Integrative Learning in History Education: A Systematic Literature Review

DINAMIKA ILMU
Vol. 22 No. 2, 2022
P-ISSN: 1411-3031; E-ISSN: 2442-9651
doi: http://doi.org/10.21093/di.v22i2.4792

Integrative Learning in History Education: A Systematic

Literature Review
Atqo Akmal
UIN Imam Bonjol Padang
akmal.atqo@uinib.ac.id

Abstract
In general, history is a construction of the past that should use models, methods,
and concepts of other social sciences to explain the changes or events throughout
human life and civilization. Thus, the assumption that history should be explained
from a broader perspective of social sciences and the deep analysis of social theory
has transformed the need for an interdisciplinary approach in history education. In
the quest for an advanced learning approach to history education, this article
proposes integrative learning as an approach that could meet the need for the
integration of various perspectives and theories from social science disciplines in
learning history. Constructively explained through a systematic literature review of
related studies oriented towards history, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and
integrative learning, this article works on the possibility of integration
encompassing four steps, namely establishing a purpose, understanding and
leveraging disciplinary insights, leveraging integration, and critical stance. Despite
the lack of empirical research, integrative learning is a promising concept that could
improve the method of fostering high-order thinking skills in history education.

Keywords: History Education, Integrative Learning, Interdisciplinary Understanding

A. Introduction
History is one of many essential subjects at schools to strengthen learners’
nationalism and national identity. Learning history is not solely for knowing important
milestones in the past but also for breaking down threads of past events with a scientific

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approach and future orientation. Practically, most youths consider history subjects
unnecessary, old-fashioned, outdated, and past-oriented. Learners regard history lessons
as bland and uninteresting subjects because they must memorize past events, royal
names, dates, and years of the events. Also, the pedagogy of history is conventionally
delivered through lectures, questions and answers, and assignments, or based on such a
“behaviorism” or “structuralism” approach (Subakti, 2010). Thus, it has resulted in learners
only working procedurally and understanding history without reasoning. It is oriented to
emphasizing memorization and making poor preparation for learners' later professional
work. Therefore, the efforts to foster historical awareness among the millennial generation
should be done in different ways from the previous generation.
Here, historian and history educator are at least partially responsible for the shift
away from a content-area reading comprehension toward a discipline-specific-oriented
approach (Massey, 2015). Teachers is considered as the most important agents in history
education, must possess a deep understanding of both historical interpretation and inquiry
before they can engage their learners in historical thinking (Bain, 2006; van Hover et al.,
2007). This notion has a strong relation with what Cohen (1989) declared two decades ago,
he stated that teaching is an “impossible profession” because of its complexity, nuance,
and uncertainty. Obviously, every subject matter has its own challenges, but teaching
history —with its overwhelming volume of content, its ever-present potential for
controversy, some subjectivity issue, and its uneasy status within the school curriculum—
seems to legitimate Cohen’s notion (Shemilt, 2018).
What experts know about history is a story with more differentiation and more
connections, with a deeper level of explanations and more hedges. Nonetheless, to
understand history, as a non-expert, is just to know the story. (Wineburg, 1999), Perfetti
(2012), and (Massey, 2015) have critically reported on the cognitive psychology distinction
between experts and novices in understanding history. They argued that history is not just
a typical story, but a very good story. Moreover, good stories are complex with rich
connections and events that play multiple roles and multi-layered interpretations.
However, the teaching of history faces additional problems of time and resource
limitations. Some things will be emphasized, and some things will be left out. In many
cases, it is the attempt to communicate complexity that is omitted. For example, historical
causation as the interplay of social forces is often overlooked and replaced with a simple
story about dates and names (Perfetti, 2012).
The transformation of historical analysis and historiography presented the Annales
school of social-economic history that broke radically with traditional historiography by
insisting on the importance of taking all levels of society into consideration and
emphasizing the collective nature of mentalities (Hunt, 1986). Annalese scholars rejected
the predominant emphasis on politics, diplomacy, and war of many 19th and early 20th
century historians, instead of exploiting an approach to a study of long-term historical
structures over events and political transformations (Fink, 1996; Harsgor, 1978). As the
result, the need for a fusion of economic, social, and cultural history was increasingly felt
and synthesis was embroidered on the new flag, and the Annalesse scholars believed that

