Educational Theory Athena Curriculum Development Science teaching in many schools is undergoing a paradigm shift. Instead of teaching only the content of science, the approach stresses the universal concepts and processes that underlie scientific research, while still teaching content. We intend that the instructional material of Athena should be useful and interesting to any school, and we hope that it especially supports this mode of teaching. A conceptual approach to teaching science, developed by Northshore School District, one of our participating districts, in support of their own K-12 Science Curriculum Development.
Content refers to topics specific to one field of science or to isolated facts.
The table of contents of a traditional general science text is usually an example of content focus. The topics and facts constitute a body of knowledge only when related to one another. It is necessary to know content to use or research a body of knowledge, but without a conceptual framework facts are hard to learn and impossible to apply. These are the large ideas used to organize facts in all scientific fields. Examples are change, cycle, energy, system.