What Do National Curriculum Reports Recommend?

 

  • More experiential, inquiry-based, and hands-on learning

  • More active learning in the classroom, with all the attendant noise and movement of students doing, talking, and collaborating

  • More emphasis on higher-order thinking, learning a discipline's key concepts and principles

  • More deep study of a smaller number of topics so that a student internalizes the discipline's ways of inquiry

  • More time devoted to reading whole, original "real" books and non-fiction materials

  • More responsibility transferred to students for their work: i.e., goal-setting, record-keeping, monitoring, and evaluation

  • More choice for students, i.e., choosing their own books, writing topics, team partners, research projects

  • More enacting and modeling of the principles of democracy in schools

  • More attention to affective needs and the varying cognitive styles of individual students

  • More cooperative, collaborative activity: developing the classroom as an interdependent community

  • More heterogeneously-grouped classrooms where individual needs are met through inherently-individualized activities, not segregation of bodies

  • More delivery of special help to students in regular classrooms

  • More varied and cooperative roles for teachers, parents, and administrators

  • More reliance upon teachers' descriptive evaluation of student growth, including qualitative/anecdotal observations

Synthesis by Cerylle Moffett: Anderson, et al., 1985; Bybee, et al., 1989 and 1991; Harste, 1989; Hillocks, 1986; NCTM, 1989; NSTA, 1985; AAAC, 1989; NCSS, 1988 and 1989.

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This site was developed by the Department of Staff Development, in collaboration with the Division of Instruction. Questions, comments, and other inquiries may be addressed to Allene Chriest (achriest@pgcps.org) or Jeff Maher  (jmaher@pgcps.org).