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 Integrative Learning in History Education: A Systematic Literature Review

history is the synthesis of all social sciences turned towards the past (Burke, 1990). It is
important to taking consideration about what the state of history as discipline, as Klein
stated that the nature of history is a “synoptic discipline” because it tends to integrate
knowledge from a various of contexts, and go beyond the interdisciplinary approach in
attempt to reconstruct the past (Bryan & Klein, 1998). If we Cross-fertilization of history
with economics, sociology, literary theory, and other disciplines, so it will enable historian
to explore the broader scope and expand their evidentiary base. Furthermore, to
understanding many of the real-world problems is too rigid if just depend on a single
disciplinary system.
Thus, an integration of a multidisciplinary explanatory framework in history
education is required to give a comprehensive explanation of history. As stated by Kocka
(1977) history is an integrative approach to all aspects of human existence, it has a strong
reliance to other discipline in particular social and humanities. Thus, the assumption that
history should be explained from the broader perspective and the connection between
history and on the deep analysis of social theory transformed the interdisciplinary
approach in history pedagogic. Many innovations in history pedagogic approach have been
developed and many of them are relevant in efforts to promote high-order thinking in
student through some advanced approach. For example, the implementation of critical
pedagogy in controversial history (Ahmad et al., 2014; Hunter, 2018) is effective in
directing students to be analytical toward controversial history; the deconstructive
learning model (Sutimin, Sariyatun, & Abidin, 2018) is a solution to eliminate the rigidity of
chronological thinking in historical learning and reduce historical students' passiveness;
the problem-based learning provided the opportunity to critically construct their own
knowledge and answer historical questions based on their analysis of a variety of sources
(Brush & Saye, 2014; Saye & Brush, 2002, 2007), and many more.
Empirically, the implementation of an integrative learning approach in history
lessons has shown that the combination of two or more different disciplinary concepts
could create new insights which cannot merely arise through a single disciplinary
perspective (Mansilla & Duraisingh, 2007; Mansilla, Duraisingh, & Haynes, 2009). Mansilla,
Miller, & Gardner (2000) stated that integrative learning as an interdisciplinary approach
could extend historical inquiry by integrating it with various distinct concepts, tools, and
modes of thinking from another discipline to stimulate a new understanding that could not
have arisen through a historical lens alone. There are previous studies that share a similar
notion in enhanced integration of learning in history education. Also, according to
Duraisingh & Mansilla (2007), the implementation of integrative learning which combines
history and art perspectives could enhance students' ties with the past and their feelings
about the relevance of past events to the present. In the idea of the integration of learning
in history, However, there is no clear and rigid examination of whether it is possible to use
integrative learning in history education, as a conceptual foundation, this article discussed
the possibility of using an integrative learning approach in the quest of developing an
advanced way in learning history.

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B. Research Methodology
This article used a systematic literature review as a method for analyzing the current
stance based on the previous research and proposing a new alternative to the issue.
Basically, a literature review could broadly be used as a systematic way of collecting and
synthesizing previous research (Snyder, 2019; Tranfield et al., 2003). To construct a better
literature review, there are some approaches to present a well-organized literature review
such as integrative literature review, meta-analytic literature review, and systematic
literature review. These approaches provide a critical method to arrange a deep analysis or
a critical research question. To conduct a systematic literature review, researcher should
systematically collect findings from multiple studies then critically evaluating, integrating,
and presenting findings of these studies to build a strong-based research question or topic
of interest (Pati & Lorusso 2018; Denyer & Tranfield, 2009). According to Snyder (2019) in a
systematic review, researcher identify all theories and empirical evidence that fits the pre-
specified inclusion criteria to answer a particular research question or hypothesis.
However, when literature review to become a proper research methodology, it
requires proper steps to ensure that the review process is credible, accurate, and capable
of reducing bias. Moher et al (2016) stated that the main purpose of systematic literature
review is to reducing the bias by using explicit and systematic methods when reviewing
articles and all available evidence, thus it helps the investigator to obtain reliable findings
before drawing conclusion and decision. There are various standards and guidelines for
conducting a systematic literature review, and generally, they cover four basic steps,
including 1) designing the review, 2) conducting the review, 3) analysis and 4) writing out
the review (Denyer & Tranfield, 2009; Moher et al., 2016; Pati & Lorusso, 2018; Snyder,
2019; Wong et al., 2013).
In the present study, the first phase of the systematic review was done by defining a
multi-disciplinary scope related to the study. It was important to position history as a
discipline and find its framework related to multi-disciplinary works. Any literature in
education that explained integrative learning as a pedagogical approach was considered in
this study. The second phase, conducting a review, was undertaken by compiling literature
based on the disciplines that had been taken into account in the previous phase. In terms
of history as a basic perspective in history education, several pieces of literature which
combined history and other social theories were analyzed, such as the works of Braudel
(2009); Peter Burke (1993); and Marshall & Skocpol (1986). Besides, any literature that
discussed integrative learning (Boix Mansilla, 2008; Leonard, 2012; Huber, Hutchings, &
Huber, 2004; Carey, 2005; Klein, 2005), multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches
(Boix Mansilla, 2010, 2016; Gardner & Boix-Mansilla, 1994; Haynes & Association for
Integrative Studies., 2002; Newell, 1990; Perkings, 1998), and previous studies that
attempted to combine history and integrative learning methods (Duraisingh & Mansilla,
2007), were also analyzed.

