Back in my high school days (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth), I once had to memorize the capitols of the countries of Europe. Of course, today many of those countries no longer exist … let alone their capitols. That’s a simple illustration of the problem with a “fact-based” approach to learning. Over time, facts can change and hard-earned knowledge becomes useless.
Instead of just memorizing facts, our goal should be to help students master key concepts and develop essential skills. It’s a move away from the old “drill and kill” approach toward an emphasis on higher-order thinking skills like application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
The Rigor/Relevance Framework is a tool developed by the International Center for Leadership in Education to examine curriculum along two dimensions: higher standards and student achievement. This model can useful in developing both instruction and assessment.
In addition, teachers can use this model to monitor their own progress in adding rigor and relevance to their instruction, and to select appropriate instructional strategies for differentiating instruction and facilitating higher achievement goals. (If you hear educators talking about “Quadrant D” activities, that’s where the terminology comes from.)
Here’s a more detailed description of the Rigor/Relevance Framework.
The bottom line is that in order to remain competitive in a changing world, our students need to go far beyond simply memorizing facts … and the Rigor/Relevance Framework offers a model that may be useful for guiding us on that journey.