Curriculum H. Lynn Erickson\'s Concept-Based

¶ … Curriculum

H. Lynn Erickson's Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts is intended to raise awareness of the differences between topical and concept-based models of curriculum and instruction. The goal of this book is to assist educators in enabling students to think and use the knowledge provided in the classroom to enhance and enrich their understanding and applicability of these lessons as opposed to the memorization of facts in order to move on to the next level.

Erickson questions whether the school system is meeting the objectives of the recent standards-based movement in education. She asks if raising standards means learning more content, which can be assessed by testing objectives, or does it mean using critical content as a tool to understanding key concepts and principals of a discipline, and applying understanding in the context of complex performances? The author postulates that the intent of standards-based education is the latter, but teachers lack curriculum designed to meet this goal.

Erickson argues that when the economy was based more on local industry and national corporations and operated largely within the borders of the United States the concern over education was not as pronounced. The development of technology, transportation, and communication awakened American businesses to the need for workers with higher levels of technological, academic, and skill levels in order to compete in the new global market. Concerned that their children were not being adequately prepared for the modern workforce, parents joined with business in calling for higher educational standards.

The subsequent pressure resulted in the launching of the 1990 National Education Act under the first Bush administration, followed by the America 2000 Act in 1991. The Clinton administration continued the reform efforts with the passage of the Goals 2000 legislation in 1994. (No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2001 by the second Bush administration.) This legislation was the springboard for the development of national standards by broad-based committees of experts and professionals in the various academic fields. They are essential to state and local districts as they design and align their own curricular frameworks. To assist in this process curriculum committee's need to understand how national standards are organized and the degree to which they facilitate conceptual thinking and teaching beyond the facts.

One weakness in Erickson's text is the expense and practicality of quantifying student performance and academic achievement using performance-based measurements. Wiggins (1990) states authentic assessments require students to be effective performers with acquired knowledge achieving validity and reliability by emphasizing and standardizing the appropriate criteria for scoring such (varied) products; traditional testing standardizes objective "items" and, hence, the (one) right answer for each. The State of California implemented the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) test for two years in 1993 and 1994 for grades 4, 5, 8 and 10. The controversial program was abandoned largely because it was too expensive and time consuming to administer, and the validity of the results were susceptible to interpretation. (Daily News of Los Angeles, October 3, 1994).