Curriculum fragmentation impedes students’ understanding of technology and the environment

This paper uses secondary school students’ understanding of the technology/environment interface to highlight the problems associated with curriculum fragmentation. It identifies the structure of the school day as a strong factor in forcing students to create boundaries between subjects and implicates the unitization of the curriculum in Western Australia in further strengthening the compartmentalisation of students’ knowledge. It considers ways in which the structure and definition of teacher's work produces its own fragmentation which parallels that experienced by students. Finally it links the fragmentation of student experience, teacher experience and environmental problems and argues that these problems cannot be solved without removing these arbitrary boundaries.