Defining the Cross-Curricular approach to teaching is much easier than putting it into practice. This is because much forethought is needed into actually setting up a task or project as well as integrating different academic disciplines, matching said disciplines to component tasks, and then facilitating the usual management that comes along with any large-scale project. Whether you are contemplating a school level project involving many academic disciplines and class levels or you are an EFL teacher trying to weave different academic subjects into your class as material, the keyword, as mentioned above is “thought”. Yes, it takes much analytical thought. Critical analytical thought to be precise!

The cross-curricular approach embodies the concept of wholeness in learning and offers to students a “Gestalt” type view and understanding of the world around them. Gestalt refers to the idea that the ‘whole’ of something represents more than just the sum of its parts. In turn, the individual parts themselves reflect microcosms of other matter, meanings or representations.

Cross-Curricular activities can involve students, teachers, and even entire faculties. The activities themselves may reflect two aims. One aim might be project based, in that there is some end result to produce. A second aim, at the syllabus level, may represent a concerted effort by teachers or faculty heads to ‘mix and match’ material from different classes for the sake of revision. An EFL class, for example, might involve students in researching material about historical events they are currently studying about in their history class and then might involve having them present their findings in English. In one novel class an ESL teacher had students write poems concerning mathematics principles. Simply said, the content from other classes becomes the ‘material’ with which students come to grips with the English language.

In this approach, students engage in a variety of activities that encourage them to break up a larger task into smaller components that can then be delegated to project participants. And not just any participants, but participants who due to their academic focus and inherent capacities or skills are best suited to achieve those specific tasks. The beauty of the approach is that since there is indeed something for everyone, all students can participate and once the project is achieved, everyone wins.

Take for example a well-developed website. The subject matter is often broken down into components and there are multiple hyperlinks to navigate the site. There are also links to material outside the website that may support or develop related material. The connection between the components is not serial or arranged in a set matter. Taken as a whole, there is truly something for everyone and no one is forced to proceed or push his or her way through the material in a preordained fashion. Readers are free to follow their interests or instincts, thus making the reading exercise more motivating. And, there is no penalty for skipping areas or items along the way. In fact, students may actually end up learning a lot more quantitatively and qualitatively than they originally bargained for.

Some argue that EFL teachers are already involved with cross-curricular type content, because of the theme-based nature and integrated-skills approach adopted by many EFL coursebooks. However, taken individually, coursebook units that explore a single theme through different tasks, do not actually embody the cross-curricular approach, which promotes the integration of many themes into individual or related activities.

The unique thing about the cross-curricular approach to learning is that you end up with a matrix of activities, all supporting a central goal, while at the same time providing a plethora of opportunities for students to put theoretical concepts from other disciplines into practice. This in turn makes both the tasks and subjects meaningful. Furthermore, the exposure and involvement aids memory retention across disciplines. In the best light, the material is wrapped around the student as opposed to the student being wrapped around the material.

To address this ‘class materials’ concern, adopting tasks which foster critical thinking can help students adopt a cross-curricular mindset and reintroduce material from other disciplines into their existing class material. Critical thinking exercises also offer students the added value of task personalization as well as cognitive development because it allows students to contemplate problems and situations that reflect the world as they know it. Indeed, for teachers and students equally, introspection, exploration and discovery become paramount. Learning becomes interrelated and the information gleaned becomes connected.

At the cognitive level, an internalized process of critical thinking becomes a mindset. The mindset colors the way you look at things. Through this mindset, critical thinkers almost instinctually form independent opinions, practice using good thinking skills, make connections between old and new information, and learn how to use these skills to tackle “problems”. In a very loose sense this means understanding how to use their brains.

A practical concern of ‘critical thinking’ is the process of evaluating the information you receive and learning to apply it so that you can solve problems, make decisions, evaluate new information and to make all other learning meaningful. However, a ‘process’ usually implies a way of doing something. Do it enough times and the practice breeds a skill. A skill is a highly internalized process that in the best respect becomes second nature to us. For example, anyone who has learned to drive a car, can think back to their attempt to make a right or left turn for the very first time. Chances are that the initial experience was a frozen moment in time filled with trepidation as you turned the wheel centimeter by centimeter hoping that the car wouldn’t spin out of control. Fast forward to today when you barely have to think about making a turn. The process has become so second nature that many drivers can do so quite easily even with one hand holding their mobile phone and the other holding a ‘frappe’ (Greek term for an iced coffee)!

Some might suggest that adopting any mindset towards the way you look at things is rather passive in nature. This is not necessarily so with regards to critical thinking. Firstly, thinking itself is an active process. Secondly, the process itself is applied not only when ‘mulling over’ the information you have received, but even at the time you are receiving the information. In this respect, critical thinking demands ‘critical reading’. This means thinking critically about the materials you read in active way. It is a step beyond literal comprehension that suggests an awareness of relationships between readers and authors. This relationship is reflected in the words a writer chooses, the structure of the sentence he or she writes, the way paragraphs are arranged, etc. So now we are truly moving into EFL territory because we are now considering elements of grammar and discourse which impact not only what we read but also how we write.

So how does critical thinking enhance the cross-curricular approach? Well, as mentioned above, critical thinking is a mindset and skill that encourages you to look closely at an object and to break it down into its components and inter-relationships. It also affords you the opportunity to draw links between objects, themes or situations that may not be immediately evident.

