The Study
University Distinguished Professor Jere Brophy chronicles the evolving views on what constitutes appropriate curriculum and instruction during the primary grades, which typically refer to the first two or three grades of elementary school.

The Findings
Brophy points out that primary school education curriculum and instruction emphasize basic literacy and numeracy skills. With students aged 5-8, teachers in these grades also emphasize socialization into the student role: teaching children to pay attention to lessons and work persistently on assignments, to follow prescribed conventions for participating in whole-class activities, to collaborate productively with peers in pairs and small groups, and to take a good care of personal possessions and classroom equipment. Brophy writes that Jean Piaget and his comprehensive stage theory of cognitive development was influential in our early understanding of young children. Piaget described children aged 2-7 as egocentric in purview and unstable in their cognitive structures and thought patterns. Piaget's work implied that progression from one stage to the next was determined primarily by maturation and thus not open to significant acceleration through educational interventions. "Consequently, primary schooling models influenced by his theory tended to emphasize play, exploration, discovery learning, and sensorimotor activities over more formally academic and verbally mediated instruction," Brophy writes. However, in recent years the thinking has shifted from Piaget's stage theory to that of sociocultural learning theory of Lev Vygotsky. In addition, research on children's cognition has shifted from general developmental stages to domain- and situation-specific learning. The general idea is the belief that many aspects of cultural learning, including much of what is taught in elementary school, can be acquired through instruction in which teachers provide modeling and explanations for students and coach and scaffold their learning efforts. Instead of accepting the genetically programmed limitations of stages, "contemporary thinking emphasizes connecting with and building on students' prior knowledge in the domain. Instruction focuses on the zone of proximal development: the range of knowledge and skills that students are not yet ready to learn on their own" but can learn with a teacher's help. Brophy concludes the article with a discussion of curriculum and instruction in the primary grades. One of the things he points out is that primary-grade students require demonstration and explanation of skills, guided practice with feedback, and frequent opportunities to develop mastery through application. Teaching in subject areas other than basic skills should either emphasize familiar content or make the strange familiar by using concrete props or other media.

What It Means to You
Brophy makes clear that the primary grades are critical to the development of children. On what theoretical foundation do your schools base their primary grade curricula? Do the curricula allow teachers to scaffold learning and draw on prior knowledge?

More Information
Brophy, J. (2000). Primary school education. In N. Smelser & P. Baltes (Eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, New York: Pergamon.

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