Prioritizing depth over breadth

Given the dominant paradigm of traditional schooling, it's understandable that breadth over depth prevailed in basic education in Latin America. The goal was to learn as much "scientific" information as possible; to know as many grammatical rules as possible; and to remember as many algorithms as possible. For this reason, over time, curricula expanded. From the medieval trivium and quadrivium, we have moved on to the "ventivium" or "trentivium." Today, long lists of subjects proliferate in all grades, and within them, the topics covered grow ever broader. During the bicentennial, new subjects are created to pay tribute to national heroes, and when studies show rising rates of pregnancy or bullying among teenagers, others are created to "tackle the problems." When traffic accidents increase, subjects appear that seek to "reduce accidents on the country's roads." When industrialists apply pressure—and they certainly do—their wishes are granted, and entire areas with subjects are created in every grade to promote "business entrepreneurship." And occasionally, subjects appear to learn about the adjustments to the National Constitution or Bolívar's role in Latin American history, the Chair of Peace, among many others. This is the logic of extension and the principle of succession, gradualness, and accumulation, so inherent and characteristic of traditional education, to which Davidov (1987: 151) referred.

In terms of the hierarchy of content, the Middle Ages had a great advantage and clarity. It was a matter—they believed at the time—of selecting the seven liberal arts (language, reason, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The study of these would provide the general knowledge necessary before addressing specialized subjects for the professions. Therefore, the thesis underlying the trivium and quadrivium is very clear and solid from a pedagogical point of view: mastery of the main liberal arts must be guaranteed before addressing specialized subjects in the professions.

On the contrary, today we know that the vast majority of students upon arriving at universities in Latin America cannot find macro ideas in short paragraphs, much less read contextually or critically. Even so, teachers receive them with various articles and books to read during the first month. And for the second month, they require students who have enormous difficulty writing a few sentences in a complete, fluent, and coherent manner to write complete and original essays. Six hundred years ago, from a pedagogical point of view, educators had a clearer understanding of the problem!

Information is either in the brain or it isn't. For this reason, information evaluation models can only conclude that the answer is right or wrong. If we ask a young person about the chemical symbol for sodium chloride, for example, they simply either know or don't know the answer. Something similar will happen if we ask about the date of the discovery of America, the conjugation of the English verb "to be," or the author of Don Quixote. Information is either available or not available. There is no middle ground or partial answer. It's black or white, right or wrong, true or false. On the contrary, assessing development requires determining the student's current level of achievement. It involves characterizing the progress and aspects that remain to be achieved. Development is necessarily assessed by levels. Hence, a development-centered education must prioritize depth over breadth, as it must ensure increasingly higher levels of proficiency.

A very clear example of assessment by levels of increasing complexity is PISA, which establishes five levels of achievement in its language test. Let's look at the case that governed PISA in the area of ​​reading comprehension until 2006, since in 2009 an additional level was introduced:

• Level 1: Fragmented reading. Information that is timely, disconnected, and decontextualized. It doesn't allow for understanding the topic, much less the central ideas.
• Level 2: Direct inference. Explicit literal information indicated in the text.
• Level 3: General inference. Integrate disparate information. Understand relationships between different parts to arrive at the most general ideas in the text.
• Level 4: Deep reading. Locate implicit information and grasp nuances in texts.
• Level 5: Critical reading. In-depth reading of texts using diverse sources that are verified and formulating hypotheses that are validated or rejected.
• Level 6: Expert reading.

The above means that the PISA test assesses the level of proficiency achieved by students in consolidating their skills in science, mathematics, and reading. In the case of the latter, it's not that more information is added for each level, but rather that, starting from the reading itself, the extent of students' interpretation is observed. This means that, when addressing reading comprehension from a competency perspective, what PISA seeks to assess is what level of skill development a student or group of students is at. And if it is assessed that way, it should be taught that way. According to this approach, reading should be taught at least five times. A traditional approach assumes that reading is either acquired or not acquired; that information is either known or not known; and that knowledge is either possessed or not possessed. The traditional understanding of the educational process is absolutist, cumulative, gradual, and binary. Reading from a competency perspective occurs in levels of increasing complexity, as is human development.

Professor Carlos Vasco rightly proposes something similar for Colombia, indicating five levels of advancement in the development of a competency: novice, practicing, competent, proficient, and expert (Vasco, 2012). We conducted a similar analysis more than three decades ago, and this led us, in the case of the Alberto Merani Institute, to create a system based on levels of increasing complexity. This original pedagogical work model was created to foster student autonomy and the consolidation of their competencies.

This model prioritizes in-depth study over broadening the content. In this sense, it embodies the postulate of Dialoguing Pedagogy, which advocates the need to focus educational work on the development of essential tools, attitudes, and competencies in the various areas of knowledge, as opposed to the privilege traditional schools give to information and standards and the expansion of singular knowledge (De Zubiría, 2006b).

At the beginning of each term, students receive a comprehensive guide or text outlining the objectives, content, required exercises, sequence, and criteria for applying each level in that subject. This way, both the teacher and the student have material that establishes the guidelines for the term's work in advance.

The system proposes dividing the topics to be covered in each subject during the term into levels of increasing complexity. The first consists of a general presentation of the topic in connection with the students' prior ideas; the second focuses on basic learning of the essential competencies and concepts; the third delves deeper into one of the topics covered; and the fourth emphasizes the production or transfer of the learning achieved.

Classes are divided into four sessions: a lecture and general presentation by the teacher, questions based on the student's previous work, a teamwork session with classmates, and an assessment.

Prioritizing depth over breadth means that very few subjects need to be covered, and within each of them, very few topics. For this to be possible, a very clear, complete, professional, in-depth, and hierarchical selection of the essential topics to be addressed in the classroom is necessary. Competencies offer an exceptional opportunity to select those essential and indispensable topics in each of the areas.