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C. Integrative Learning in History Education

The need to integrate history with other disciplines is an objective condition of
history itself. As Burke argued, “without the combination of history and theories (from other
social disciplines), we are not likely to understand either the past or the present” (Peter Burke,
1993). History, in its analysis, could not stand alone to explain a historical event
chronologically. Burke reviewed the re-emergence of the fields of history and social
science and explained their tentative convergence; he stated that history requires theories
from other social and humanities disciplines to get through in-depth analysis. The
interaction of historical concepts with other social and humanities disciplines has resulted
in a variety of branch themes in historical science, such as anthropology history, economic
history, social history, and others. Burke examined what models, methods, and concepts
of the social sciences that historians could use; moreover, he also described how history
has contributed to other social sciences based on a broad range of cultures and periods in
which history has been used to create and validate social theories (Peter Burke, 1993).
In addition, Braudel's concept of the longue durée has revitalized the multiplicity of
social sciences and their respective utilities in the analysis of historical phenomena. This
concept specifically criticizes the emphasis on episodic and idiographic history (l'histoire
événementielle) over the use of eternal concepts in the social sciences, which he referred to
as très longue durée. He explicated the necessity of analyzing the longue durée (long, but
not eternal), as well as what he called la conjoncture, the cyclical movements within the
longue durée (Braudel, 2009; P. Burke, 1990). Braudel and some annals scholars were
concerned about the cycle of history of some civilizations which they analyzed using the
combination of history and social sciences theories. In line with this, Skocpol discussed
how history influenced a long tradition of research rooted in sociology and provided a
detailed discussion and comparison of three reiterative strategies to yield historical
evidence and theoretical ideals of combined tolerance over others (Marshall & Skocpol,
1986). Therefore, based on the idea that history should be opulent by collaborating with
other social sciences, an integrative learning concept can reinforce a broader construct of
multidisciplinary learning which is naturally part of history because it utilizes various
disciplines, theories, models, or concepts.
The central of this notion is the uniqueness of history as a framework on arranging
history pedagogic which depends on historical sources and accepted patterns of historical
explanations. Retz (2016) explained a long and various way of delivering history subject in
the educational field had been coming from the philosophy of history. Though Retz (2016)
did not agree that history is a distinct discipline with its own logic, he realized that the
growth of interdisciplinary methods, theories, and approaches has revolved around the
construction of multiple perspectives around historical narratives. Obviously, the relation
of history pedagogic and the philosophy of history appeared as history is constructed from
historians’ efforts at understanding the past. This implies that students of history should
learn to master cognitive skills based on how historians perform (Thorp & Persson, 2020).
In addition, one of example how radically history could be integrated with different
perspectives is shown by Swanson et al (2021), their works showed that integration of

