Education Policy Analysis Archives

Volume 3 Number 14 September 15, 1995 ISSN 1068-2341

A peer-reviewed scholarly electronic journal.

Editor: Gene V Glass,[email protected]. College of Education,

Arizona State University,Tempe AZ 85287-2411

Copyright 1995, the EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS

ARCHIVES.Permission is hereby granted to copy any article
provided that EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES is
credited and copies are not sold.

Toward a Theory of Thematic Curricula: Constructing New Learning

Environments for Teachers & Learners

Carole Cook Freeman

La Salle University
[email protected]

Harris J. Sokoloff
University of Pennsylvania
[email protected]

ABSTRACT:
A theory of thematic curriculum emerged during the development of a unit on pets, entitled Pets
& Me. The unit was designed through a school/university partnership for children pre-school to
grade 5. Analysis of data collected during the unit's development and field tests supports a
dynamic view of curriculum that challenges policy makers to rethink policies that begin from a
view of curriculum as a static list of "facts" to be learned or "topics" to be mastered. Reflection
on the project led to the differentiation of three distinct constructs: (1) facts and information, (2)
topics, and (3) themes. Each of these three constructs plays a different role in children's learning.
Facts focus on basic information and narrowly defined ideas understood as discrete items. Topics
provide a context for facts and information, and present a way of organizing discrete bits of
information into classes of experience recognizable by scholars within traditional disciplines.
Themes defined as broad existential questions, transcend disciplines, allowing learners to
integrate the information and the topic within the full range of human experience. All three are
important elements of thematic curriculum.

PREFACE

Politicians and educators who set curriculum policy, whether at the national, state, or local
level, face many questions. These include questions about:

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 content of the curriculum (What is "covered"?);
appropriate materials (Whether to require use of adopted textbooks or to encourage teacher
and child selected materials?); and
locus of control of the content (Should teachers address only "tested" information or
should they direct learning while creating an environment where student questions play a
central role?).

While these questions can be answered in a variety of ways, it seems that currently,
Americans are choosing to think about standardization and a static view of what should be taught
and learned in schools. Much of the on-going work regarding national standards reaches a very
specific level. Benchmarks for Science Literacy (1993) lists specific concepts to be mastered at
specific grade levels. In California, state decision makers recently debated how many pages or
how many illustrations in the approved textbook should be devoted to a given topic. And at the
local level, there have been increasing numbers of challenges on religious or moral grounds to
books being read. Each of these cases reflects a view of curriculum and teaching as part of a
static system of delivery. As a question of how to develop curriculum policy, each case, we
would argue, represents a misunderstanding of the interactive realities of learning in schools.
In contrast, what follows, presents the story of a curriculum development project that
operated from a dynamic perspective, grounded in the tradi- tions of Progressive Education.(Note
1) The process of writing a thematic unit as a collaboration among university-based educators
and pre-school and elementary teachers led to a new perspective on levels of knowledge (themes,
topics, and facts and information) and their roles in the learning process. The project highlighted
the on-going, dynamic, messy nature of curriculum development. This work also demonstrated
that it was possible for one group of teachers to write a thematic unit that was useful to others.
This paper and analysis provides those interested in curriculum policy decisions with a
framework for thinking about thematic teaching and an example of one type of curriculum that
engages teachers and children together as learners. As such, this paper makes an argument for
curriculum policy that encourages a dynamic vision of curriculum including the exploration of
broad existential questions.

INTRODUCTION

...the language of education, if it is to be an invitation to reflection and culture

creating, can not be the so called uncontaminated language of fact and "objectivity."
It must express stance and must invite counter-stance and in the process leave place
for reflection, for metacognition. It is this that permits one to reach higher ground,
this process of objectifying in language or image what one has thought and then
turning around on it and reconsidering it. (Bruner, 1986, p.129)

Bruner's observation clarifies the distinction between education and other forms of
learning such as indoctrination, training, or conditioning and invites teachers to engage students
in learning in ways that are deeply intellectual and connected with moral purpose. While many
educators support this ideal, the profession is not clear about how to go beyond standard or
traditional practice and create learning environments and activities that truly engage students in
meaningful exploration. Many innovative teachers are trying thematic units as one approach to
Bruner's "higher ground." We share this interest in thematic units and have worked with teachers
to write and field test one unit. During this process, we learned that the theory base for thematic
units is not entirely clear, that there are several unresolved questions about what makes a unit
thematic , and that we need to know more about what types of teacher involvement in planning
are necessary for a successful unit. In this paper, we share the story of the Pets & Me project in

