Designing the Classroom Curriculum Designing the Classroom Curriculum | Page 18

Designing the Classroom Curriculum
Procedural knowledge can be further divided into two sub categories:
Processes --- which are procedures that involve the execution of interrelated component parts that
have subcomponents.
Skills --- steps that may or not have to be performed in a set order.
In understanding the type of knowledge you are to teach is to also understand the teaching strategy that it
requires. In simple terms the way you teach declarative knowledge is different to that of procedural
knowledge and to not know this is to jeopardize the potency of your lessons.
For a full outline of the teaching strategies that fit procedural and declarative knowledge read:
Dimensions of Learning Teacher's Manual, 2nd Edition
Marzano, R., & Pickering, D. (2006, 1997). Dimensions of Learning Teacher’s Manual. Mid-continent Regional
Education Laboratory, Colorado, USA.
The Knowledge Hierarchy
In the widest sense, we acquire new knowledge—that is we learn new things or processes --- by making
connections between the existing knowledge we have and the new. Therefore if one has no prior knowledge
to connect to new knowledge in a particular field then it is difficult to acquire that new knowledge. Imagine
attending a physics class taught in French, with no physics background when your only language is English.
The premise is that there are sets of background knowledge needed to operate successfully --- to learn — in
this environment.
Similarly, some knowledge is conventionally arranged in hierarchies. For example, ‘white cedar’ is a kind of
‘cedar’ which in turn is a kind of ‘tree’. The wattle outside our building is also a type of ‘tree’ but not a kind
of ‘cedar’. We learn that they are trees but cedars and wattles have distinguishing features. Teaching makes
great use of such knowledge hierarchies especially when dealing with conceptual knowledge. Thus, the
numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 2, 4, 6, 8 etc. are all ‘numbers’ but we distinguish odd from even ones because in
more complex areas of mathematics, it is an important distinction. These trivial examples and those that
everyone can invent, make, or fail to make, connections to knowledge already held by the student.
Effective teaching is always concerned to build on what is known rather than punishing a learner who fails
to make connections because the requisite background knowledge and skill base is missing. The most serious
cases in schooling occur when students are unable to engage with the ‘next step’ because they lack such
things as the required level of literacy or numeracy.
We can understand this by reflecting upon our previous discussions about learning but also by following
this simple illustration:
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