Working towards big ideas: Implications for the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment

The need to define a set of ‘big ideas’ as a framework for decisions about the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment originated in the context of science education. For many years there had been calls for greater depth and less uncoordinated breadth in this field. Multiple problems stemmed from the curriculum being overcrowded with content, allowing insufficient time for understanding through inquiry-based learning. Assessment dominated by tests of disconnected facts added to the perception of science as fragmented, and encouraged memorisation rather than understanding. As a result, many students did not see their science education as interesting or relevant to their daily lives. A major part of the solution was to conceive the goals of science education not as a collection of facts and theories, but rather as progress towards a relatively small number of key ideas that are most worthwhile and relevant to students’ lives during and beyond school. A set of such ideas would provid