Executive Summary - Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction, by H.L. Erickson

Note: This document was originally a draft collaboration between Todd Newby, Patricia Neuhaus, and Andrew Stillman as part of an assignment for a course in curriculum development for aspiring school leaders at Baruch School for Public Affairs.

Big idea #1: The world is more complex and demanding than ever and our curricular thinking must evolve to meet new needs.

Standards movement is a response to the rapid expansion of knowledge, the global marketplace, and increasing competition. Many of the performance standards issued by state, federal, and disciplinary groups have been designed to improve student performance and make educators more accountable, but the standards have missed the mark by overemphasizing content/facts.

Big idea #2: Coherence

The solution to the problem raised in big idea #1 is to extrapolate concepts that create a lens for study. When students can "get" the big concepts, they become an organizing tool for lifelong learning/transferrability. Therefore, big concepts should be the teacher's lens for selecting and organizing curricular content.

What does a coherent curriculum entail?

The author identifies herself as a "systems thinker" around curriculum, which means she intends to address four critical components in thinking about a coherent curriculum:

1. the student outcomes: what do we need to know, do, and understand to be successful citizens.
2. the knowledge base of the disciplines: content, concepts, and understandings essential to each subject area.
3. the process skills that ensure performance.
4. assessments for measuring standards-driven performance.

Big idea # 3: Curriculum should balance content understandings with process expectations.

There are two, simultaneous goals to a coherent curriculum:

1. to ensure process and skill abilities develop through the grade levels.
2. to ensure students develop a critical fund of content knowledge and conceptual understandings.
   

The author emphasizes that deep, essential understandings are the "key principles and generalizations that develop from a fact base." (47)

The distinction between KNOW and DO is an important one for this author. Too often, Erickson claims, curriculum standards over-specify the VERB form, or the performance, of the understanding. While meant to allow us to determine (through performance) whether or not a student knows or understands something, Erickson maintains that--if monolithic--this form of standard "robs teachers of the opportunity to engage students creatively with the kinds of performance they (or their students) wish to use for the demonstration [of an understanding]" (49). She adds, "unless teachers consciously identify these understandings, they focus on the fact-based content as the endpoint in instruction, and the conceptual level of understanding usually is not addressed" (49).

The biggest essential concepts and understandings should "spiral" through the grade levels, with increasing complexity and sophistication of application. Erickson suggests that our process skills (DO) targets need to be clearly identified and nuanced for each developmental stage, in such a way that student attain greater sophistication at the "complex performances" that are at the heart of most disciplined professions.

Big Idea #4: Curriculum should be structured yet flexible

The author discusses a need to mediate the extremes of a structured and an unstructured curriculum. She cites "whole language" instruction as an example of an approach lacking structure resulting in major inefficiencies in learning. By contrast, she also does not espouse an highly structured approach that constrains thinking. She writes, "Curricular and instructional planning needs to be focused and systematic, yet provide flexibility for instruction" (47).