1. Seamless Subjects, Seamless Reform: Learning and Teaching Together, from Pre-School to Ph.D. Occasional Paper.
- Author
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National Council for History Education, Inc., Westlake, OH. and Gagnon, Paul A.
- Abstract
This essay suggests that helping people learn any subject better is a job for everybody who teaches that subject, from preschool to Ph.D. To do the job well at any level requires knowing what teachers and students at all the other levels need to do, and need to have done for them, subject by subject. Most educators have ignored the seamless nature of levels of learning in a particular subject. They do this because they are usually preoccupied with one particular level of schooling, and because they do not think of organizing or reforming things by starting with subject matter or curriculum. They have focused on the processes, not the content, of education. This paper argues that curriculum, the subject matter, needs to come first in educational reform. A hypothetical eighth grade history course is described in which inclusive strategies of reform have improved the course and the education system as a whole. The paper traces the work of commissions and conferences on educational reform. The importance of close collaboration based on mutual respect among practitioners at the school, college, and graduate levels is discussed. United States Department of Education standards and state frameworks are cited for the development of criteria to establish national content standards that will turn the idea of multilevel collaboration into practice. (DK)
- Published
- 1993