K-12 Education

by: norma b. rico

Principal II - Bataan National High School - Senior High School

Date posted: September 28, 2018

K – 12 education is an innovative education system. This type of education has upper hand over the conventional education system as it highlights the ability of students on reaching own self-explanatory conclusions. The introduction of this educational system modified mastery approach of learning to a spiral form of curriculum.

The mastery type of curriculum means spending greater time going into depth about a subject that all children should know. Therefore, lessons may take several days or even week for students to master a topic. It complies with the philosophy that human should not move to the next step until the preceding one is mastered.

However, Jerome Bruner’s theory on cognitive growth offers a different perspective. Bruner’s (1960) hypothesis is that “any subject can be thought in an intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.” He believes that learning can be more effective through what he has called spiral curriculum.

Bruner’s spiral curriculum lets students revisit a topic, theme, or subject several times in their school career. This increasing exposure to same materials year after year will eventually lend to mastery of the topic.

The human brain works by adding new information to the old ones. The more ways information is attached to the brain, the better it is learned. Children need more than one exposure to learn a thing because humans are like programmable machines and need endless repetitions to master something.