Scope and Sequence, in Curriculum Development

The design of a curriculum has an organizational dimension to it that accounts for what content [Page 771]and skills should be taught and for how they should be instructionally presented over time. Among curriculum developers, the overarching organization of the curriculum is embodied in a concept known as scope and sequence. Scope specifically refers to the breadth of the curriculum the organizing threads that constitute the skills and content that teachers are expected to include in their instruction. Sequence refers to how these skills and subject matter should be ordered. The two concepts work in synchronization because decisions related to scope have implications for sequencing and decisions related to sequencing have implications for scope. In each case, wider concerns about the coherence and continuity of the curriculum are at stake, as are the efficiency and educative power of the school experience.

Decisions related to the scope and sequence of a curriculum usually account for the developmental and maturational patterns of learners and a normative (state-directed) construction of what is worth teachingwhat many teachers might see as the full range of skills, ideas, and content that need to be taught to learners at different stages of development. In this way, the scope and sequence of a curriculum provides teachers with a blueprint of age-appropriate learning outcomes. The end result is a carefully calibrated expression of skill development and subject matter knowledge that the teacher can usefully build lesson plans around.

Scope and sequence decisions are commonly worked out within grade levels, through a process known as horizontal articulation, and across grade levels, through a process known as vertical articulation. As a horizontal articulation concern, scope and sequence has to do with how school experiences offered early in an academic year will logically and coherently flow into experiences offered later in the year and to how the development of various skills (reading skills, thinking skills, and so forth) might change during an academic year to reflect increasing developmental capacities. Horizontal articulation also concerns itself with how grade level coursework is integrated and harmonized across subject matter. Thus, if calculus is taught simultaneously with physics, how do the two articulate? If the elementary school classroom is learning about early explorers in the social studies, how does such an undertaking articulate with the teaching of reading?

The vertical articulation of scope and sequence sets its analytical sight on cross-grade concerns. It is the tool used to build coherence in the educational experience of children during their entire school career. Thus, it asks how the teaching of, say, mathematics in 7th grade is related to the teaching of mathematics in 8th grade, or how mathematics instruction in the elementary school will provide a basis for learning mathematics in the middle school? In the science curriculum of the elementary school, vertical articulation concerns might result in a cross-grade curriculum that coheres around key principles and concepts, normally expressed as living things, earth and space, and matter and energy space. Similarly, reading instruction will follow a course of identifiable skills across grade levels related to, say, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, narratives gauged by readability variables, and so forth.

...