Path for Progress (cf. Montessori’s “Prepared Paths to Excellence”)
A recent National Research Council study argued that schools should focus more on building students’ understanding of “big ideas” in science rather than simply teaching them unconnected facts. The NRC document describes how a “learning progression” can be used to expand gradually students’ knowledge of the central concepts behind matter and atomic- molecular theory in grades K-8.
Big Idea: “Objects are constituted of matter, which exists as many different material kinds. Objects have properties that can be measured, depending on the matter and the material kinds they are made of.”
Sample Progression: (Describing measurements and explanations for properties of objects.)
- Grades K-2: Objects have certain properties—weight, length, area, and volume—that can be described, compared, and measured.
- Grades 3-5: Weight and volume are additive properties that can be measured; the weight of an object is a function of its volume and the material of which it is made.
- Grades 6-8: Mass is a measure of the amount of matter and is constant across location. Weight is a force proportional to mass and varies with gravitational field. Solids, liquids, and gases have different properties.
To learn more about creating Progressions vs Standards and “Progress Maps” ….
Learning Progressions are frameworks that spell out how student comprehension of concepts should grow over time. Those progressions, scholars say, should be guided by an understanding of how children learn and the knowledge that they already possess or have been taught.
Despite scholarly work on progressions, the concept is unfamiliar in the vast majority of K-12 school systems in the United States, where states and schools have been reorganizing lessons around academic standards and mandatory tests since the late 1980s.
Math and Science Education in the U.S.
A report, “Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K- 8,” available from The National Academies Press pointed to learning progressions’ potential as a more orderly, less scattershot way of teaching science in grades K-8. (“Panel Points Way to Improving K-8 Science Learning,” Sept. 27, 2006.)
“We see missed opportunities—ways that the learning of science has been compartmentalized,” said Brian J. Reiser, a professor of learning sciences at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill., and a member of the committee that produced the NRC report. “The idea behind learning progressions is, let’s figure out a sensible path. We may not use the same path for everyone, but let’s figure out a logical path.”
Connected Steps
Studies of learning progressions, sometimes referred to as “continua,” date back at least as far as the 1980s. Researchers have explored the potential benefits of progressions within many academic subjects and skills, particularly in literacy.
Experts on learning progressions see them as distinct from academic standards or curricula. Standards, such as those set forth by individual states, are expectations for what students should know, with different demands at each grade level. Learning progressions, supporters say, instead:
- describe growth in student understanding over time,
- drawing connections between the intermediate steps at each grade level.