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historical approaches toward the ecological and socio-cultural perspectives could provide
possibilities for better integrating insights from diverse disciplinary perspectives about
nature sustainability, because its simultaneously addressing the urgent need of past
ecological and socio-ecological pathways alongside ongoing dynamism. Therefore, based
on the idea that history should be opulent by collaborating with various approaches and
perspectives. Integrative learning concepts could reinforce a broader construct of
multidisciplinary learning which is naturally part of history because it utilizes various
disciplines’ theories, models, or concepts.
Several scholars have defined an integrative learning approach in a quite similar way.
For example, integrative learning is defined as a term for various learning activities that
connect with various disciplines (Brown Leonard, 2012); a learning activity in which
learners are asked to bridge several understandings in the curriculum and co-curriculum
(Newell, 1990); an exploration of relationships with general curricula of education and
majors (Huber & Hutchings, 2004). The importance of interdisciplinary approach in the
higher education is to foster student’s abilities to integrate learning over time and across
courses in order to use integrative learning as an approach to linkage across disciplines. It
also relates to the ability to analyze issues from several perspectives, compare the
contrasts, critically analyze from various sources (information or data), deal with problems
and propose related solutions in a broader context, develop critical arguments, and
tolerate ambiguity and complexity (Haynes & Association for Integrative Studies., 2002;
Klein, 2010). However, Klein (2005) urged that the complete unity of several disciplines is
impossible. Nevertheless, he stipulated that an integrative approach in terms of “unifying,”
not “unified”, which means the locus of integration, is on the process integration rather
than content integration. Hence, in this context, the important shift is away from single
structures or teaching methods and toward integrating the strengths of various disciplines
into integrative learning. Conclusively, the discourse of integration generally urged a
combination of knowledge and ways of thinking from two or more disciplines to improve
cognitive thinking in ways that are not possible through only one discipline science.

Boix Mansilla Barber (2012) Leonard (2012)

(2016) •Establishing •Application
•Establishing Purpose connection •Comparison
•Understanding and •Application accross •Understanding
wighing disciplinary contexts context
insights •Synthesis a new •Synthesis
•Leveraging whole
integration
•Critical stance

Figure 1 Cognitive hierarchy of interdisciplinary understanding (lowest to the highets)

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Klein (2005, 2018) and Mansilla (2010) rooted back the idea of integration in Herbert
Spencer’s principles of psychology such as organismic psychology, Gestalt psychology, and
the democratic model of education, as well as Alexis Bertrand’s theory of integrated
instruction. Though, they still doubted what the locus of integration. According to Klein,
(2018) a practical interdisciplinarity is a holistic process that entails learning-by-doing and
uses these experiences within and outside school. However, a bold step has been taken by
Mansilla (2010), she concluded that pragmatic constructionism is the epistemological
foundation for integrative learning and emphasized that the locus of integration is inquiry
of advancing understanding instead acquiring or claiming true knowledge.
Nonetheless, some of literature which discussing about integrative learning
described the primary construct of integrative learning is the emergence of an
interdisciplinary understanding as a cognitive process. Mansilla (2005) defined
construction of interdisciplinary understanding:
“The capacity to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking drawn from two or more
disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement such as: explaining phenomenon,
solving the problem, creating a product, or raising a new question (Mansilla, 2005)”
She stated that when students encounter differences in disciplinary perspectives to
invent a higher-order construction that moved from a single perspective and adopts a
meta-perspective, they experienced a “system of thought in reflective equilibrium” which is
a complex and dynamic set of connections and mental representations that embody
insights and tensions across disciplines (Mansilla, 2016). The concept of reflective
equilibrium is a balanced mental representation of a dynamic connections among various
discipline, approaches, and perspectives.
In the quest of defining a framework to implement the integrative learning, it is
important to explain how the form of integration processed. Leonard (2012), Barber
(2012), and Mansilla (2016) have tried to explain how the interdisciplinary understanding
and integrative learning approach enhanced the learner’s meta-cognitive related to
Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom & Krathwohl, 1956). Leonard (2012) argued that integrative
learning is the sequence of interconnected cognitive insights, ranging from the simplest to
the most sophisticated cognitive processes. Furthermore, interconnected cognitive
insights of integrative learning which she offered ranging from 1) application, student’s
activity in finding relevant coursework personally; 2) comparison, student’s ability to
compare the similarities and differences from various perspectives ; 3) understanding
context, student’s ability in considering context when sorting through conflicting
perspectives; and 4) synthesis, the most complex form of integration and involves blending
perspectives to create a new understanding. However, she was miscalculated that the
application as the lowest cognitive process of integrative learning, because she failed to
distinguish the term of application whether it is a kind of cognitive process or just an
activity in choosing coursework.
On the other case, Barber (2012) also tried to fill the gap in technically measure
categories of the integration of learning based on the cognitive complexity aligns with

