Concepts as connections over time
Well hello there and welcome to update #075!
The reason that the concepts and big ideas in the subjects are helpful is that they are like ‘holding baskets’ for a lot of information.
They are like the boulders across the curriculum that gather more moss over time. Each time a pupil encounters a big idea in a new topic, it is an opportunity to make connections with what they have learnt before and what they are likely to learn in the future. This is why it is worth spending time identifying them and teaching them explicitly.
A big idea in history is democracy and pupils will encounter this concept as they learn the curriculum over time. For example, when they are learning about Ancient Greece in the KS2 history curriculum, they are likely to be taught about democracy. In other history units they might learn about Magna Carta or the suffrage movement, which are also underpinned by the concept of democracy.
This means we can talk to our pupils about how our understanding of democracy is similar to, and different from, what they learnt before. In this way, the holding basket means new knowledge is much ‘stickier’ if it is linked to prior learning of the big idea.
Similarly in religious education, the concept of the covenant in Judaism is important as a foundational element of Jewish theology: that there is a contract or agreement between God and the Jewish people, with obligations on both sides.
If my pupils don’t have this understanding of the big idea of the covenant then it’s very hard for them to understand the point of the 613 commandments or mitzvah, which the Jewish community are expected to take account of, in order to keep their side of the covenant. And an appreciation of the covenant is important when teaching about Jesus referring to himself as the ‘new’ covenant. It only makes sense if we understand what the covenant means in the Jewish tradition.
Daniel T Willingham1 has this to say about concepts:
Students can’t learn everything, so what should they know? Cognitive science leads to the rather obvious conclusion that students must learn the concepts that come up again and again—the unifying ideas of each discipline.
Some educational thinkers have suggested that a limited number of ideas should be taught in great depth, beginning in the early grades and carrying through the curriculum for years as different topics are taken up and viewed through the lens of one or more of these ideas.
From the cognitive perspective, that makes sense.
The great thing about the concepts is that there are plenty of them, but there aren’t too many. If we are looking to get going on this, the starting point is the importance statements for the national curriculum subjects. There can be a tendency to go straight to the content of the programmes of study, without spending a bit of time considering the importance statements.
These point to the larger landscape of the subject and the ambition for each subject to make to the human and intellectual development of our pupils.
If you’d like more on how to help pupils to learn the curriculum, I’ve done a short series summarising the research. It’s on Myatt & Co: Helping pupils learn the curriculum. (£/free trial)
Until next time
Mary
Willingham, Daniel T.. Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom . Wiley. Kindle Edition.