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order to raise some of these questions, address them from our experience, and introduce a
conceptual framework for thinking about the content of thematic units.
Currently, many researchers and teachers in language arts and other disciplines are
exploring what they mean by the term thematic unit. In part this feels like a revisiting of some of
the central issues of Progressive Education. Dewey, in the early part of the century, argued that
the teacher needs to build the classroom around the principles of continuity and integration
(Dewey, 1938). Later, Bruner (1960) argued for the centrality of meaning and building a spiral
curriculum where students visited and revisited core ideas. Even when the "back to basics"
movement gained strength throughout the 70's and early 80's, teachers grappled with ways to
connect those "basics" with kids' lives and raised questions about what they saw as a growing
fragmentation of curriculum.(Note 2) The current focus on thematic units can be understood as
an attempt to overcome that fragmentation.
There are many visions of thematic units and appropriate methods of instruction and
assessment for thematic work. In most, teachers are urged to develop thematic units by
identifying a topic, developing a visual representation (most often a web or concept map) of ideas
and facts related to the topic, and then identifying materials and designing curriculum activities
(Pigdon and Wooley, 1993). In addition, the literature reveals many questions about who can
write themes (Altwerger and Flores, 1994), what content should be included, and how this
content should be structured. Some authors, especially those who operate from a whole language
perspective, advocate planning units almost exclusively at the classroom level and at least part of
units with children (Altwerger and Flores, 1994, Harste, Short & Burke, 1988; Mills and Clyde,
1990). While we support the important ways that teachers are curriculum planners, we wonder if
there are not also legitimate ways to draw upon the expertise of other teachers, scholars, and
researchers in the development of thematic studies.
In order to explore the possibilities of another vision for thematic unit planning, two
education department faculty, eight pre-school and elementary teachers, and a veterinary school
faculty member whose specialty is the human-animal bond, worked together over a period of
three years to write, field-test, and publish a thematic unit, Pets & Me. This action research
process was documented through notes from meetings, phone conversations and interviews with
test site teachers, collections of children's work, and various draft versions of the unit itself.
During the process, the team confronted many issues including development of a shared theory of
teaching and learning, a process and format for sharing the team's work with others, and an
emerging perspective on curriculum. In particular, we came to a new understanding of the inter
relationships of facts, topics, and themes in curriculum.
As teachers and children engage in the lessons from Pets & Me, they actively explore their
relationships with animals. Learners also research, compare and contrast results, describe,
analyze, and synthesize. These explorations lead to multiple opportunities for talking, reading,
writing, and creating. In essence, through a variety of interactive experiences, they explore the
underlying theme, visit and revisit the topic, and support their understanding through learning
discrete facts and information about many different types of animals. Importantly, these learners
are mindful and reflective as they construct a deeper understanding of themselves and their
responsibilities to those animals they keep as pets. In this paper, we argue that this mindful and
reflective approach is possible because teachers and students explicitly examine the underlying
thematic question, "How can we understand the relationships among humans, other animals, and
nature?"

DESCRIPTION OF THE THEMATIC UNIT

Pets & Me is a thematic unit for pre-school through grade five that uses the human-animal
bond (mainly focusing on pet ownership) as a heuristic and a topic worthy of study itself. Its

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heuristic value is based on the fact that children are naturally fascinated by animals. This
heuristic is widely exploited in books as is evident from the high percentage of children's books
that feature animals--Pat the Bunny, animal alphabet books, the Frog and Toad series, and
Winnie the Pooh stories are just some examples of this genre. But there is also a growing
research base that demonstrates the strong attraction of animals for children as well as the
positive influence pet ownership has upon children's social and cognitive development.
As a topic itself, learning about the human animal bond can involve language arts, math,
science, social studies, physical education, art, and music. For example, the language arts are
involved when students read stories, articles, or other expository works about or involving
animals; when students write reflections, poetry, or stories about animals; or when students talk
to each other about their reading, writing, or reflections. Math is involved when students conduct
surveys of pet ownership or when they solve problems about the growth of animal populations.
Observing animals either inside or outside of the classroom and developing hypotheses about the
animal and its behavior provide the fundamentals of scientific literacy. Inquiry about what
animals other cultures consider to be pets contributes to social studies curriculum. Resources
from multiple curriculum areas are consulted so that learning in one discipline connects to
learning in another. In these ways, the activities in the curriculum also stimulate growth in the
following skill areas: observing and drawing inferences, interpreting and creating, thinking and
deciding, research and analysis, presenting and performing.
The thematic unit is descriptive, not prescriptive. The lessons are not written as recipes,
but are presented in a format designed to encourage teachers to develop their own lessons or to
modify and adapt the suggested activities. Along with each "Sample Process" (lesson), we have
left a blank page entitled "Your Modification" where teachers can reflect on how well the lessons
worked for them and their students as well as make notes of their own modifications. This
explicitly acknowledges that teachers--regardless of national, state, or district policies--must
adapt materials to respond to the exigencies of their particular classrooms. (Note 3)
Consistent with emerging research on thematic and integrated instruction, the unit is based
on a constructivist approach to learning (Perkins and Blythe, 1994; Brooks and Brooks, 1993).
We operate on the belief that learners best understand those meanings of a concept that they
create for themselves out of the data of past and present experiences and with appropriate
guidance from concerned and knowledgeable "teachers." Using this belief, we have divided the
unit into three cycles which create different kinds of opportunities for individuals and classes to
explore and then revisit the topic question, "What makes a pet?" The outline for this exploration
includes:

1. Lessons begin with what children already know. This knowledge is used to structure a
broad conceptual and practical framework about pets. Children are then asked to find out
what others know. What makes a pet, the values of pets, and observation of pet behavior in
the man-made and natural environment are explored throughout the unit.
2. The second cycle begins with a lesson that returns to the question, "What makes a pet?"
Children are given opportunities to generate and organize factual information about pets
through a variety of means including data base research, library research, interviews with
pet care professionals, and their own non-invasive experiments and observations. The goal
here is to encourage them to reflect on what they already know about pets, to increase their
knowledge, and to modify their original thinking.
3. Lessons end by returning once again to the question, "What makes a pet?" Students
synthesize what they have learned and develop it into a broad framework. They
demonstrate this synthesis through creating their own imaginary pets, building habitats for
them, and writing pet care manuals.