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Bloom’s taxonomy and other prominent models of intellectual and personal development.
He divided the complexity level of integration into three categories which are: 1)
establishing a connection, an ability to finding a common thread between concepts or
experiences that remain distinct and identifying similar elements; 2) application across
contexts, an idea or skill learned which elaborated into diverse context; 3) synthesis of a
new whole, an ability to enhance understanding and gain a new insight by combining
various knowledge, method, and perspectives. Barber (2012) defined that integration of
learning demonstrated by the abilities to connect, apply, and/or synthesize information
coherently from diverse contexts and perspectives, so the learner could use new insights in
multiple contexts. Though, Barber failed to assess the initial purpose or goal in setting up
the integration, as the beginning phase and lowest cognitive process, it is important to
establish a learning objective that could be pin-point to exploring related disciplines
toward the learning purpose.
In this case, generally, educators view that thematic learning is an appropriate way of
carrying out interdisciplinary integration and establishing the purpose and objective of
learning. Integration could be implemented by preparing a theme linking some disciplines
in which the theme has a function to help students focus their attention on particular
problems, in-depth and comprehensively (Fogarty, 1991). However, Duraisingh & Mansilla
(2007) have criticized the simplified theme-based approach in conducting history learning,
they insist mostly on linking themes or phenomena from two or more disciplinary
perspectives just connecting relations without taking any deep integration and achieving
new understanding. But the theme, in this context, is still important to set up the purpose.
In line with it, Lonning, DeFranco, & Weinland (1998) stated that a theme could provide a
framework and organization of topics, concepts, or problems that guide the development
and implementation of a series of interrelated disciplines or activities, cross-sectoral ideas,
and broad perspectives.
Mansilla (2016) inspired by Edward Wilson’s theory of consilience which principally
admits a diversity of intellectual endeavors and proposes collaborating humanities and the
sciences legitimately. Consilience theory proposed grants the humanities the right to
articulate human and cultural constructs to be studied and entrust the biological sciences
with the power to explain them. Then she examined history and art based on Maya Lin’s
Boundaries (2000) and proposed a way to integrate two different perspectives as an
epistemological foundation of interdisciplinary learning. The cognitive integration that she
proposed could be conducted through four steps including 1) establishing purpose, a study
of interdisciplinary learning must consider how learners set their epistemic intention; 2)
understanding and weighing disciplinary insights, this level of cognitive emphasize the
abilities understand disciplinary contributions and weigh their role to construct such a
system of thought in reflective equilibrium; 3) leveraging integration, leveraging integration
arise when the system of thought in reflective equilibrium which in particular emerged as a
form of preferred disciplinary integration; 4) critical stance, Mansilla argued that
understanding is an endless and cyclical task as the conclusion of a topic could be

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challenged by the context, insight, or experiences, so the learner should realize the
limitations of our knowledge.
However, in the Interdisciplinary Epistemology Foundation, Boix Mansilla did not
directly include synthesizing as one of interdisciplinary understanding. Even though, she
has considered synthesizing and idiosyncratic features of interdisciplinary syntheses as the
main reasons to explore what learning to synthesize stands. Moreover, many of her works
have discussed the role of integration of knowledge and modes of thinking from various
disciplines in promoting synthesizing a new understanding. Mansilla (2016) argued that
synthesis is a fundamental human capacity and it has manifested early in life, for example
when children engage in symbolic play, create artistic compositions, or learn the rules of a
new game. This notion seems to bring us into an important consideration that synthesize
is a form of integration. As the highest cognitive ability, synthesize from the integration of
knowledge and modes of thinking in two or more disciplines as the way to searching for
better understanding.
Based on the discourses of interdisciplinary understanding which have been
discussed by Mansilla (2016), Barber (2012), and Leonard (2012). These notions could be
merged into a more comprehensive framework of interdisciplinary understanding in the
learner’s realm. Above all, we consider that Boix Mansilla’s (2016) epistemology
foundation of interdisciplinary understanding was the almost complete framework in
describing how the integration of learning is generated in the learner’s cognitive realm,
even though she has not included synthesizing as part of interdisciplinary understanding.
Thus, to complement her theory, we consider adding synthesizing as the higher cognitive
skill of interdisciplinary understanding.
However, still there was some debate about the form of integration. Based on the
literature review on student development, learning and psychology, there is no clear
description of how the form of integration is undertaken. This challenge is made more
difficult by a lack of clarity about what integrative learning is and how it is taught and
measured. Barber (2012) critically discussed the lack of detailed information about the
ways in which learning is integrated, he is also concerned about an array of
conceptualizations which has led to the problem in implementing the concept. Even
though, he stated about practices of integration process (e.g., the requirement of multiple
sources in the working of paper/project, taking an interdisciplinary course, or participating
in a service-learning) may facilitate the central notion of integration.
Interdisciplinary synthesis, however, presents heightened cognitive demands and
requires deliberate instruction. Even though still many debates on the form of pedagogical
approach to integrative learning. Haynes & Association for Integrative Studies (2002)
argued that interdisciplinary learning does not claim a unique set of pedagogies but rather
reinforces students' comprehensive understanding to respond the complex problems and
issues. In line with it, Klein (2005) added that there is no unique or single pedagogy for
integrative interdisciplinary learning, she argued that interdisciplinary knowledge is a
complex psychological and cognitive process that cannot be applied with just one
approach. For example, how project-based learning (PjBL) offers a learning strategy that

