Integrated Studies: The Craft Dimension

Abstract

A consideration of the 3 Curriculum Units of the Schools Council Integrated Studies Project that have just been published by the Oxford University Press together with a teacher's guide, slides and tape.

All societies, so the argument runs, have a technology. All technology involves design. All design raises social issues of purpose and use. Thus to understand an artefact, in any full sense, is to gain an insight into a society in a particular place, and at a particular time. The Integrated Studies Project has had a central interest in man and society, and hence has been concerned among other things with what Bruner distinguishes as one of the five key humanising forces distinguishing man from the animals: man the tool maker and user. Such an issue has been seen as multi-dimensional- an axe, for example, can be studied in the context of warfare, ritual use, nature and availability of materials 'used, organisation of manufacture, techniques involved, design and decoration. Expressed in school terms, a number of school subjects can contribute to the desired understanding, and motor skills will be involved as well as cognitive ones. Organisationally, all this points to a team- teaching approach.