You can’t teach a Year 7 or 8 student about the big ideas of science, can you? According to our research, yes you can. And not only is it possible, it will help your students to build ongoing connections and deeper understandings.

According to Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s definitive volume, Understanding by Design, a big idea is a 'concept, theme or issue that gives meaning and connection to discrete facts and skills'. It is this same 'meaning and connection' that underlies the VELS curriculum. By taking a big ideas approach in your science classroom, you will enhance students' ability to make meaningful connection between the many discrete facts and skills the syllabus prescribes (e.g. microscopes, cell organelles, classification) and to connect them in a meaningful framework (e.g. living systems). This is, after all, the big idea of VELS.

Oxford's own in-school research supports Wiggins and McTighe’s assertions about the merits of big ideas education. For instance, a Victorian science coordinator recently spoke of her experiences as follows:

This is a common observation; students have no active realisation that they have been learning about energy all through their high school studies every time they learn about light or heat or sound or any number of other topics. By asking big questions about 'energy' right from Year 7 – and building on that in Years 8, 9 and 10 – the Year 11 physics students in question would have found meaning and connection in their studies, and as such, a deeper understanding. This is the same philosophy that the VELS curriculum encourages. The Science knowledge and understanding dimension of the VELS document focuses on building student understanding of the 'overarching conceptual ideas of science'. In other words, big ideas (such as matter, systems and energy).

Manager of the Oxford Big Ideas Project, Melinda O’Donnell, says: 'It's connections, not breadth of coverage, that are important. Understanding ultimately derives from making meaningful connections about important topics. By exploring — not necessarily answering — a few big ideas in great depth, students transcend simple knowledge acquisition and start to develop rich understandings.'

Big ideas underpin all disciplines. They are a powerful pedagogical tool to frame methods of enquiry and make sense of seemingly disparate pieces of knowledge. A philosophy of big ideas enables students, over time, to develop deep, transferable understandings and skills.

Big ideas also help teachers and students establish learning priorities for students:

What’s most important?
How does it all fit together?
What do I really understand?

Big ideas enable better, more effective teaching by:

In a recent survey conducted by Oxford University Press, 80% of respondents expressed their positive support for a big ideas framework in the science classroom and 86% of teachers agreed strongly that students needed the opportunity to connect and transfer their learning and understanding. If you are wondering if a big ideas framework is right for your classroom, you should think about how many times you have been asked, 'why do we have to learn this?', 'what does this have to do with anything?' – a big ideas framework not only answers these questions but will have a greater chance of engaging your students in many years of curiosity, wonder and questioning.

Link
www.oxfordbigideas.com.au/science_resources