From Cognition to Curriculum to Scale

Most developers and publishers claim that their curricula or approach to teaching are based on research, but few explicate their claims. In this chapter, we briefly assess the state of affairs regarding “research-based curricula” and then address weaknesses in the field by presenting a model that is based on coordinated interdisciplinary research ranging from cognitive science to scale-up. We discuss the instantiation of that model with an early childhood mathematics curriculum, showing how a grounding in cognitive science allowed all components of the curriculum, professional development, implementation, and scale-up to benefit from a shared core of learning trajectories. We illustrate each of the phases of the Curriculum Research Framework by focusing on one learning trajectory, for the topic of subitizing. We document the efficacy of this approach and suggest it be tested at other grade levels and on other subjects.