Research On Big Ideas-based Teaching For Promoting Key Competencies

In primary and secondary schools,cultivating students’ key competences is the key to cope with future competition and challenges.However,the cultivation of key competences is difficult to be competent in teaching only by relying on the teacher to tell the knowledge that the students hear.Therefore,it is urgent to transform the teaching paradigm and realize the transformation from knowledge-based teaching to big-idea based teaching.Based on the investigation and analysis of the historical development of big-idea based teaching and the reality of key competences cultivation,we can sort out the knowledge base and experience and lessons of big-idea based teaching,and try to put forward the theoretical connotation and practical promotion mechanism of big-idea based teaching to promote key competencies.From the historical perspective,big ideas-based teaching has experienced the development track from behind the scenes to the front.Taking the United States as an example,curriculum reform movement of the late 1960 s and 1970 s,was seen as the soil for the germination of big ideas.Curriculum experts,such as Bruner and Schwab,tried to adopt structures of the academic disciplines to construct the curriculum content and promote the curriculum reform dominated by expert thinking.Later,in the Project 2061 of the United States,the concept of "big ideas" was further strengthened,and the thought of "less is more" and "doing science" were developed,advocating curriculum consistency and curriculum practice of integration and optimization.With the rise of key competencies,big ideas are formally put forward and widely discussed at the theoretical level,which led to the rise of big ideas-based teaching to a great extent.Of course,the rise of promting key competencies with big ideas teaching is the result of multiple factors,forces and difficulties intertwined together.In China,the boom of promting key competencies with big ideas teaching can come down to the result of the social driving force leading the teaching reform,the mission of promoting the school transformation,cracking the war of traditional teaching and looking forward to the literacy attribute of teaching transformation.By summarizing and reflecting on the theoretical competition of big ideas teaching in the United States,we can find that the continuous clarity of educational objectives,the transformation of teaching paradigm,the reform of learning and the improvement of evaluation,all imply the core elements and key characteristics of big idea-based teaching.The "coherence" of the organizational principle of big idea-based teaching is also rooted in many curriculum reform practices.Based on reality,looking back to history,and starting from key competencies,we can try to clarify the theoretical connotation of big idea-based teaching to promote key competencies.Its key point is to realize students’ deep learning,pursue powerful knowledge and promote effective understanding and migration.Its essential feature is to go beyond fragmentary knowledge to teaching in real situations,teaching for deep learning,and pursuing consistent teaching of holistic education.From the practical level,the operation mechanism to promote big ideas-based teaching needs to start from three dimensions,that is,to understand the basic structure,to grasp the key subjects and to grasp the key links of of big idea-based teaching.For primary and secondary school teachers,grasping the key link of big idea teaching is equivalent to grasping the core of big concept teaching.We can start from three points:focusing on big ideas,reshaping the learning goal design and reshaping the scheme design of big idea-based teaching.Among them,the scheme design of big idea-based teaching is the cornerstone of big idea-based teaching which promotes key competencies.It is necessary to follow the concepts designed to promote students’ meaning creation in deep learning,to support learners’ real problem solving,and to promote learners to achieve interconnection.Especially,the instructional design level should pay more attention to the learning task design,the teaching sequence design,and grasp the overall scheme design from the conceptual model of instructional design.At the level of big idea teaching to promote key competencies,we should pay attention to the conception of basic problems,develop learning tasks linked with the real situation,and design continuous and authentic evaluation.In a word,the shift from traditional knowledge-based teaching and to big ideas-based teaching is an important choice to implement key competencies.Mining the development context of big idea teaching,understanding the fundamental driving force of the rise of big idea teaching,clarifying and outlining the theoretical connotation and operation mechanism of big idea teaching to promote key competencies are important research starting points and cognitive basis for broader front-line teaching practice,which need to be paid great attention to.At the same time,researchers and practitioners need to work together to further promote implementation at the classroom level,further promote the key competencies of students and realize the fundamental task of moral education.