Let’s put this definition and theory into practice:

Study the picture on the left. What can you make of it? What’s your first impression?

On the surface, and with only a little effort, it’s plainly understood that this is an example of an optical illusion. Upon further contemplation, you should consider the following: are there two faces or one face behind the candlestick? Of course it depends on your perception and the way you look at the picture.

OK, so obviously the beauty of this picture is that there is no right answer. Everyone is right, no one is wrong, and life is good. But is that it? Can we dig a little deeper and make more of this picture? Of course we can! Now study the picture again and apply some critical thinking and then answer the following questions:

1. Assume there is one face. Is the candle-stick in front of the individual’s nose, or has it somehow become embedded in it? If it is the latter, how could he have achieved this result? Is if painful? How could he extricate the candlestick from his nose? Would he need surgery?

2. Assume there are two faces. What series of events would culminate with two individuals in this compromising position with the candlestick? Again, you might consider whether their noses are in front of or behind the candle-stick. How about their lips?

The above two points is what occurs to me when I look at this picture. Of course, you, the reader, might see it my way, or not. Perhaps you will see in it all sorts of other scenarios. And you would be right to do so!

So, there is more to the picture than what we see or what we are told to see. In fact, some abstract thinkers might demand to know where the rest of pictured individual’s body or individuals’ bodies are? So critical thinking is very much an exercise of thinking ‘outside of the box’. In some respects it goes against ways we were taught to learn and engage in exercises or tasks. Just think back to those wonderful ‘coloring’ tasks in kindergarten or nursery school when the teachers instructed you to ‘not color outside the lines’! Critical thinking and cross-curricular ideology however, demands us to!

At its best, critical thinking creates in us an explorative and inquisitive mindset or outlook. It allows us to personalize tasks, and to break larger concepts into more manageable yet related chunks. It also affords us our own personalized ‘handle’ with which we can grasp and then assimilate new subject matter or experiences. Similarly, in cross-curricular projects, tasks and material must be inter-related at both micro and macro levels and across different disciplines. Students who develop critical thinking skills are more suited to achieving cross-curricular tasks because their mindset already encourages the integration of different disciplines or components.

At the macro level, the components of critical thinking include evaluating the information, deciding what’s useful and discarding what’s not, developing a plan of action, setting goals, devising and formulating an approach to achieving those goals and then upon completion evaluating the effectiveness of the original plan. At the micro level and for the purposes of project management, critical thinking fosters effective decision-making. The following are directives that would be included: establish the “issue” to be decided, list the criteria to be considered, gather information, ask questions & do research, ask the opinions of others, evaluate the possibilities, listen to instincts, discuss with partners, make a checklist, make a decision & act on it, set long & short-term goals, evaluate your decision, and finally learn from this experience.

At the practical level, critical thinking tasks include logic games and brain teasers. One such exercise is word association. For example, what might be the possible connection between ‘teacher’ and ‘wheel’? One possible answer is that a teacher helps students facilitate progress in their studies much as a wheel helps us to facilitate our progress to points known or unknown. This, of course, is only one of many possible answers. This exercise however, is very similar to the way we teach vocabulary in related lexical sets. In reading comprehension we teach students to draw inference from text referents and other discourse components. With relationship to grammar, or more specifically sentence structure, analyzing possible variations of miscommunication in less grammatically correct sentences can be a real eye openers and of course lots of fun. So in a sense, mainstream ELT has already embraced many facets of critical thinking ideology.

Where we end up is that critical thinking is a means to an end. The ‘end’ in this case is the enhancement of analytical skills related to project management and decision-making not only within the framework of a cross-curricular project, but also within the framework of the student’s own personal education and life.

Lastly, I offer you a practical suggestion with humanistic overtones. To help foster a cross-curricular/critical thinking mindset, the media ( i.e., print and television), in any language, provides easily obtainable rich content for students to think critically about. The best of such material tends to be highly biased (advertising, political editorials, etc.). Biased material is great because it helps students, regardless of their own opinions, play ‘devil’s advocate’ and to see and understand things from another point of view. Ultimately, this insight into other people’s opinions promotes better interpersonal communication and perhaps even mutual respect. The latter drives homes the message that teaching is not only about transferring knowledge but also developing life skills and making the world a better place, one student at a time.

Please note: This article is based on a presentation entitled “Enhancing the Cross-Curricular Approach and Mindset through Critical Thinking Tasks”, I first presented at an EKADEVE seminar in Greece, February 2004. Some of the internet links below, as cited below, are now broken. Please contact me if you have any information on new internet links. Thanks – Jay

Suggested Reading:

For Reference and Further Reading:

Griegolet, L. SCIENCE THROUGH POETRY: A Cross-Curricular Approach. http://www.ncrel.org/mands/docs/6-12.htm

Heibert, E. H.,1994. “Becoming literate through authentic tasks: Evidence and adaptations.” In R. Ruddell & M. R. Ruddell (eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Vogt, M.E. Cross-Curricular Thematic Instruction, Internet link: http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/vogt.html

Paris, S., Calfee, R., Filby, N., Hiebert, E., Pearson, P. D., Valencia, S., & Wolf, K.,1992. “A framework for authentic literacy assessment.” The Reading Teacher, 46 (2), 88-98.