These three cycles build upon children's early learning about animals. Each provides

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students with a set of structured experiences that help them develop deeper levels of
understanding about animals and our relationships to them. The experiences (lessons) provide
multiple and multi-sensory approaches to teacher and student learning about the bond between
people and animals. These experiences create multiple opportunities for an entire school to come
together to examine the human-animal bond as well as for cross-grade work engaging older and
younger children in the same questions. This overall collaborative and cooperative approach is
designed to foster the growth of the school as a learning community.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNIT

As is generally the case in the literature on thematic unit teaching, when we began and
during the time we were working on Pets and Me, our notions of facts/information, topic, and
theme all ran together. During the first year of development of the thematic unit, we worked from
a notion of interrelated core concepts. We identified four concepts and organized the unit around
them. These four concepts were : (1) values of animals as pets, (2) what kinds of pets are
available, (3) responsibilities of pet ownership, and (4) health issues related to pet ownership. In
addition, we had a notion of revisiting a central question, "What is a pet?" three times during the
unit as a way of having children address their own understanding at deeper levels. We believed
that children constructed their own understandings through talk, action, and reflection. We also
wanted to be interdisciplinary in our approach integrating scientific exploration, children's
literature, and popular media.
Working as a team, we wrote lessons and organized them in ways that enabled children
and their teachers to engage in learning more about animals and pet ownership. We were
generally pleased with the outcomes from both the school where the materials were developed
and from the initial test sites. At the end of the unit, pairs of children designed imaginary pets
and wrote Pet Care Manuals for their creations. Through these culminating projects, children
demonstrated developmentally appropriate and complex understandings of the needs of animals,
their life cycles, and the issues of pet ownership and care.
During the second year, however, one of the teachers pushed the team to do more. She
wanted to include the full range of issues around pet ownership from deciding to adopt a pet to
pet loss. She also wanted children to explore their understanding of the statement, "A pet is a
way of taking nature inside." She pushed the team to include more environmental questions and
to explore the use of the monarch butterfly garden and the experience of raising and releasing
monarch butterflies as part of the unit. Although she did not articulate her reasons as moving
toward including a thematic framework for the unit, that was the result of her efforts.

CRITERIA FOR A THEORY OF THEMATIC CURRICULA

Thematic units are only one of many valuable and powerful ways of organizing
curriculum. Developing Pets & Me taught us that if one is going to organize curriculum
thematically, a clear understanding of how thematic units differ from other kinds of curricular
organizations is essential.
When most authors talk about thematic units, they use the terms "unit," "theme," "topic,"
"essential concept," and "issue" almost interchangeably (Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde,1993). They
also talk about integration across subject areas as essential. Some, such as Pigdon and Wooley,
talk about the importance of relating children's studies to "big ideas." What teachers and other
curriculum planners are left with as a result of this literature is a fuzzy picture and sense that
there is something important here, but what that "something" is remains ill defined.
We see the ideas represented by facts and information, topics, and themes as serving
different functions in children's learning. While some authors use these concepts interchangeably

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(Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde, 1993; Harste, Short & Burke, 1988; Mills and Clyde, 1990;
Pappas, Keifer & Levstik, 1990; Gere et al., 1992) or avoid them altogether (Pigdon and Wooley,
1993), we want to propose seeing them as a hierarchy of distinct yet inter-related elements of
curriculum development. (Note 4) The heuristic of separating theme from topic and topic from
information and facts provides curriculum developers and teachers with a typology they can use
to help students make increasingly sophisticated sense of their worlds. Exploring themes gives
teachers and students a framework for understanding interrelationships among different levels of
ideas and abstractions (from specific to abstract).
This perspective on thematic units as a format for curriculum, draws upon the ways
"theme" is used in other disciplines. A theme in literature is connected to the underlying message
of the story or poem. This message often helps the reader understand more about the human
condition. For example, in The Scarlet Letter Hester's actions (the facts) can be understood in the
broader context (topic) of the way Hester's life plays out in the community. But exploring the
nature of responsibility for one's own life and the paradox of social membership (the theme),
adds an important dimension to understanding our own lives and responsibilities to others (which
is one reason we read the book).
Another link between our understanding of themes in literature and themes in curriculum
is that as we study The Scarlet Letter, or any book, there are "right answers" at the fact and
information level, but as we move closer to thematic issues, the focus shifts from looking for a
"right answer" to looking for the patterns of reasoning learners use to explain their
understandings. At the thematic level, there is no single right answer for many of the questions
we explore, but clearly there are wrong answers or answers that do not fit within our beliefs
about the nature of our civilization.
Similarly in science, data at the fact and information level are fairly clear cut. When we
want to look at these data in terms of patterns for understanding, falsifying hypotheses enables us
to interpret them, gain further understanding, and begin to explain why phenomenon happen as
they do.
The examples from literature and science, help us understand the roles of
facts/information, topics, and themes in curriculum. Recognizing the implications of the
necessity of interpretation is essential to understanding the potential and power of themes in
curriculum. Our experiences developing and testing Pets & Me demonstrates both the potential
and the power.
In this emerging understanding, "facts/information," "topic," and "theme" serve different
functions in children's learning. As distinct and hierarchically related elements of curriculum
development they represent different layers of context and meaning with facts and information at
the center, while topics and themes are successively broader rings in a set of concentric circles.
See Figure 1.1, Relationships Among Facts/ Information, Topics and Themes in Curriculum.

Figure 1.1
Relationships Among Facts/Information,
Topics & Themes in Curriculum

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 The boundaries that separate the different layers in this representation are both permeable
and intimately connected. Each layer is given meaning because of the others and the relationships
among them. Consistent with our experience developing Pets & Me, teachers and children enter
into this hierarchy at any layer. Conceptually, it does not matter where you enter; educationally, it
is important that teachers and children move across all three layers, being conscious of the
connections among them.

