Question identification and response strategies

Education Theory -- Book Review and Commentary

Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts.

Identify and discuss the main point of the Erickson text. (Why did she write the book and what points were made?)

The principal idea of Erickson's concept-based curriculum is that modern education has developed an excessive focus on the accumulation of factual information instead of helping students develop process-based analytical skills. In general, the author expresses concern that the explosion of information associated with globalization and the availability of the Internet is not being exploited for its true educational potential. It is primarily being incorporated into traditional curricula mainly as a source of more facts and not as a means of helping students learn how to use factual knowledge and the process of its acquisition to further their analytical skills.

Identify the main elements of Erickson's argument (Summarize the reasons Erickson's cities to support the main argument.)

According to Erickson, the contemporary academic performance standards established by educational authorities and government education program administrators emphasize only factual subject matter retention without corresponding deeper understanding or the ability to apply knowledge to the process of thinking. The author advocates a "systems thinking" approach to curriculum design in which various objectives can be met that are largely ignored by traditional educational approaches.

Specifically, the author hopes that a more coherent curriculum would (naturally) include a component of factual knowledge, but within a format that helped students use factual information to better understand abstract ideas and the relationship between analytical processes and factual knowledge. In that regard, the author also advocates the gradual increase in complexity corresponding to higher grade levels. She hopes that the systems thinking/coherent curriculum concept will allow teachers to challenge students more and more as they develop the intellectual and analytical capacity to make sense of factual knowledge in the larger context of their world. Finally, Erickson promotes the idea of educational curricula and teaching methods that are structured while being simultaneously much more flexible than traditional information-based education.

3. Identify at least two areas of weakness in the Erickson Provide a rationale for selecting each area of weakness identified.

If there are any weaknesses of the text, they might include the relative lack of inclusion of: 1. specific types of cognitive intelligences; and 2. specific substantive interests of students. First, modern educational theorists have embraced the concept of Multiple Intelligences pioneered by Howard Gardner of the Harvard School of Education. Gardner has demonstrated that even the best traditional curricula neglect the needs of many students. Second, there are reasons to believe that students should be allowed more autonomy in the choice of subjects long before the middle or late high school years.

4. Identify suggested methods for improving the two areas of weakness identified in question 3.