Thread by @LouroAlfredo

I worked in the Science Expert Working Group in the K-12 curriculum review conducted during the NDP government. So I am particularly interested in the science component of the draft curriculum published today. #abed #abpoli #ableg (1/11)

We produced a draft K-4 curriculum that was to be field tested the year the UCP took over government. Here are some links to compare the two documents:
twitdoc.com/BA1I (Previous Science Intro)
twitdoc.com/BA1J (Previous Science K-4)
curriculum.learnalberta.ca/curriculum/en (Today)

I will focus here on the Organizing Idea "understandings of the physical world are deepened through investigating matter and energy". (3/11)

In the new curriculum there is no discernible effort at producing a sequence across grades. Each grade has a laundry list of factoids, mostly not age appropriate, that does not lead to understanding. (4/11)

For example, did you know that magnets can be found in MRI machines? (Grade 4). (5/11)

I am particularly interested in the the topic of energy. There is no attempt to introduce the physical concept of energy in the entire curriculum. Instead there is a deeply flawed discussion of forces. (6/11)

Newton's laws of motion are presented starting in Grade 3, with an erroneous interpretation of the law of inertia. Newton's laws are high school material. At this level, it can only result in rote memorization. (7/11)

I pity the high school teacher who will have to undo the errors and misconceptions created by this curriculum in the early years. (8/11)

As for energy, the word appears in the Grade 6 Guiding Question "How are energy resources used?" What an energy resource is, is left unexplained. As is the very term "energy". (9/11)

The construction of an energy sequence is in fact quite difficult. It took many hours of work in our Group, and research. We looked at the experience in other jurisdictions, and what the physics education literature had to say. (10/11)

When I say "we", I mean classroom teachers, curriculum specialists, and university instructors like myself. This is clearly not the case with the curriculum we have been presented with today. (11/11)