Characteristics of Facts/Information:

In this conception, the layer of facts/information means basic information and narrowly
defined questions and ideas understood as discrete items. This is not unlike the substance of
traditional curriculum for elementary school children. It is a focus on "the three R's," of
information contained in textbooks and most textbook units. The factual level is exemplified by
the focus of standardized testing programs as well as of curricula that prepare students for those
tests. At the fact and information level, little attention is paid to a larger context that, among
other things, gives meaning to facts and is the reason those facts were selected in the first place.
It is important to recognize that facts and information may contain an intrinsic appeal to
children--children may, for example, enjoy playing with numbers and with words. Yet, in most
cases it is not the sounds of the words alone that is the appeal. Nor is it typically the numbers
themselves that children enjoy. Rather, children like the way facts and information enable them
to manipulate or gain control over their world, and they like the access to things and ideas that
comes with knowing facts and possessing information.

Characteristics of Topics

A given set of facts is fairly meaningless unless it falls under some topic. For example, "In
1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue," is a nice but meaningless rhyme until we put it in a
context that tells us what it means to sail the ocean blue, what a Columbus is, and why one ought
to care what Columbus did. The traditional academic topics of European and American history
provide a context in which to understand the story of Columbus. As teachers, we must be
cognizant that from a Scandinavian or Native American perspective those "facts" and possibly
the "topic" would take on a very different meaning.
Thus, in our model topics begin to provide a context for facts and information. They also

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help us decide what information is important for children to learn. Organizing facts and
information within topics allows us to guide children's engagement with the world and provide
them with categories that adults have used to make sense of their world.
In this sense, topics are a way of organizing facts and discrete bits of information into
classes of experiences. Typically, these facts and information are grouped into topics that fall
within what Crittenden (1973) refers to as the "standard ways of knowing that humans have
developed." These standard ways of knowing include the arts and the academic disciplines.
Topics can also be understood more broadly and across disciplines. For example, knowing
the sequence of events of a particular story might help explain why honesty is the best policy;
learning the days of the week can help one anticipate and prepare for what is going to happen;
and knowing the classifications of animals can be part of deciding what kind of pet would be best
in one's home. In all cases, topics are ways of grouping, categorizing or making sense of facts and
information. Moreover, when exploring topic questions, facts and information are an essential
element to answering that question one way rather than another.

Characteristics of Themes

The exploration of themes moves us beyond the disciplines with their standard ways of
knowing to constructing complex, moral dimensions of meaning that are not discipline based. In
addition to learning discrete facts about a topic or studying a topic for its own sake, we learn
something about our selves, our society and what it means to be human. This often means that we
explore fundamental human (existential) questions. It is, for example, fruitful to study the Mayan
culture and learn about that culture: its mathematical system, its calendar, its social organization,
and some of its artifacts. Inclusion of the layer of theme within this study, however, would
engage learners in dialogue between their own experiences and the life experiences of the Mayan
people leading to the exploration of one of several possible thematic questions, including, how
do people make sense of their world; what do different cultural groups create and why; or how do
we understand our purpose or "project" (Greene, 1968)?
Themes allow learners to integrate the information and the topic within a context of the
full range of human experience. Designing curriculum around themes provides the opportunity to
engage students in a celebration of life, a conversation about what it means to be human, and a
joint exploration of the world with their teachers. For individuals, thematic learning helps people
grapple with their place in the world. At the aggregate level, thematic learning explores
interrelations of people with institutions and the natural world.

Analysis of Content Using Facts/Information, Topics, and Themes

The literature is replete with discussions of what is the appropriate content for thematic
study (Stotsky, 1993). We think that is an understandable but misleading emphasis. For what
really matters are the broad existential and developmentally appropriate questions the content can
help you address. It is easier to say this, however, than to use it as a guide for constructing
curriculum. Often teachers begin by selecting a topic and the facts and information appropriate
for their students' levels of development or knowledge. Taking the next steps to uncovering and
using the embedded themes is conceptually demanding and non-linear. Our experience is that we
get to an understanding of the theme through engaging in a messy reciprocal process of
curriculum development. We use an example reported by Sandra Stotsky (1993) to illustrate the
difficulties related to sorting out these relationships.
Stotsky tells the story of a middle school thematic unit that paired the study of the Jews in
Germany during World War II and the study of Japanese Internment camps in the United States
at the same time. In her example, drawn from an actual case, students read one literary work

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about the Holocaust and one about Japanese Internment. Stotsky found this to be inappropriate.
She thought that the two events-concentration camps in Germany and internment camps in the
United States-were not parallel. She wondered what underlying messages were being taught by
this selection of works. She then suggested that children would develop a better understanding of
the Jewish experience and the inhumanity of the Holocaust by exploring literature, art, music of
European and American Jewish communities as part of their thematic study.
We agree with her suggestion but believe that it does not address the issue of underlying
messages because she mixes questions about the topic and the underlying theme. By not sorting
these out, her analysis still does not address the potential for broad moral understanding students
might develop through study of these complex and important issues.
Our understanding of themes, topics, and facts and information suggests a different
analysis. We constructed Table 1.1, Analysis of World War II Thematic Unit, using Stotsky's
example. It shows that the two "events" do share similar fact and information patterns. For
example, both Jews in Germany and Japanese-Americans were imprisoned and lost their
property. Moreover, both actions were "legal" in that they were based on laws passed in those
respective countries during the 1930's and 1940's. Thus, if one were studying the topic of how
different groups were treated during W.W.II, the pairing of the two groups seems appropriate, if
limited.

