Which approach to curriculum development emphasizes meaningful connections…
2026
Which approach to curriculum development emphasizes meaningful connections among different areas of knowledge and relates learning to learners’ everyday experiences?
Answer: C. Integrated approach — Concept. An approach to curriculum development is identified by its organising unit — the thing around which content, timetable and assessment are arranged.…
- A.
Activity-based approach
- B.
Subject-centered approach
- C.
Integrated approach
- D.
Discipline-based approach
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Correct answer: C
Concept. An approach to curriculum development is identified by its organising unit — the thing around which content, timetable and assessment are arranged. Four organising units are classical in curriculum studies: the separate school subject, the internal structure of an academic discipline, the task the learner performs, and a theme that cuts across several areas of knowledge. The unit that is chosen decides two things at once: how firm the walls between subjects are, and how much of the learner's daily life is allowed into the classroom.
Application. The stem imposes two conditions simultaneously — (i) meaningful connections among different areas of knowledge, and (ii) learning tied to learners’ everyday experience. Condition (i) rules out any organising unit that keeps each body of content inside its own compartment; the separate subject and the discipline both do exactly that. Condition (ii) rules out any unit defined solely by the internal logic of scholarship. That leaves the two learner-facing units — the task and the theme. Of these, only the theme carries both requirements inside its own definition: a theme taken from the learner’s surroundings comes from daily life, and language, mathematics, science and social study are drawn into it as the theme demands. That is the integrated approach.
Cross-check. Placing all four side by side shows why only one unit can meet both conditions together:
Approach | Organising unit | Walls between subjects |
|---|---|---|
Activity-based | the task the learner performs | not the organising concern; an activity may or may not cross them |
Subject-centered | the separate school subject | firm, one syllabus per subject |
Integrated | a theme cutting across areas | deliberately dissolved |
Discipline-based | the structure of the discipline | firm, and further sharpened |
Result. The integrated approach is the one whose definition contains both requirements at once — connection across areas of knowledge, and an anchor in everyday experience. Note the near-miss: an activity-based organisation is also learner-facing, and the activities chosen are often things the learner can do and handle. But what defines it is the mode of learning — the learner learns by doing. Neither a link to daily life nor a link across areas of knowledge is built into that definition; a given activity may have either, both or neither, depending on which activity the teacher sets.