Understanding Integrated Learning

Integrated learning as a concept can be said as a teaching and learning approach that can involve several studies in one subject, several subjects, or between and between subjects to provide meaningful experiences to children. Thus integrated learning does not impose integration between fields of study, but rather emphasizes integration for the meaning of learning. So that the coercion between fields of study that is forced is not desired by this approach. Meaningfulness occurs because in integrated learning children understand the concepts they learn through direct natural experience and the connection between one concept and another that has been experienced, and the relationship is natural.

In fact, integrated learning is an effort to improve the quality of learning in accordance with the development of each child. Improving the quality of learning will ultimately improve the quality of primary school education (actually also higher education). The implementation of this learning can at the same time compensate for the cramming of the curriculum that often occurs in schools. That is, a dense curriculum can be circumvented through meaningful, natural learning, according to the child’s wishes, the impact of a dense curriculum can be achieved more quickly because it is not fragmented in the mission of each subject.

Integrated learning that allows exploring the curriculum contains various benefits, but it still has a negative effect, because if it is not carefully controlled students can learn through exploration and activities or tasks that exceed their capacities and needs, which in the end children can lose something else that they should be able to do. work on. If students only work on the teacher’s cues, they will miss out on the direct natural way of learning, the sensory-motor experience of their world that is the basis for forming the abstract abilities that are actually characteristic of their way of learning. In this regard, the determination of the theme should be with mature consideration.