Table 1.1
Analysis of World War II Thematic Unit in Stotsky's Example

Japanese-Americans in
Jews in Germany
United States

Imprisonment
Imprisonment
Loss of property
Loss of property
Facts/Information Laws against Jews
Laws limiting rights of
Japanese-Americans
Genocide

Treatment of an ethnic/racial Treatment of an ethnic/racial

Topic
group during WW II group during WW II

Theme Unclear Unclear

The pairing becomes more questionable when one begins to think about the human
significance of these fact/information patterns in both their similarities and differences. That
significance resides in neither the facts/information nor in the topic, but in our ability to construct
an interpretation of them in the broader context of a theme (e.g., rich existential questions like
"'man's' inhumanity to 'man'" or "the nature of good and evil"). The question after all is not
simply to understand particular events but to understand how it is that very human tendencies can
lead to very inhumane actions. The exploration of the theme would enable students to work
through the conditions under which different threats to a nation's security justify different kinds
of behavior. In the process, students would develop ways of seeing themselves and their actions
in relation to historical and current events and explore what constitutes moral action.
Thus what seems like an appropriate, if limited, pairing of topics based on a similarity of
fact patterns, can not be considered thematic curriculum. In our typology, the focus on specific
events in a single historic period has the hallmark of a topic not a theme. In addition, teachers
using a thematic approach would identify and address rich existential questions (what we think

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Stotsky is wondering about when she questions the underlying message being conveyed through
this pairing of novels). Also, students would use what they are learning in the classroom to help
them make sense of and enlarge their own experiences and values.

Characteristics of Thematic Study

Thus, the learning that takes place within thematic study engages teachers and children in
exploring the moral dimensions of their emerging understanding of the world. In Pets & Me,
students learn how animals live and die in the world. They also explore ways humans live in the
world in relation to those animals they keep as pets. The moral and ethical issues of pet
ownership are an integral part of the work students complete as they address the unit's four
central concepts.
In thematic units, topics are examined from multiple disciplinary perspectives. For
example, in the case of pets, children study the life cycle of the animal, its natural habitat, and its
habitat as a pet. They also explore the ways in which it is represented in art, literature, music,
television, and advertising. They examine the relationship between the animal and its human
owner looking at both what the pet gets from the human and what the human gets from the
relationship with the pet. Students understand how the pet lives in the world and they pursue in
more depth standard scientific concepts such as classifications, anatomy, or physiology.
Table 1.2 demonstrates the application of this typology to the content of Pets and Me.
Separating the content into the levels of facts and information, topics, and theme makes clear the
potential for connections among the three levels of contextualization. It is important to remember
that this classification does not imply that teachers and children move among the levels in a set
order nor does it imply that one or the other levels is most important or should be "mastered"
before other levels are addressed.

Table 1.2
Content of Pets & Me

1. Facts and Information: Classes of animals and individual animals as pets.

a. Information about the ways selected animals live in the world
b. Information about selected animals' lives and needs
c. Information about ways humans and other animals interact
d. Information about the environment where selected animals live
2. Topic: What is a Pet?
a. Values of animals as pets
b. Kinds of pets available
c. Responsibilities of pet ownership
d. Health issues related to pet ownership
3. Theme: How can we understand the relationships among humans, other animals, and
nature?

Thematic studies also have a role to play in the development of communities of learners
(Senge, 1990; Lytle and Botel, 1988; Barth, 1990). Such communities are, typically, based on
inquiry, classroom discourse that is open-ended, and other learning activities in which
participants work through the meaning of their studies.
In classrooms where curriculum is based on the acquisition of facts and information it is
difficult to build a sense of shared inquiry. In such classrooms, answers to questions are based on

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a linear and close-ended search for information. The inquiry is confined to locating the correct
authority, and there is no need for extended discourse or deliberation.
It is often easy to forget that facts and information are only the beginning. Working with
topics connecting to broader themes, arriving at a "right answer," even if there is one, is beside
the point or just the starting point. For example, one third-grade classroom in Wylie, Texas had a
fish tank. The first day of the unit children began to ask whether the fish could be pets. After all,
one child said, "I can't pet them." This generated a great deal of energized discussion. By the last
day of the unit, the focus of the discussion had changed. The class had, in fact, decided that the
fish were pets. After all, another student said, "We take care of them." But, other children wanted
to know, "What about the sea horse?" The sea horse was also a fish, but the children did not
recognize or classify it as such. The teacher didn't know how to answer and turned to ask one of
the authors of Pets and Me. The response, "What do you think?" led to a vigorous discussion
during which one child said, "I don't know how to relate to that sea horse. I guess I'll have to keep
working on that!" The point, they had learned, is to look at an issue from multiple perspectives
and wonder about the meaning of those perspectives for their lives and for their relationships to
the world around them.

