Teacher Beliefs and Subject Matter Boundaries: The Struggle for Curricular Transformation Among Teachers of Adults

Teachers of adult learners in formal settings are increasingly exploring more integrated approaches to curriculum and teaching. One location for such work is the community college. Among these teachers, however, who are traditionally content experts, an integrated approach often represents a paradigmatic shift in their understanding of what is most worth knowing. Little is known about how these teachers' beliefs influence, change, and are changed by participation in such curriculum efforts. This study reports on the beliefs and meaning and perspectives of one group of teachers attempting to bring about more curricular coherence and integration within four different disciplines of developmental education. In the United States, community colleges are rapidly becoming major, postsecondary locations for the education and training of adults, contributing to what Grubb (1996) describes as a "midskilled labor force. " Many of the occupational programs offered through community colleges, however, require students to complete some level of basic academic or general education coursework. For many adult learners, these courses are experienced as fragmented pieces of information or skill, disconnected from each other and the learners' life contexts. Developmental education programs represent a specific example of this problem. Usually taught by subject matter specialists, these instructional experiences are designed to equip the "underprepared" adult with the academic skills he or she will need in later college-level work or on the job. But they often have little to do with each other or the learner's future employment contexts. Scholars and practitioners suspect the lack of a meaningful, coherent curricular experience may be a significant and fundamental reason why so many adults do not complete these courses and eventually drop out of college (Beane, 1995; Grubb, 1996). Efforts at curriculum reform, involving integration of academic and vocational content or integrating content more within the life contexts of the learners (Dirkx & Prenger, 1997), represent teachers' attempts to bring some coherence to an otherwise fragmented educational experience. To be truly effective, however, integrated approaches require a paradigmatic shift from a focus on teaching to one on learning. Many community college teachers rely on curricular structures and instructional models intended to transmit to adults codified bodies of knowledge or skills for which they are perceived to be lacking or deficient (Brody, 1998). Learning-centered (O'Banion, 1997) and integrated approaches to instruction represent radical departures from what teachers have come to know as effective practice (Griffith & Conner, 1994; LeCroy & McClenney, 1992). This paper reports on one group of teachers who are collaboratively engaged in a process of transforming their curricula through the use of more integrated approaches. Our goal was to develop a deeper understanding of the beliefs and perspectives which teachers from different disciplines use to guide and make sense of curricular integration. Theoretical framework Our focus in this study was on the beliefs that teachers hold about the process of curriculum integration. According to Fang (1996, p. 49), "Teacher theories and beliefs represent the rich store of general knowledge of objects, people, events, and their characteristic relationships" that teachers hold and use in their planning, interactive thoughts and decisions, and when working face-to-face with students in the learning setting. We might think about a teacher's general knowledge in terms of subject-matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and curricular knowledge (Shulman, 1986). Thus, teachers hold beliefs about the nature of the subjects they teach (what is most worth knowing and how we know it), ways to most effectively teach these subjects, and the variety of curricular materials available to them within their subjects and to their students within other subjects. Teacher beliefs constitute an important dimension of a teacher's general knowledge, forming a conceptual representation of what teachers perceive to be the reality of their educational setting. It is through this representation that teachers filter their perceptions and make sense of the curricular and pedagogical issues which confront them minute to minute within the learning setting (Dirkx & Spurgin, 1992). Along with attitudes and values, a teacher's beliefs make up what is referred to as a "belief system" (Pajares, 1992), or what Pratt (1998) refers to as "perspectives" or "points of view. " According to Pratt, an individual's perspective reflects "an expression of beliefs and values related to teaching and learning" (p. xii). These perspectives are not merely random assortments of beliefs, but ones which seem to cohere and are, in some way connected with each other. That is, they seem to be held together as if through a structure of some kind, not unlike what Mezirow (1991) refers to as meaning schemes and perspectives. Thus, we can expect seasoned, experienced teachers, trained within specific disciplines, to bring to a process of curricular development well-established systems of beliefs about what is most worth knowing and how it should be taught. The task of exploring a more integrated approach to teaching will challenge and make problematic some or most of these curricular beliefs held by the teachers. Our focus in this study was on the beliefs that educators of adults use and reconstruct as they seek to negotiate the boundaries of their disciplines within a process of curricular transformation.