Jeanne Chall on Key Differences Between Teacher-Centered and Student-Centered Instruction 3: Specific versus Integrated Content

“Teacher-Centered: There is a tendency to teach the traditional subjects (i.e. reding, writing, spelling, social studies, science) separately in the elementary grades. There may be some integration, but not until the basics of the separate subjects have been acquired.

Student-Centered: There is a preference for integrating subjects: reading, writing, spelling, literature, speaking, and listening into language arts; history and geography into social studies; and more recently social studies with reading and writing and science with literature.”

Excerpted from: Chall, Jeanne S. The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom? New York: The Guilford Press, 2002.