Spiral approach

Spiral curriculum refers to a didactic principle for the arrangement of learning content, which has been largely determined in 1960 by the American developmental cognitive psychologists Jerome Bruner. It therefore falls within the scope of the teaching methodology.

The basic idea

The principle goes back to the hypothesis that each child each teaching subject can be taught in an intellectually honest form to any stage of development. This means that in principle all relevant content can be learned using the didactic reduction of the children already in primary school. Therefore, the curriculum follows not only an intra- professional logic, but also takes into account developmental and learning psychological aspects, assigns the substance is not linearly, but so that recur in the form of a spiral, individual subjects during the school year several times on each higher level and in a more differentiated form. Because of the hermeneutic circle but also within faculties historicity can justify as a model a spiral approach.

The spiral principle applies not only in general education forms, but also in the training collection. It is particularly suitable for any content, in which a bound structure and relationships Manufacturing work is required. This is the case with cross-curricular themes and project-oriented nature of the case, such as "renewable energy", as well as all forms of learning that are not fully pre-planned on legal basics.

Importance for teaching mathematics

The special significance of the spiral principle for teaching mathematics is discussed in the context of mathematics education. By applying the concept to mathematical content they should not fall into unrelated areas, but the learner can recognize relationship lines between the respective topics and receive an orientation in the material wealth.