THE THEMATIC UNIT IN USE

One issue the team struggled with as we developed the materials was figuring out how to
write materials that would be useful to teachers and students in a variety of contexts. Gibboney
(1994) demonstrates clearly the problems that accompany attempts to adopt written/published
curriculum or pedagogic techniques exactly as they are written or presented in training programs.
He argues the most successful innovations are those that professionals adapt to their own
political and educational contexts. This is not surprising. Teaching, like all practices, requires
that the practitioner adjust curriculum or pedagogic techniques to fit the needs of her students,
the expectations of teachers and administrators in the school and school district and the
expectations of parents and the school board (MacIntyre, 1981). When teachers attempt to
structure learning experiences for students in ways that are inconsistent with educational norms
and other organizational constraints in the school or district, those innovations are generally short
lived and unsuccessful.
Knowing that successful innovation comes when teachers adapt and invent their own
curriculum raises a recurring and significant tension for us between "packaged" and teacher
developed curriculum. On the one hand, our understanding of thematic units, and of the messy
work involved in uncovering thematic foci as they arise, requires that teachers be intimately
involved in constructing the units and related materials. On the other hand, we have produced a
packaged unit that seems to violate this understanding. We have not completely resolved this
tension, but we have some beginning insight based on our experience with the field tests of the
unit. As we describe below, we have structured the unit to encourage teachers to engage in hard,
intellectual work as they move among the levels of fact/information, topic, and theme. We also
explicitly encourage teachers to become learners in the classroom as they explore the theme of
human-animal relationships with their students. In addition, the design of the unit invites teachers
to work together in cross-grade and school-wide projects as they make the unit their own.
We explicitly designed the thematic unit to encourage every teacher to use the materials in
ways she felt would work with her students and in her organizational context. This expectation is
clear in the structure of each "lesson" and in the lay out of the curriculum materials. Each
"lesson" is presented descriptively, as a description of how the teachers on our design team
actually taught the material in their classes. Moreover, each lesson is called a "sample process,"
the first structural indication that we expect adaptation, not adoption. The page facing each
"sample process" is blank except for the words "your modifications" at the top. This page serves

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several purposes. First, it provides teachers with more than space in the margins for their
modifications. Second, in giving ample space, it makes it easier for teachers to keep a year to
year record of their adaptations of the lessons and notes about what worked and what did not.
Conversations with teachers who have used the materials indicate that each teacher used
materials in her own ways -- often within organizational constraints.
Several weeks before the unit was used as a school wide thematic unit in the T. F.
Birmingham School in Wylie, Texas, teachers there met in grade-level teams and in cross grade
teams to discuss the unit and how they would adapt it to their individual classroom and team
needs. We also spoke with them as part of a conference call and discussed their modifications.
Some of those modifications were adaptations to the learning needs of their students. Other
modifications were in reaction to Texas State mandates that certain skills content be taught.
These teachers were incredibly creative in making adaptations that would fit both substantive and
political demands.
Field tests of the curriculum in Norristown, Pennsylvania; Wylie, Texas; Nashville; and
Chicago demonstrated that one of the powerful aspects of a thematic unit is the multiple entry
points, both for teachers and for students. Teachers became involved in a variety of ways. Most
frequently, they (and their students) were most fascinated by the topic, pets, or the opening topic
question, "What is a pet?" This is not surprising. As we explained earlier in this paper, the natural
attraction humans have for pets is part of the reason so many children's books are centered either
in content or in characters around pets and animals. One first-grade teacher immediately saw that
she was able to group together many stories from her reading program and use them while doing
other activities from Pets & Me. Consequently, her class completed many reading and writing
activities in connection to pets. Her fourth-grade partner, however, was much more interested in
having live animals in the classroom. The fourth-grade students read less about pets but had
many opportunities to care for, observe, and ultimately deal with pet loss.
In almost every case, however, teachers and students developed an interest in the theme,
namely, the relationships among humans, animals and nature. While this relationship is the
theme, it is often most powerful in learning contexts to think in terms of a thematic question,
"How can we understand the relationships among humans, other animals, and nature?" For
teachers on the curriculum development team, the theme emerged over the three year writing and
revision process as we realized that the topic opened opportunities to explore broader questions.
Indeed, each generation of the materials expanded the opportunities for students to explore the
underlying theme through an expanded set of topics and acquiring more information about those
topics. While teachers and students using the materials were initially also attracted by the topic,
they quickly discovered that they could not answer the topic question without becoming
immersed in the theme. One of the early activities is a reflection (Carini, 1982) in which students
were asked to reflect on the phrase "A pet is a way of taking nature inside." One fourth-grade
student wrote:

A pet isn't like a ten speed bike. It's a toy that controls it's self [sic].

Another fourth-grader wrote:

Taking a dog inside is like taking nature inside because a dog evolved from nature
and its not man made so taking it inside is like taking in a part of nature. In lots of
ways you can tell there not manmad [sic.] if man had made pets they wouldn't bite
they wouldn't scratch or break things. But by not being manmade they're special and
unlike and a lot more fun.

Clearly, these students are working through more than what a pet is. They are making
connections and distinctions between the man made world and the natural world while