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situated student to elaborate the solution or artifact of a complex problem based various
approaches (MacLeod & van der Veen, 2020). On the other side, Duraisingh & Mansilla
(2007) have conducted a case study of interdisciplinary work through project-based
learning, especially that they experimented it using an integration of art and historical
learning. Also, they have outlined several ways in which students’ historical understanding
could be boosted by integrating arts into history classrooms. Furthermore, derived from
Mansilla’s work, they offered a practical assessment strategy of interdisciplinary learning
(Mansilla, Duraisingh, Wolfe, & Haynes, 2009).
Obviously, interdisciplinary understanding is an integral part of the integrative
learning which emerged from the integration process. Thus, we assumed that the
empirical foundation of interdisciplinary understanding could be inherent in defining the
way integrative learning is applied and it is important to construct a pedagogical
framework based on the nature of the interdisciplinary understanding. Therefore, the
author proposed revision of interdisciplinary understanding framework by adding the
synthesis as one of the processes to established a holistic system of integration. Finally,
the integrative learning process could be implemented through: 1) establishing purpose; 2)
understanding and leveraging disciplinary insight; 3) leveraging integration; 4) critical
stance or synthesizing.

1. Establishing Purpose
At this stage, the learner will be oriented towards a more substantial direction of
learning objectives. The learning activity directed students to realize actual problems in
society, which had relation to the history that they currently learn and it is important to
avoid students from understanding history textually and chronologically. According to
Barber, King, & Magolda (2013) and Magolda (2014) how to create a meaningful learning of
interdisciplinary approach is by developing a frame of mind that allows students to put
their knowledge in various perspectives; directing students to understand the sources of
their beliefs and values; and establishing a sense of self that enables them to participate
effectively in a variety of personal, occupational, and community contexts. Meaningful
learning for students is fundamental in learning activities, and the process of meaning
formulation depends on the instructional design. In this case, achieving learning outcomes
requires a mindset shift from relying on authority to ways of making sense of one's
experiences that reflect more complex meaning-making skills. Dwelling learning purposes
would help students to know the pathway of the true value of the historical event. Because
the achievement of higher learning outcomes involves complex meaning-making, students
who adopt increasingly complex forms of meaning-making more quickly gain an
advantage in learning.
One example of how meaningfulness is explored in learning is explained by Mansilla
(2016) when he exemplifies how there is interdisciplinary understanding by exploring the
meaningful values of Maya Lin’s Boundaries as an interdisciplinary work which in the initial
stage sought the reader to reflect about war and reconciliation of the Vietnam War.
Monuments related to the memories of the history of the Vietnam War combined an

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understanding of the past with space, symbolism, and learning materials that aroused the
learners’ historical interpretation. The monument’s usage is to commemorate a memory
and make past experiences a part of the present. Interdisciplinary learning must examine
how learners’ interest in structuring their ways of obtaining knowledge. For example,
readers represent the memories to reflect on war and reconciliation, but other learning
interests, such as understanding why conflict occurs, are ruled out. She argued that this
kind of learning effort will be measured by the effectiveness of the stimulant in provoking
thought rather than being an explanatory power of history because the essential lesson is
how important to reconcile and spread love to everyone from the dark memory of the war.

