Date of Award
2003
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Fischler Graduate School of Education and Human Services
Advisor
Joan M. Mignerey
Committee Member
Barbara Packer
Keywords
academic achievement, academic needs, complementary lesson design, core classes, curriculum design, data retrieval, electronic resources, essay writing, fused curriculum, integrated curriculum, integrated education, instructional methods, interdisciplinary teaching, language arts, lesson planning, mathematics, middle schools, nontraditional education, observational data, oral communication, parallel lesson design, research skills, science, seminars, seventh-grade students, social studies, thematic approach, traditional approach, whole-class instruction, workshops, written communication
Abstract
The academic needs of 7th-grade students were not met because 18 of 34 seventh-grade students failed 1 or more academic courses in language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science. Seventh-grade teachers delivered instruction by use of the traditional approach at this middle school. The 7th-grade students were failing in writing essays. The students were unable to access/retrieve print and electronic data for research purposes. It was evident that these 7th-grade students were lacking skills in expressing themselves in oral and written communication. This applied dissertation was developed to change the utilization of the instructional (traditional) approach and use the interdisciplinary teaching approach to meet the academic needs of 7th-grade students who failed in core classes.
The writer utilized strategies, techniques, seminars, observational data, and critiqued lesson plans as models for 7th-grade teachers to follow. Periodic seminars and workshops provided teachers with best practices in the integration of lesson themes. Parallel and complementary lesson designs were primarily used to integrate content areas as an alternative to traditional lessons that were taught by the whole-class method.
The One-shot case study revealed that using the interdisciplinary teaching approach yielded some positive impact upon 18 of 34 seventh-grade students who had failed classes before the intervention. Students who were taught by the parallel design of the interdisciplinary approach met more of the outcomes in the content areas of social studies and language arts than they had before when taught by the traditional methods.