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comparing and contrasting phenomenon from both. They are working through their relationships
with pets and with nature. In the process, they are implicitly moving from the topic to the theme.
Experience with this theme expanded as students acquired more factual information
through reading and interviewing pet care professionals as well as caring for and observing an
animal in class. The animals they cared for in class were not typically thought of as pets spiders,
land snails and monarch butterflies. Yet, with the experience in the classroom caring for these
animals, students began to revise their concept of a pet and their understanding of their
relationship to nature.
Starting with a topic question also led students and teachers to acquire more and more
factual information. Indeed, teachers liked starting, as the unit does, with a conceptual question
that was immediately appealing to most students. The question, "What kind of animals can be
pets?" serves as a powerful heuristic device to involve students in more specific, fact based,
studies. These include comparative studies of what kinds of animals people keep as pets in
different places (urban, suburban, rural), cultures, and times. It also leads to questions about
responsibilities of pet ownership which leads nicely to a project researching individual pets: life
span, health issues, environmental needs, etc.
The layers of facts/information, topic, theme can be entered at any place, but it is important
to acknowledge and attend to the entire system, not just a particular layer. If we start with facts, it
is important not to leave children at the level of new information, but rather to help them
integrate it back into their understanding of the topic and of the broader theme. It is, after all, the
topics and theme that provide a context for using facts and information in making sense of the
world. Likewise, if we start with the topic question, facts are what form the substance for
knowing about the topic. If we start with the thematic level, the topics and facts are necessary for
understanding the relationships expressed by the theme.
As we noted earlier, thematic units are often referred to as important curriculum elements
in the current literature on improving classroom practice in the elementary school (Zemelman,
Daniels, and Hyde 1993). Advocates claim that thematic units will help overcome the problems
with fragmentation in the curriculum, help students see the interrelationships among various
ways of knowing, and provide "meaningful, conceptually and experientially rich ... explorations"
(Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde 1993, p 106).
Our experiences go much further. We see the development and use of thematic units as a
way of capitalizing on the shifting paradigm of schools and schooling. The paradigm is shifting
away from schools as teaching organizations to thinking of schools as learning organizations.
The understanding of thematic units we have developed enables teachers to move from teaching
as a technical activity to teaching as a deeply personal and intellectual activity. It also enables
students to experience learning that is active and deeply personal. It is through the exploration of
the theme that teachers and students alike are able to transform their experiences.
While this article is based on a pre-school and elementary level project, we believe that the
fact/information, topic, theme analysis has implications for secondary and post-secondary
education. These implications can be seen by exploring our fundamental goals for student
learning.
If we ask, "What knowledge, skills and attitudes should students demonstrate in order to
graduate?" our inclination is to answer from a disciplinary perspective. We respond, that is by
talking about math skills, science skills, English skills, history knowledge, etc. Building
curriculum from the answer to this question keeps teachers and students focused on facts and
information or topics. In other words, the curriculum has a static and disciplinary focus that
makes it difficult to address thematic questions. In contrast, if we ask, "What fundamental
questions do we want students to have grappled with before they graduate?" our response is
usually more oriented toward broad existential questions. Building curriculum so that students
explore these questions requires that students develop facility in math, science, literature, history,

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etc. It is not possible to answer such questions without using the knowledge, skills, and attitudes
represented within the disciplines.
The implications of this shift do not require the abandonment of the departmental structure
of most schools and colleges. They do, however, require a fundamental rethinking of how we
structure time (for teachers and students), courses, teacher and student interactions, and
graduation requirements. While we can not make specific recommendations based on this
project, it is important to raise these questions.
We close with a quote from one of the teachers who worked with us in developing Pets &
Me. It summarizes her thoughts and feelings at the end of an extended "lesson" during which her
fourth-grade students had raised monarch butterflies, planted a garden that attracts butterflies,
and released the butterflies. For this teacher, exploring human-animal interactions had
implications far beyond the specifics of the topics developed or facts students acquired: "The
project helps the children connect to the environment and have an impact upon it. I hope it will
help them to see school as a place where they can learn to make a better world. We will all see
butterflies quite differently in the future." (Pets & Me, 1991, p.10)

Notes

1. The rich history of Progressive Education in the United States, England, New Zealand, and
Canada provides many examples of project methods, personalized instruction, and
connections between school learning and moral development (Shannon, 1990). We do not
address the historical perspective directly in this paper but want to acknowledge its impact
on our thinking as we were attracted to and developed this project.
2. Progressive Education has always represented a challenge to the policy maker's need for
standardization, control, and accountability. One interpretation of the "pendulum swing" of
American education is that it grows out of the tension between social and individual
agendas. On the one hand, society needs to insure that all children are being taught roughly
the same skills and information at roughly the same time. On the other hand, we must
acknowledge that different children from different backgrounds and with different interests
and abilities will learn things at different times or at different rates.
3. The challenge is not only one of responding to [acting within] policy constraints.
Publishers also place constraints on the substance and structure of curriculum materials. In
our case, we had to overcome our publisher's reluctance to leave entire pages blank, except
for the word "Your Modifications." It took us many meetings with the publishers to
convince them that it is necessary to make it easy for teachers to modify curricular
materials.
4. The work of Ausubel and other cognitive psychologists implies that the hierarchical
relationship among information, topics, and themes would be best represented as a concept
map with "theme" as the super ordinate concept, "topics" as the first level subordinate, and
"facts and information" as the second level subordinate. As we show in figure 1.1 (at the
end of this section), we understand these concepts as an embedded set with permeable
boundaries.

Acknowledgments

The development of the Pets & Me unit was funded by a grant from the American Pet Products
Manufacturers Association. The authors want to acknowledge the contributions of the other team
members to the development of the unit. This work became the foundation for our analysis of the
relationships among facts/information, topics, and themes. Alan Beck, Ph.D., Dorothy N.
McAllister Professor of Animal Ecology and Director of the Center for Human Ethology and

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Human-Animal Interaction in the School of Veterinary Medicine at Purdue University, guided
the team's understanding of the human-animal bond. Madeleine Antionelli, Elizabeth Bennett,
Elizabeth Bradley, Sally Fricke, Barbara Grippi, and Dolly Ketterer wrote, taught and revised the
lessons.

References

Altwerger, B. & Flores, B. (1994). Theme cycles: Creating communities of learners. Primary
Voices K-6. 2 (1), 2-6.