2. Understanding and Leveraging Disciplinary Insight

In the next stage, the student tried to weigh each discipline's insights, learners begin
to understand the contribution of each domain and consider its role as a whole to build a
balanced, reflective way of thinking. Learners can take the form of theories, findings,
models, methods, tools, techniques, models of typical thinking, applications, discourses,
languages, examples, or explanations from a scientific discipline. In this phase related to
Barber (2012) category of establishing a connection, where he defined student’s activity to
recognize a novel concept from two or more/disciplines in a common element, the
experiences within the establishing connection were mostly in the realm of ideas. This
notion has a similarity with Duraisingh & Mansilla (2007) efforts in triggering students’
sense to weigh each discipline's insights and find a useful combination or connection
among them.
Based on Maya Lin’s Boundaries, Mansilla (2016) explained that the Vietnam War's
memory-challenged her in identifying their perceptions of this historical memory and
invited the readers to build historical stories that originate directly from the literal
interpretation of primary sources. This is also an option for learners who must decide on
past representations that will illustrate the monument, in contrast, history records are
limited by historian’s choice of explanation. Art and architecture also provide important
challenges in monument design. Both called the learners to imagine a detailed version of
the monument in their mind; consider materials and techniques as provocative symbolism.
They need to overcome rooted misunderstandings such as believing that the quality of art
depends only on its decorativeness or that an artist's interest is the last thing in work. She
must work with disciplinary ideas, weigh them against her present understanding, and
assess their role in informing the whole.

3. Leveraging Integration
At this stage, students are directed to unite each interdisciplinary perspective in a
comprehensive understanding where integrative learning produces a system of thought in
reflective equilibrium, which is usually organized in a combination of preferred disciplines.
The student should recognize the chosen analysis unit sometimes has a different domain
or different validation standards; however, it is a challenge to find each discipline’s
strength which is complementary to the other. In line with it, Barber (2012) defined the

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activity in leveraging integration as the most concrete experience which focuses on

application. In his category, application across contexts, the mobility of knowledge across
contexts is seen as a key link to the transfer of learning references and how students take
an active role in this mobility.
In Maya Lin’s work, Mansilla (2016) assessed that the past has been reframed in the
form of a visual metaphor that drives the aesthetic design. The dark memories of the
Vietnam War on the individual and social minds of American society are scars.
Nevertheless, when learning is to create an aesthetic, metaphors frame reality in different
ways. The interdisciplinary synthesis of the Vietnam War history becomes a scar that
requires learners to understand its contents, a metaphor that stands between these three
forces: historical accuracy, visual beauty, and the power to heal. By choosing visual
metaphors to represent the past, students can develop a more sophisticated
understanding of how history is interpreted differently. A reminder that meaning is not a
property of the event itself. It is due to that event, development, or circumstance. Events
can be considered important for many reasons. For example, its uniqueness, its influence
on subsequent events, or its resonance with contemporary issues. Meaningful
considerations are usually influenced by philosophical assumptions about how history
"works". This is regardless of whether influential individuals or larger social processes are
typically seen as factors influencing historical change.
In other cases, the spirit of integration across disciplines in History has been brought
by the Annalese School. Their works contributed to and enriched the study of history by
utilizing other social sciences such as economics, sociology, demography, social
psychology that produces what they call "total history" rather than traditional
historiography which tends to dwell on politics, institutions, or diplomatic relationships
(Church, 1976). Thus, Annalese work has shown that history can uncover a broader aspect
of a particular community/entity including social and economic movements, trends, and
cycles. and psychology as a contextual factor that, they say, has a significant influence on
people. activities. life than traditional stories tend to explore around events and main
characters (great man history).

4. Critical Stance or synthesizing

A critical stance is seen as a fundamental notion in historical thinking. Basically, the
construction of historical narratives is susceptible to subjectivity and bias which could
deviation from the original fact. So, it is important to critically deconstruct the idea imply
in a historical narrative. In this case, history and the teaching of history should not be
based on certain historical stories, but on the processes and methods by which these
historical stories are constructed (Thorp & Person, 2020; Wineburg, 1994). Therefore,
history teachers should encourage students to develop the thematic skills necessary to
critically review historical sources and reconstruct stories from them. Furthermore,
reading a historical narrative requires disciplinary insight into the history, considering how
the reconstruction and construction of information inside the historiography, and how the
idea is disseminated.

