How Can We Factor in Both Disciplinary & Substantive Knowledge into Our Curriculum
Before we can think about how we are going to structure the curriculum I want to outline the use of both substantive and disciplinary knowledge and the interplay between them.
Substantive knowledge is the knowledge produced by the academic subject. In science, this involves concepts which form the underpinning structure of the subject.
A high-quality science curriculum not only identifies the important concepts and procedures for pupils to learn, it also plans for how pupils will build knowledge of these over time. Pupils with little prior knowledge are particularly susceptible to working memory limitations because they do not yet have the necessary conceptual frameworks to filter out what matters.
Here are a few of my thoughts on this