Presented is a model of curriculum design for history instruction using the concept cluster approach. The importance of proper age/grade placement when teaching historical concepts and the developmental characteristics of children and adolescents are emphasized. (Author/RM)

Discusses advantages and disadvantages of standard high school biology and chemistry course sequences. Relates these sequences to Piagetian developmental levels as well as to David Ausubel's cognitive theory. Suggests that the sequences be reexamined in light of issues considered. (JM)

A brief description is presented of a curriculum offered in one school system that applies much of the available research on how children learn. Materials used, goals for instruction, concepts emphasized, and intellectual processes engaged in each of grades kindergarten through third are noted. (MP)

Current efforts to promote issues-based education in elementary and secondary schools will not succeed unless educators know what issues-based education is, why it is an important part of education, and how to include it in the curriculum. (Author)

This is the second in a series of six units for administrators and teachers to serve the Environmental Goal, one of Pennsylvania's Twelve Goals of Quality Education. The environmental goal states that quality education should help every student acquire the knowledge and attitudes necessary to maintain the quality of life in a balanced environment.…

Describes problems with traditional views of goals and presents considerations for goal setting in the issues-based curriculum. Uses the interdisciplinary approach of science/technology/society (STS) to illustrate how curriculum should be structured to improve students' creativity and process skills. (MW)

Challenges the assumptions behind discipline-based art education. Defends studio art as educationally sound relative to learning theory and characterizes it as the best defense against the exclusion of art from the curriculum. Recommends studio art as a means for balancing curriculum already skewed toward analytically abstract teaching…

Standards-driven school reform is the national strategy to raise U.S. schools to a world-class level by the year 2000. Schools and school districts must develop plans, that show how to integrate the sets of national goals, standards, and assessments. This paper describes a school-improvement model (SIM) developed by the Gilbert (Iowa) Community…

The educational objective of the Russian "Development" curriculum for children ages 3-7 is the development of creative and intellectual abilities. Theoretical foundations for the curriculum include the works of Vygotsky, Venger, Leontev, and Zaporozhets, which offer ideas such as: (1) child development is the unity of affective and…

Mastery learning is a philosophically based approach to teaching and learning which focuses on effective individualized instruction in the group oriented classroom setting. This article discusses the development and application of mastery learning theory and its implications for teachers. (JN)

SEQUENCE IN LEARNING IS USEFUL ONLY AS IT CONTRIBUTES TO THE CONTINUITY OF A CHILD'S OVERALL DEVELOPMENT. CHILDREN MAY NOT GO THROUGH THE SAME SEQUENCE TO ARRIVE AT A SIMILAR POINT OF UNDERSTANDING. EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS IS INDICATED BY A CHILD'S GROWTH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRATEGIC CONCEPTS, IN WAYS OF PROCESSING INFORMATION, AND IN WAYS OF…

Educators today have a renewed perspective: when schools attend systematically to students' social and emotional skills, the academic achievement of children increases, the incidence of problem behaviors decreases, the quality of the relationships surrounding each child improves. The challenge of raising knowledgeable, responsible, and caring…

Contrasts recent views of learning and cognition with cognitive learning theories of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Maintains that Jerome Bruner's spiral curriculum approach, still valuable, is not sufficient to explain cognitive development. Proposes a lattice-like cognitive development structure, inviting differing paths of exploration. (CFR)

This paper describes a plan to improve school effectiveness in the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Public Schools by incorporating instruction in thinking skills. The program selected by the school district was the Strategic Reasoning Program, based on Albert Upton's Design for Thinking and J. P. Guilford's Structure of the Intellect. The Strategic Reasoning…