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Previously, we have proposed that to complement Boix Mansilla’s epistemology

foundation of interdisciplinary understanding, “synthesizing” should be considered as one
of the cognitive abilities which reflect individual mastery of interdisciplinarity. In line with
it, Leonard (2007) argued that the linking process characteristic of integrative learning is
more than a pairing of ideas, he added that to be integrative, the connection must blend
and synthesize perspectives. In this phase, students are invited to realize a partial
understanding of discipline has a weakness in capturing the complexity of human life. Also,
students recognize that their ability to interpret is limited and requires a combination with
other people or other knowledge. Social problems or phenomenon cannot be generalized
easily because it sometimes applies contextually. Theory only helps to give consideration,
so experience and application are needed to confirm all knowledge they gain. Thus,
students continue to renew their understanding within different disciplines, as the critical
stance makes students not easily satisfied with what they had gotten.
Mansilla (2016) described the relationship between critical thinking and
metacognition in the final stage of integrative learning. Students also realize that they
have limitations in their interpretation. Such restrictions often function as a path to further
understanding, setting new goals, new disciplinary insights, integration, and building new
mind-sets. Understanding is an endless task and a cycle. It concluded that constructionist
epistemology takes power not from attaining perfect truths but from acknowledging our
knowledge's limitations. In addition, Ivanitskaya, Clark, Montgomery, & Primeau (2002)
argue that with repeated exposure to interdisciplinary thinking, learners develop more
advanced epistemological beliefs, enhanced critical thinking abilities, and metaphysical
skills. perceive and understand the relationship between perspectives from different
disciplines.
Thus, interdisciplinary understanding can be viewed as a "reflective equilibrium
system of thought", a complex and dynamic set of mental affinity and representations that
embody ideas. and tension between subjects, demonstrating an improvement in prior
confidence and remaining open at the exam. Many argue that improving critical thinking
and effective reasoning (as well as other outcomes) goes beyond skills to include
fundamental changes in how learners think about the nature of knowledge and its role in
knowledge construction (Barber, King and Magolda 2013; Magolda 2014). Thus, academic
and personal experiences that promote critical thinking and effective reasoning can be
experiences that also promote complex forms of meaning formation.

5. Some Considerations to Implementing the Interdisciplinary Approach

Even though, some problem in implementing the concept of integrative learning
have been discussed in previous sections such as the locus of integration and the array of
conceptualizations which has led to the problem in implementing the concept. MacLeod
(2018) discussed a more details explanation based on an empirical experience. According
to MacLeod the “Cognitive obstacles” refer to conceptual and methodological challenges
in integrating various concepts, methods, epistemic standards, and technologies of their
respective domains. These challenges include the demarcation of domain specific to the

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Atqo Akmal

outsiders, conflicting epistemic values, large conceptual and methodological divides and
unstructured task environments. However, in drawing his argument MacLeod (2018) used
some cases which mostly from the science, and he is not exploring interaction that
involving history or historical approaches. Still, his finding could be a consideration about
problem or obstacle in integrating various disciplines. Clearly, his finding tells us that the
problem stems from the cross-section of fields that correspond to the domain structure of
scientific practice, especially the complex interdependencies between methods,
techniques, and methods. technology, cognitive values, and cognitive structures whose
practice often depends on functional science. However, it is different case if obtaining
history as a component of integration, because the nature of history discipline has
dependency on other discipline. Although history has a certain philosophical and
methodological approaches, history mainly focus on human and its dimension of the past.
But in reconstructing the past, it strongly rely to multidisciplinary approach.

D. Conclusion
Collaboration of history and other social science theories would create a
comprehensive and in-depth understanding of history. Integration of a multidiscipline
explanatory framework in history education is required to give a comprehensive
explanation of history. In this case, multidisciplinary perspectives which are naturally part
of history have been reinforced by a broader construct of integrative learning, because it
seeks various scientific disciplines to enhance students’ high-order thinking skills.
Integrative learning constructed an interdisciplinary understanding that combines
knowledge, model, and theory from two or more disciplines to improve metacognition in
ways that are not possible through only one discipline of science.
Integrative learning is the emergence of an interdisciplinary understanding that
combines knowledge and ways of thinking from two or more disciplines to improve
cognitive thinking in ways that are not possible through only one discipline of science. In
history education, the integrative learning approach could be delivered through 1)
establishing purpose where the learner is invited to contemplate the reality compared to
various life lessons of historical events. 2) Understanding and leveraging disciplinary insight,
in this stage learner tries to weigh each discipline's insights and understand the
contribution of each domain as well as considers its role as a whole to build a balanced,
reflective way of thinking. 3) Leveraging integration, interdisciplinary cognition through
integrative learning produces a system of thought in reflective equilibrium, which is usually
organized in a combination of preferred disciplines. 4) Critical stance, the learners
contemplated that a partial perspective is limited to the breakdown of the complexity of
human life. As they critically construct its incapability to find the perfect truth, instead the
learner should be widely open to various possibilities in using different perspectives.

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