided. Here are some examples for the Business, Marketing and Management" cluster.

* Marketing - Acquire, analyze and evaluate information to develop a marketing plan to promote or enhance sales of a product or service. Consider the cultural, economic, governmental, ethical and technological factors.

* Business law - Analyze the relationship between ethics and the law and describe the sources of the law, court system structure and classifications of procedural and substantive law. Exhibit competence in analyzing and/or applying contract, property, computer and environmental laws as well as agency and employment laws.

* Customer relations - Exhibit an awareness of the importance of good customer relations to a business. Communicate with customers to identify their needs and expectations. Identify and/or obtain additional resources to resolve customer problems and satisfy their needs. Differentiate between consumer rights and business responsibilities. Recognize the relationship between public relations and marketing.

Twenty of the integrated standards included in the Curriculum Integrator follow the National Career Development Guidelines sponsored by the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee. These focus on guidance and career development issues and connect them to academic and employability, standards. Here are abbreviated examples of two of them.

* Career decision-making skills - Assess and use information to develop a lifelong career plan. Identify problems that may interfere with this plan. Identify strategies to use during any transitional period.

* Work ethic - Display conscientious personal and professional work habits, seek ongoing professional development, improve performance for the benefit of self and the employer and display a sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of the company and colleagues.

Other core standards include such skills as computer literacy, teamwork, workplace safety and technical writing.

Start assessing

At step five student assessment begins. The Curriculum Integrator provides descriptions for six types of assessment strategies - projects, portfolios, on-demand demonstrations, case studies/simulations, written tests and structured observations. Each strategy also includes specific suggestions. Portfolios, for example, can serve as the centerpiece for parent conferences. The Curriculum Integrator includes suggestions for what to include in the portfolio, such as a student's best work or work in progress or a selection chosen by the student and the teacher. Different assessment strategies may be more effective depending on the standards. Team members will decide which are best suited to the situation.

Step six - using the integrated standards to redesign curricula - is reserved for integration teams that are applying the Curriculum Integrator to existing curriculum. This section of the model introduces seven suggestions for a curriculum redesign. Some of these include: introducing contextual or applied learning materials; implementing project-based learning; and creating work-site learning experiences. The Curriculum Integrator does not include actual classroom materials or texts for classroom use; however, references for these materials are included in the package. Dan Hull's book Getting Started in Tech Prep is an example of a suggested source. Teachers who have implemented the system in pilot sites found they already were incorporating many of the standards, but the Curriculum Integrator gave them the organized structure and skill standards they needed to integrate across curricula.

Although the integration team should start developing a local plan of implementation at the project's outset, step seven is when it comes into play. Keep in mind this is only one step in the entire process. The implementation plan should cover these areas:

* the specific curricula the team has developed or revised;

* the structure of each course;

* professional development requirements;

* public relations plans;

* student and project assessment activities; and

* a timeline for the entire project.

The most effective implementation plans are custom-made to fit a school or district, so integration teams should stress specializing in the above areas as much as possible. When implementation plans are structured to fit specifics, it is less likely that something will be left out. Finally, the integration team should create a support network for everyone involved in the project. There should be at least two or three people from the team who can serve as an integration "helpdesk." Workshops also are valuable for educators to share experiences and discuss implementation issues.

Integrating curricula becomes much easier and comprehensible when it comes with directions and structure.

Teachers Will Be Surprised

When Peg Slusarski saw the mound of materials that make up the Curriculum Integrator her eyes grew wide.

"It was overwhelming," she remembers. "But I was able to go to a workshop at CORD and after studying just the core integration standards, I decided that it was a workable document."

Slusarski, an English and speech teacher at Lakeview High School in Columbus, Nebraska, was among the first teachers to pilot the Curriculum Integrator two years ago. She participated in a two-day workshop at the Center for Occupational Research and Development in Waco, Texas, where she learned about tying standards to her school's English and business education curricula.

"We actually worked with the standards and tied them back to curriculum in groups," Slusarski says about the workshop. "I think the thing that surprised me was that my curriculum was easily tied back to the standards. I didn't have to change a whole lot. Teachers who have been in the profession for a while will be surprised."

Slusarski admits her school had a leg up on the Curriculum Integrator because of its Business-English Curriculum Integration project that was already in place. However, now she feels she has steady ground to stand on.

"I can justify what I do in my curriculum because it's tied now to national standards," Slusarski says. "It makes me feel like I have the backing of experts. It gives me another tool to work on curriculum and makes it relevant for my students."

The 8-Step Curriculum Integrator

1. Establish an integration design team. Include business, academic, vocational, secondary and postsecondary representatives.

2. Identify your school or district's career clusters or occupational areas of interest.

3. Identify which integrated curriculum standards apply to your project. If needed, add to those.

4. Apply the standards provided and/or develop new ones.

5. Choose and apply student assessment strategies to each standard.

6. Use the standards for redesign if you are integrating existing curriculum.

7. Develop a local implementation plan. Be sure to include professional development activities.

8. Provide support for teachers as they put the integrated curriculum into practice in the classroom.

Walt H. Edling is a vice president and project director of CORD's Integrated System for Workforce Education Curricula, Ruth M. Loring is senior associate at CORD and team leader for the ISWEC project.