**3.1. Content knowledge**

Put concretely, the core curriculum mentions four ways of organizing cross-curriculum learning or even abandoning subject borders [1]. First, integration can be achieved through activities such as theme days, events, campaigns, study visits, or school camps. Second, longer integrated study modules can be created around a theme by combining the perspectives of various subjects. Third, integrated cluster subjects can be formed, for example, a science cluster that includes mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The fourth and most radical way is to organize all schoolwork holistically without any designated subjects. This is a common

However, to consider CI as the opposite of subject-based education would be incorrect. Integration can be seen as a normal feature in the pursuit of knowledge whenever teachers are constructing cross-disciplinary concepts in a subject-based curriculum [17]. The core curriculum offers two concrete examples of integration structured on differentiated subjects [1]. First, studies can be taught in parallel in such a way that one theme is studied simultaneously in different subjects, for example, climate change along with social studies, chemistry, and geography. Second, themes can be sequenced inside a single subject or between subjects so that a topic is learned along a continuum; an example would be studying Middle Eastern religions first in religious studies followed by the rise of the Islamic Empires and the Crusades

Lee Shulman has described the development of teacher education as a process in which pedagogical knowledge has become more and more openly acknowledged as essential competence along with subject matter content knowledge. However, according to Shulman, not enough attention has been given to the pedagogical skills necessary for teaching certain subject contents. Shulman's point is that pedagogical knowledge has been seen as too general, applicable to teaching any subject and all content. Instead, Shulman stresses the importance of pedagogical knowledge with which teachers can teach specific content in different subjects. The content of every subject needs its own pedagogical approach, i.e., *pedagogical content knowledge* to make it comprehensible to students. This is what Shulman has called *the missing paradigm* [2], although it has been argued that the paradigm has not been entirely missing, because it has long been a central feature of the German tradition of subject didactics

Shulman presented his argument three decades ago, and the tradition of didactics has a much longer history. In Shulman's theory and in the tradition of subject didactics, the pedagogical questions of school subjects have been widely discussed, but pedagogies of CI have been taken up to a much lesser degree. Additionally, the recent discussion on development of teacher's competences has been bind to subject teaching [19]. This can be called *the missing paradigm of today*. There are many manuals of CI and reports of experiments on CI, but the question of what kind of pedagogical knowledge CI requires from teachers is rarely answered. Generally, researchers have been more interested in well-working performance than in the knowledge

practice at the pre-school level in Finland.

122 Contemporary Pedagogies in Teacher Education and Development

**3. Teachers' integrative knowledge**

in history.

(*Fachdidaktik*) [18].

base and reasoning of teachers [20].

*Content knowledge* refers to teachers' awareness of the facts and the structure of their subject(s). In addition, a teacher must know why these are the accepted facts in a given field, how knowledge is constructed, why some aspects of the field are more important than others, what alternative understandings of a subject exist, how the facts are related to other concepts within and outside of the discipline, and why these things are worth knowing in the first place [2, 3]. Shulman does not problematize the relation between scientific disciplines and school subjects. In this way, the fundamental question of content knowledge is left open. According to Stengel [25], Shulman assumes that disciplines precede school subjects and that the task of teachers is to modify disciplinary content knowledge into learnable form, i.e., transform it into a school subject.

Thus, Shulman's assumption about the relation of disciplines and school subjects seems to be inadequate. Direct transformation of a scientific discipline into a school subject is hardly a reality, even with subject teachers who have received a disciplinary education. It would be practically impossible for a teacher to know a discipline so thoroughly and coherently that s/he could simply transform it into a school subject [25]. For example, a subject teacher who graduated as a history major might have strong content knowledge of the Cold War period, but only fragmented knowledge of antiquity. However, history as a school subject should cover all relevant historical periods, not just those in which a teacher has specialized. Thus, the content to be studied is more than or different from teacher's disciplinary knowledge.

Although Shulman sees teachers' ability to relate the content knowledge of a subject(s) to other subjects as a part of content knowledge, it is hard to guarantee that teachers have the necessary capabilities to do that. As mentioned above, in teacher education programs subject teachers are specialists in one or a few disciplines, and student teachers do not necessarily have any contact with subjects other than their own except for what they learned in their own school days. As Gardner and Boix-Mansilla state [27], if one does not have enough content knowledge of the subjects to be integrated, CI can be degraded to a pre-disciplinary level, the work based on common sense instead of expertise. Kysilka [13] has indicated that the lack of disciplinary knowledge is a problem for subject teachers as well as for primary school teachers, whose knowledge of the subjects might be too shallow to enable real integration. If the ability to relate is taken seriously as part of teachers' content knowledge, then some interdisciplinary studies will be required in teacher education, a topic discussed in the last section.

