Content Characteristics, Selection, and Grading in Andalusian Curriculum
Characteristics of General Content
Conceptual Content: Facts, Concepts, and Principles
Facts
A fact is a particular event in singular reality, an objective phenomenon displayed in space and time, and thus apprehensible by the senses. We learn facts through repetition and rote learning.
Concepts
Concepts interpret facts and connect them. They arise from discovering essential common features within a set of facts, allowing for differentiation from other facts based on the chosen classifier concept.
Principles
Principles describe relationships between concepts; they are general concepts encompassing other elements. They serve as the foundation of conceptual systems, crucial for explaining and understanding content.
Procedural Content: Techniques and Strategies
Procedures
Procedural content involves learning actions to achieve goals. Procedures encompass technical skills, strategies, and general skills. Techniques are complex action chains requiring explicit training. Learning strategies involve planning, decision-making, and controlling technique application to suit specific task needs.
Attitudinal Content: Values, Attitudes, and Norms
Values
Values are challenging to define, falling within the realm of axiology, which studies their essence and nature. Key features include objectivity, unreality, timelessness, incommensurability, absolutism, polarity, rank, and incompatibility. Values represent aspirations that inspire and guide human behavior.
Attitudes
Attitudes are ways of behaving in specific situations, towards events, people, or objects. Their functions are enabling, motivating, guiding, and stabilizing.
Norms
“Norm” is a multifaceted term, derived from the Latin for “rule” or “role model.” In a curriculum context, norms relate to rules in action.
Selecting and Grading Conceptual Content: Counseling Perspective
- Rank concepts by difficulty.
- Ensure concepts are interesting and student-appropriate.
- Structure social science curricula around a limited set of core concepts.
- Ensure accessibility based on student experience and intellectual/social maturity.
- Facilitate understanding of daily events and the surrounding world.
- Analyze conceptual structures for schematic incorporation.
Selecting and Grading Conceptual Content: Epistemological Perspective
- Prioritize concepts with direct, immediate utility for understanding and interacting with the environment.
- Include concepts with indirect, less immediate utility.
- Enable the development of scientific procedures.
- Ensure accessibility and verifiability through student-accessible scientific procedures.
- Use fundamental organizing concepts to establish epistemological axes and sequential learning.
- Provide spiral treatments at higher levels for major epistemological syntheses of the disciplines.
Selection and Grading of Procedural Content
- Enhance qualitative observations, descriptions, regularity detection, classification, and identification.
- Establish relationships between variables, initiate control, and ensure secure experimental design performance.
- Interpret natural phenomena as direct applications and deduce immediate technological applications.
- Address inquiry problems in family situations with simple mathematical requirements.
- Utilize basic, everyday observation devices.
- Enhance understanding and expression of scientific messages, prioritizing descriptive narratives and then addressing simple arguments and problem-solving.
Selection and Grading of Attitudinal Content
- Focus on personal and interpersonal attitudes like responsibility, teamwork, self-esteem, curiosity, perseverance, problem-solving, and decision-making.
- Use knowledge about the human body and environment to improve hygiene, health, and environmental protection habits.
- Foster positive attitudes towards science and technology’s impact on daily life, acknowledging both benefits and drawbacks.
- Shift from individual work assessment to valuing positive group attitudes, shared effort, and peer contributions.
Core Content in Andalusian Legislation
- The historical, social, and cultural construction of Andalusia
- Andalusian landscapes
- Health and welfare
- Heritage in Andalusia
- Responsible resource use
- Technological progress and development models