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From: "Won't Someone Please Tell Me What To Teach" or "Help, I Need a Syllabus!" by Thelma Perso
Background
Formal reports and evaluations are coming in fast and thick concerning the take-up of outcomes focused education in Western Australia and the implementation of the Curriculum Framework in schools. One thing keeps rearing its head and that is that teachers are crying out for help in making decisions about what to teach and when.
"I can remember a school a few years ago getting distraught because some of their students had come through years 8, 9 and 10 and didn't know that the sum of the angles of a triangle are 180°. I probably would have been horrified by that myself once. I now think that it's not such a big deal - if students need to know that piece of information for a later purpose, for example, in the context of the Geometry and Trigonometry course in year 11, it certainly won't take them long to learn it! And what's more they clearly didn't need it to progress to year 11. I would be far more concerned if they hadn't learned a mathematical concept such as Angle.
My personal view is that we need to be ensuring that students learn and understand mathematical concepts such as Angle, Area and Length in the context of the Curriculum Framework outcomes for Measurement rather than the methods and procedures for calculating then that we have become so wedded to over the years.
I am also convinced that, in the past we taught these methods and procedures and assumed that our students understood the concepts because they had learned the methods and procedures. We now know that for the majority of children that was not the case.
Many students have their heads stuffed full of bits and pieces of mathematical (and other!) knowledge and they understand very little of it. I can remember teaching a student in Calculus who hadn't studied Geometry and Trigonometry in year 11 and I was horrified at first, believing he wouldn't cope. In actual fact he did quite well - anything he needed to know in order to study Calculus I taught him at the point of need and he picked it up quickly because it was relevant and meaningful in the context. Similarly I've taught students the Introductory Calculus course who hadn't studied Unit Curriculum Units and they certainly didn't suffer from not having `been exposed' to reciprocal and exponential functions. In fact learning about linear and quadratic functions at a slower pace had ensured greater understandings of these concepts which , in my opinion, made them better placed to succeed with Introductory Calculus than their peers."
The point Thelma is making here is central to Montessori Education and Child/Outcomes Focused Education. Get the concepts clearly understood and the facts will come! The “just in time “ knowledge theory she is advocating is a major educational movement around the world now. Maria Montessori recognized it a hundred years ago!
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