What’s wrong with a spiral curriculum?
Education experts have argued for millennia about the 'best' approach to learning. The debate today centres on 'spiral progression' versus 'blocks of learning'.
Spiral learning works on the presumption that students should be exposed to a certain group of topics each year, first at a shallow level then, as they grow up and attain proficiency, at deeper and deeper levels. This approach sounds good, but the practical outcomes don't always match the expectations of its creators. This is the approach currently in vogue in Australia. The problem with a spiral structure is that we assume kids will ascend. But spirals can also take you downwards.
The opposite of the spiral approach is to learn blocks of content that are never revisited in depth. It has the advantage of enabling teachers to cover more content areas. But because of time constraints in the school year, it doesn't go deep enough to achieve true mastery of a topic and ignores the value of revision, which is probably the key benefit of the spiral approach.
In our experience at Coach House, the spiral approach leaves students knowing a little about a lot of subjects. The block approach leaves them forgetting what they have learned about a whole lot of subjects. At Coach House, we're throwing a third contender into the ring - the 'immersive approach'. It’s the immersive approach that strikes just the right balance for the majority of students. Learn more about immersive curriculum planning in our next post.
The problem with spiral learning
Spiral learning exposes children only to the currently dominating world view of the curriculum writers. It tends to discourage critical thinking because the child will be expected to produce standardised responses, in greater depth each year. When we repeatedly encounter the same material within a limited knowledge bank, we easily become bored. By not learning anything in depth, we’re skimming over the rich, fascinating details that make study worthwhile. This is no way to foster a love of a subject.
There is a real danger that students who have been repeatedly exposed to the same topics and materials will come to believe that they already know all about it, when in fact they have hardly scratched the surface. When tested, these students will then find that they don’t really have a good grasp of the material at all because assessment methods only rely on short-term memory, not necessarily proper understanding.
Spiral learning does not equip kids with the ability to reason, because they aren’t in contact with any one topic for long enough to develop a deep understanding and familiarity. This can leave kids feeling anxious and stressed.
Spiral progression is assessed using worksheets, written tests and tends to stifle creativity and innovation. With every subject treated as a single, specialised discipline, there’s no integration – which presents an unrealistic picture of how we really learn.
