There are many leaders in the field who are pushing and fighting for a concept based curricula. Those such as Lynn Erickson write how a concept based curricula can help better the education of our students nationally. In Lynn Erickson's book Stirring the Head, Heart, and Soul: Redefining Curriculum Instruction and Concept-based Learning she states that
"After years of leading local curriculum committees in writing standards-based, concept-based curricula across the United States, I have come to the conclusion that we should develop a model for concept-based curricula at the national level, with teacher teams of our best disciplinary experts representing each grade level. This national model would state clearly what students must know factually, understand conceptually, and be able to do in each subject area. The leaders of the discipline-based writing teams would create a uniform concept-based design across the different disciplines. This means that they would need solid training in the what, why and how, of concept-based curriculum design. The writers would strive for clarity, coherence, and rigor through the grade levels and across subject areas. The current national and state standards are not curriculum documents they are curricular frameworks. The next step is to provide solid models for classroom curricula.
For science and social studies the national curriculum model could be in the form of concept-based interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary instructional units for each grade level and course that are rigorous (intellectually) coherent (internally, horizontally, and vertically), and clear. These grade level instructional units would be developed using the current national standards as a base, but would focus the content to reflect the most critical knowledge, concepts, and skills of the discipline. Secondary mathematics would also be designed as units of instruction.
Elementary mathematics and language arts would need a developmental skill sequence. The elementary mathematics would also need to develop the statements of conceptual understanding (generalizations) to accompany the necessary skills. Ideally, all other disciplines (fine arts, career and technical education, health and physical education and so on) would follow suit in designing concept-based curriculum models for a well-rounded education"
She continues to claim that the current state academic standards fail to articulate clearly the differences between three components (factual knowledge, conceptual understanding, and key processes and skills). She states that if teachers had these three sets of understanding articulated clearly in their curricula that they could teach deeper factual knowledge and and conceptual understanding.
References
Erickson, H. Lynn. (2008). Stirring the Head, Heart, and Soul: Redefining Curriculum Instruction
and Concept-based Learning. Corwin Press. Thousand Oaks, California.
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