Updated: January 14, 2006 06:09 PM

I wrote this article in 2003 when I was designing this department's first ever inquiry-based course.

Interestingly, although I had been allowed to attend Curriculum Committee meetings (*every* faculty member in CS can do that), I was NOT asked to serve on ANY departmental committees from 2000 until the time they finally drove me out (in 2006). In fact, at one point I was able to ask why, and I was told that I was not allowed on committees because (certain) other faculty didn't want me.

One of the issues I keep raising has to do with the problems of “coverage”, and how a list of topics is inadequate on its own as a syllabus. What follows is a (brief) summary of some of the recent research and findings that support this view. Please note that the following information is well researched, and thoroughly reviewed by some of the top researchers in their fields.

“Achievement target”, “intended outcomes”, “performance standards” refer to the desired impact of teaching and learning - what a student should be able to do and what standard should be used to signify understanding. This implies that we keep aiming for a result using curriculum and instruction. Note that content standards are different from performance standards. Content standards specify inputs - what is the content that should be covered? Content involves lists of topics, concepts, and sometimes skills. Performance standards specify the desired output - what must the student do, and how well, to be deemed successful? Performance implies understanding. Understanding involves sophisticated insights and abilities, reflected in various performances and contexts. [Wigg1989]

The (curriculum) design process:

1. Identify desired results.
2. Determine acceptable evidence.
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction. [Wigg1989]

• The text is the syllabus.
• Assessment is a test based primarily on what is in the textbook, often involving the use of publisher-supplied test questions.
• The students' job is to know the text; there are no overreaching questions.
• The text is read more-or-less with the intent of moving from cover to cover; with no clear overreaching purpose.
• Primary-source materials are not used.
• The textbook is viewed as lecture notes in a course dominated by lectures.

• The text serves as a resource and reference book for core inquiries and performances.
• The main ideas suggest the kinds of performances for which the text can serve as one resource.
• The text is viewed as offering a helpful summary of “answers” to essential and unit questions, but where other answers will likely arise and be explored.
• Sections of the text are read to support overall objectives, and not necessarily in the order of the textbook pagination.
• The textbook is seen as one resource, supplemented as needed with primary-source materials.
• The textbook provides a summary of desired learnings, for which active lessons, inquiries, and problems need to be found to lead those summaries, in addition to lectures provided.

“I would like to go into greater depth, but I have to cover the content.”

This statement is based on a misunderstanding about the relationship between results and teaching. The root of the misunderstanding is the very real problem of having to make difficult choices and set priorities in instruction. All teaching involves deciding in part what not to teach or emphasize. All teaching involves the feeling that we are making great sacrifices in likely and desirable understanding. No good teacher has ever complained of having too much time.

The “coverer” acts under an illusion: Textbook and test-driven instruction operate under an untested assumption that coverage maximizes test scores. There is little evidence to support this view; in fact there is growing evidence that the opposite is true. So much is passed over without inquiry. Weaker students get confused and lost. Memory is overtaxed in the absence of central questions and ideas upon which organized inquiries and answers can be placed. Ultimately, coverage is based on an egocentric fallacy: If I talked about it and we read about it, they got it.

Coverage involves a sad irony. In the absence of guiding questions, ideas, and methods that are meant to recur and inform all learning, students are left to guess about what was most important and what is going to be tested. The time-honoured justification for this type of content coverage is that the syllabus and upcoming tests somehow demand it. Yet teachers who make this claim rarely subject it to critical scrutiny.

When important activities are relegated to separate courses rather than being integrated into the curriculum, students learn the parts in isolation, but they receive no practice integrating the parts into a new, more complex “whole”. When components are taught outside the context in which the performance usually takes place, students do not acquire the ability to apply what they have learned. [Resn1992]

The basic assumption that students will automatically apply knowledge when needed has turned out to be false. Research has shown that students can learn facts, theories, or individual tasks, but with out the opportunity to use the knowledge or skill to achieve a goal, it is recalled only in the context in which it was learned. [Bran1989] In other words, the knowledge is inert.

“Overall, the new science of learning is beginning to provide knowledge to improve significantly people's abilities to become active learners who seek to understand complex subject matter and are better prepared to transfer what they have learned to new problems and settings. Making this happen is a major challenge, but it is not impossible. The emerging science of learning underscores the importance of re-thinking what is taught, how it is taught, and how learning is assessed.” pp13

Key findings from recent studies of learning, memory, knowledge:

1. “Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.”
2. “To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: (a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and © organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.” Experts differ from novices in how they plan a task; notice patterns; generate reasonable arguments & explanations; draw analogies to other problems. To develop competence, students must have opportunities to learn with understanding. Deep understanding of subject matter transforms factual knowledge into usable knowledge.
3. “A 'meta-cognitive' approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.”

1. “Teachers must draw out and work with the pre-existing understandings that their students bring with them.”
2. “Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth, providing many examples in which the same concept is at work and providing a firm foundation of factual knowledge.”
   1. This requires:
      1. Superficial coverage of all topics in a subject area must be replaced with in-depth coverage of fewer topics that allows key concepts in that discipline to be understood. In-depth study in a domain often requires that ideas be carried beyond a single semester or year before students can make the transition from informal to formal ideas. This will require active coordination of the curriculum across school years.
      2. The teacher must have a grasp of the growth and development of students' thinking about these concepts.
      3. Assessment for purposes of accountability (accreditation, etc.) must test deep understanding rather than surface knowledge. This requires new assessment tools.
3. “The teaching of meta- cognitive skills (i.e. learning how to learn) should be integrated into the curriculum in a variety of subject areas.

Schools and classrooms must be learner-centered. Teachers must pay close attention to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that learners bring into the classroom.

To provide a knowledge-centered classroom environment, attention must be given to what is taught (information, subject-matter), why it is taught (understanding), and what competence or mastery looks like. Learning with understanding is often harder to accomplish than simply memorizing, and takes more time. Many curricula fail to support learning with understanding because they present too many disconnected facts in too short a time - the “mile wide, inch deep” problem. There are important differences between tasks and projects that encourage hands-on doing and those that encourage doing with understanding: the knowledge-centered environment emphasizes the latter.

Formative assessments - ongoing assessments designed to make students' thinking visible to both teachers and students - are essential. They permit the teacher to grasp the students' preconceptions, understand where they are in the “developmental corridor” from informal to formal thinking, and design instruction accordingly.

Learning is influenced in fundamental ways by the context in which it takes place. A community-centered approach requires the development of norms for the classroom and the school, as well as connections to the outside world, that support core learning values.

[Bran1989] Bransford, J.D., & Vye, N.J. 1989 “A Perspective on cognitive research and its implications for instruction.” In L.B.Resnick & L.E.Klopfer(Eds.), Toward the Thinking Curriculum: Current Cognitive Research, 1989, ASCD Yearbook (pp.173-205). Alexandra, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

[Bran2000] Bransford, et. al., Ed. National Research Council, “How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School”, Expanded Edition, 2000, National Academy Press, ISBN 0-309-07036-8

[Resn1992] Resnick, L., & Resnick, D. 1992, Assessing the Thinking Curriculum: New tools for educational reform. In B.R..Gifford & M.C.O'Connor(Eds.), Changing Assessments: Alternative views of Aptitude, Achievement and Instruction (pp. 35-75) Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

[Wigg1998] Wiggins, Grant & Jay McTighe, 1998, “Understanding by Design”, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ISBN 0-87120-313-8