Barth, R. (1990).Improving schools from within: Teachers, parents, and principals can make the
difference. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Benchmarks for science literacy. (1993) New York: Oxford University Press.

Brooks, J. & Brooks, M. G. (1993). In search of understanding: The case for constructivist
classrooms. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Bruner, J. (1960) The process of education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Carini, P. (1982). The school lives of seven children: A five year study. Grand Forks, ND:
University of North Dakota.

Crittenden, B. S. (1973) Education and social ideals: A study in philosophy of education. Don
Mills, Ontario: Longman Canada.

Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and education. New York: Kappa Delta Pi.

Gere, A. R. et al. (1992) Language and reflection: An integrated approach to teaching English.
NY: Macmillan.

Gibboney, R. (1994). The stone trumpet, A story of practical school reform, 1960-1990. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.

Greene, M. (1968). Teacher as stranger: A philosophical theory of education. New York: Harper
and Row.

Harste, J., Short, K. & Burke, C. (1988). Creating classrooms for authors. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.

Lytle, S. & Botel, M. (1988). PCRP II: Reading, writing, and talking across the curriculum.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Mills, H. & Clyde, J. (1990). Portraits of whole language classrooms. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.

MacIntyre, A. C. (1981) After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Pappas, C., Keifer, B. & Levstik, L. (1990). An integrated language perspective in the
elementary school: Theory into action. White Plains, NY: Longman.

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Perkins, D. & Blythe, T. (1994). Putting understanding up front. Educational Leadership. 51 (5),
4-7.

Pets & Me: A thematic learning experience built on the relationship between people and animals
(1991). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Center for School Study Councils, University of
Pennsylvania.

Pigdon, K. & Wooley, M. (1993). The big picture: Integrating children's learning. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.

Senge, P. (1990) The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New
York: Doubleday.

Shannon, P. (1990) The struggle to continue: Progressive reading instruction in the United
States. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Stotsky. S. (1993). Linkages between multicultural education and the development of civic
responsibility in English and history curricula: Strengths and problems. Paper presented at
Faculty Forum: La Salle University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. December, 1993.

Zemelman, S., Daniels, H. & Hyde, A. (1993). Best practice: New standards for teaching and
learning in America's schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

About the Authors

Harris J. Sokoloff, Ph.D.

Harris Sokoloff is Executive Director of the Center for School Study Councils (CSSC) at
the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. His responsibilities includes
working with school superintendents, school boards, and district staff to help them keep pace
with state-of-the-art educational and management theory, research and practice. He has worked
with more that 70 educational organizations in six states on a range of organizational
development and improvement projects. His consulting focuses on strategic planning,
organizational redesign, and improving linkages between schools and the communities they
serve.
Dr. Sokoloff and the Center for School Study Councils are working to develop a regional
and Commonwealth-wide network of educators who are able to moderate deliberative dialogues
that will create stronger, more supportive linkages between schools and their communities. As
part of this network, he has moderated deliberative forums around the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania under a grant from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and is working with the
Philadelphia Inquirer and WHYY radio on a project called "Citizen Voices." This later project
extends the idea of deliberative dialogues to include the print and electronic media, involving
them as partners to the conversations. Dr. Sokoloff also directs the University of Pennsylvania
Summer Public Policy Instiute which trains people in the theory and practice of deliberative
dialogues.
Some of Dr. Sokoloff's projects include working with the Susquenita (PA) School District
to redesign the early childhood and elementary education programs, and to build board and
community support for those changes (some of this work is reported in the November 1996 issue
of School Administrator; designing and implementing an instructional student database for the
Wissahickon School and Southeast Delco School Districts; and working with the West York
Area School District to improve school district and community dialogues. Dr. Sokoloff has also

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worked on technical assistance projects with the Radnor School District, the Haddonfield (NJ)
School District, the Haverford Township School District and the Upper Dublin School District.
He has worked extensively with the School District of Philadelphia in the early design of the
PEPI (Philadelphia Elementary Principals Institute).
Dr. Sokoloff is also lead author of a thematic unit for pre-school and elementary school
settings. Entitled "Pets & Me," the unit has been commended by the National Council of
Teachers of English and has received glowing reviews from professional organizations focusing
on the teaching of the humanities and the sciences. That curriculum served as the impetus for this
article which appears in EPAA.
Dr. Sokoloff received his Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy from Temple University and a
Master's in Education in Philosophy of Education and Educational Counseling, also from Temple
University. In 1983, he received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University where his research focused
on Philosophy of Education and Social Theory.

Harris Sokoloff
Center for School Study Councils
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216

Phone: 215-898-7371
Fax: 215-898-4399

Home page:http://www.upenn.edu/gse/CSSC/

Copyright 1995 by the Education Policy Analysis Archives

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Editorial Board

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John Covaleskie Andrew Coulson
[email protected] [email protected]
Alan Davis Mark E. Fetler
[email protected] [email protected]
Thomas F. Green Alison I. Griffith
[email protected] [email protected]
Arlen Gullickson Ernest R. House
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Aimee Howley Craig B. Howley
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William Hunter Richard M. Jaeger
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Benjamin Levin Thomas Mauhs-Pugh
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Dewayne Matthews Mary P. McKeown
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Les McLean Susan Bobbitt Nolen
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Anne L. Pemberton Hugh G. Petrie
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Richard C. Richardson Anthony G. Rud Jr.
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Dennis Sayers Jay Scribner
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Robert Stonehill Robert T. Stout
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