spiral curriculum

Categories: Site glossary

(after Bruner) "A spiral curriculum is designed such that learners will revisit areas of knowledge over time. As they mature they should meet increasingly sophisticated treatments of a topic, with increasing abstraction and nuance…As with a spiral staircase, early steps are the means of making progress to the higher levels. In designing such a curriculum, each time students meet a topic area they should be building upon what they have learnt before, and developing the foundations for later more advanced learning" (Taber, 2019)

"As well as sequencing material so that more foundational ideas and topics are mastered before those for which they make up prerequisite learning are taught, a spiral curriculum revisits topics at increasing levels of sophistication over time. That requires taking into account both the match between sophistication of treatment and what students of a particular age are ready to learn, and the logic of the discipline that is being represented in the curriculum." (Taber, 2019)

Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.