Teachers' Knowledge of Curriculum Integration: A Current Challenge for Finnish Subject Teachers

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.75870

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By curriculum knowledge, Shulman means teachers' broad comprehension of school subjects and an understanding that the current one presents only one way of constructing a curriculum. Curriculum knowledge includes awareness of various instructional materials, teaching procedures, and learning objectives. Teachers commonly use different kinds of curricular materials from which to pick suitable tools. It is important that teachers realize that they could pick other tools as well, that alternative learning methods are available, and that there are different ways to structure a course or a curriculum, for example, in an integrative way. This *knowledge of alternative curriculum materials* is the first of three different forms of curriculum knowledge Shulman explains. The other two are *lateral* and *vertical curriculum knowledge*. By *lateral curriculum knowledge,* Shulman refers to teachers' ability to know what the students are learning in various subjects simultaneously. Here Shulman makes a general assumption by stating that he expects professional teachers to be aware of what students are doing outside of a teacher's own classes [2]. He also points out that for comprehension of their own subject matter, teachers would need to know how the concepts are related to other school subjects as well [3]. These are admirable objectives, but it can be asked how far this ideal is from the current reality of schools and teacher education. If the content of subjects that are not one's own is alien to teachers, then it can be posited that there are no means of knowing what is being learned in other subjects, especially simultaneously. In addition, Rogers [28] stresses teachers' profound identification with their own subject subcultures, including their particular beliefs, norms, and practices. These aspects are usually in the form of tacit knowledge, which guides everyday work, yet is not simple to express. Without knowledge of these subcultures, cross-

Lateral curriculum knowledge makes high demands of subject teachers and requires sharing information within schools. Yet, such knowledge is one prerequisite for CI in its many forms. *Vertical curriculum knowledge* in turn refers to teachers' knowledge of what has been previously taught in one's subject(s) and what will be taught in the future [2]. Such knowledge is a starting point for integration within a single subject with the goal of making the content of one subject more interconnected and experienced as a whole in students' consciousness. With history

**3.2. Curriculum knowledge**

curricular coordination can be restricted.

Shulman [3] is aware of how teachers' content knowledge is not equally distributed to cover all aspects of a subject. He shows an empirical example of how teaching becomes different when instruction based on good content knowledge changes to subject content with which a teacher is not well acquainted. Rich, versatile teaching then turns into rigidly planned, inflexible pedagogy. Thus, the better content knowledge a teacher has, the better chances there are to develop a good level of pedagogical content knowledge. This is why it is worth spending a bit more time to consider what content knowledge really is.

The most common assumption about the origin of knowledge for teaching is the one Shulman presents, namely, that scientific disciplines are transformed into school subjects [25]. This is the case in teacher education programs, such as in Finnish subject teacher education, in which student teachers study scientific disciplines at the university level and are educated as specialists in certain disciplines and then equipped with pedagogical knowledge. However, Lopes and Macedo [8] claim that there is not necessarily a relationship between scientific disciplines and school subjects. They represent school subjects as autonomous communities that are socio-politically constructed and constantly mutating. The social objectives of school subjects are viewed differently than the objectives of science.

If the content of content knowledge does not come directly from scientific disciplines, then content knowledge should be considered as leaning on other sources, such as a curriculum, textbooks, teachers' guides, and media. It is beyond dispute that scientific disciplines and school subjects are somewhat symmetrical and that part of teachers' content knowledge comes from specific disciplines, especially the deeper knowledge of alternative views and competing theories within a discipline. However, to answer the question of why some things are worth knowing, for instance, one might look for very different explanations in school contexts as opposed to the contexts of scientific inquiry.

According to Deng [26], an integrated curriculum distances school subjects from scientific disciplines. If subjects are integrated into broader clusters, the new integrated subjects might create their own fields of knowledge without a corresponding scientific discipline. Deng uses science and technology studies as an example of a commonly integrated subject. However, Deng does not point out that disciplines can also be integrated into a form of interdisciplinary science. It is not rare to find interdisciplinary science programs combining natural sciences and technology. Thus, CI might find correspondence in interdisciplinary science projects. Another question is how these kinds of studies affect teacher education and the development of teachers' content knowledge. We will return to this question in the last section.

Although Shulman sees teachers' ability to relate the content knowledge of a subject(s) to other subjects as a part of content knowledge, it is hard to guarantee that teachers have the necessary capabilities to do that. As mentioned above, in teacher education programs subject teachers are specialists in one or a few disciplines, and student teachers do not necessarily have any contact with subjects other than their own except for what they learned in their own school days. As Gardner and Boix-Mansilla state [27], if one does not have enough content knowledge of the subjects to be integrated, CI can be degraded to a pre-disciplinary level, the work based on common sense instead of expertise. Kysilka [13] has indicated that the lack of disciplinary knowledge is a problem for subject teachers as well as for primary school teachers, whose knowledge of the subjects might be too shallow to enable real integration. If the ability to relate is taken seriously as part of teachers' content knowledge, then some interdisciplinary studies will be required in teacher education, a topic discussed in the last section.
