Excerpts from Designs for Science Literacy
Among its many recommendations for improving the coherence and effectiveness of the K-12 curriculum, Designs for Science Literacy provides some strategies for "reallocating time—time to focus on understanding important facts, principles, and applications in science, mathematics, and technology." The following excerpts highlight some of those recommendations. Click on the links indicated below to go to the full text for each section.
From Chapter 7: Unburdening the Curriculum
"Time in school for teaching and learning is not limitless. Yet many
textbooks and course syllabi seem to assume otherwise. They include a great
abundance of topics, many of which are treated in superficial detail and employ
technical language that far exceeds most students' understanding." Read
more...
Cutting Major Topics
"The case for reducing the number of different topics taught in science,
mathematics, and technology is straightforward. A basic message from research
on how children learn science is that (1) many science concepts are inconsistent
with children's beliefs about how the natural world works, and (2) for children
to understand science concepts often requires that they wrestle with how those
concepts are more satisfactory than their own current beliefs. Learning science
effectively, therefore, requires direct involvement with phenomena and much
discussion of how to interpret observations. Moreover, it requires encountering
the intended concepts in a variety of contexts and successively more adequate
formulations—activities that obviously take time." Read
more...
Pruning Subtopics from Major Topics
"Similar arguments can be made for a less radical adjustment of traditional
curriculum content that will leave time for higher-priority learning goals.
Part of the curriculum problem is that, in addition to treating too many major
topics, the curriculum treats many subtopics within them with excessive detail
(relative to the topic's importance for literacy). In addition to eliminating
whole topics, therefore, progress can be made by cutting back on the extent
and complexity of the treatment of at least some topics. Whereas dropping
whole topics can lead to the elimination of whole chapters or units, pruning
may correspond loosely to cutting out paragraphs at the subtopic level. The
purpose of such pruning is to focus on what is really important to know about
a topic rather than on how to make it easier to learn." Read
more...
Trimming Technical Vocabulary
"A special case of pruning topics involves cutting back on the teaching
of technical terms for their own sake. It is not an easy task. Some teachers
say that technical vocabulary has been an integral part of their instruction
for so long that they can barely conceive of what topics would be without
it. And de-emphasizing vocabulary may not produce immediate cheers from students
either, particularly the older ones, since many of them have come to believe
that memorizing words is the same thing as understanding the concepts—and
they have become very good at it. Students' inclination, reinforced over years
of schooling, to substitute memorization for understanding is all the more
reason for teachers to help students get better at learning content that has
greater utility and durability." Read
more...
Reducing Wasteful Repetition
"Overloading the curriculum with topics, overloading topics with detail,
and having students learn words and terms they don't need are not the only
ways to waste instructional time. Another waste is the unnecessary repetition
of topics—the same ideas in the same contexts, often with the same activities
and the same questions. But deciding what is necessary and what is not is
not always an easy matter. The common student complaint that the same topics
appear in successive grades, often in the same way, is matched by the common
teacher complaint that the students did not learn what they were supposed
to before, and so previous topics have to be "reviewed" or, to be frank about
it, taught all over again. This situation leads to frustration on the part
of both teachers and students and to the loss of opportunities to take up
other topics or the same topic in a new and more advanced context." Read
more...
The Challenge
"Before wholesale easing of the curricular burden can be attempted or
accepted, educators will have to believe that reducing the number of topics,
pruning ideas within topics, cutting technical vocabulary, and avoiding needless
repetition are worth doing and possible. The small-scale team efforts described
above are all within reach." Read more...
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