Envisioning Process as Content : Toward a Renaissance Curriculum

"How will the traditional skillset of the industrial era have to be expanded for successful workers and citizens in the knowledge era? How must the traditional education process be transformed? Two cornerstones to the new system of education will be elevating the learning process to comparable standing with the content of what is learned, and making high-level thinking and learning skills, like systems thinking and collaborative learning, as important as traditional skills of reductionistic thinking and individual problem solving. These could indeed be two elements of a ′thought revolution in education."
From the Foreword by Peter M. Senge, Center for Organizational Learning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Envisioning Process as Content proposes a radical revision of curriculum, the heart and soul of teaching, too often an overlooked component of school reform and restructuring. The chapter authors of this comprehensive study, all leaders in their respective fields, establish a new framework for our learning communities that fosters a desire to see life as an intellectual and personal quest for knowledge and meaning. Teaching specific disciplines, such as language arts, math, or social studies, reinforces the all-important teaching of processes and skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, information processing, and lifelong learning. The authors explore in detail the dynamics of shifting the primary focus so that the content becomes the vehicle for teaching the process, resulting in a greater mastery of the discipline.

This volume will help you:

• Reconsider specific disciplines as vehicles for teaching processes

• Link processes and content

• Enhance student learning through process-centered teaching

• Create outcomes that ensure all students have learned to think

Envisioning Process as Content is the first volume of a trilogy addressing the curriculum needs for the 21st century. Written for school administrators, teachers, staff developers, curriculum specialists, and students and faculty of teacher education, the series provides new insight about the role of restructuring the curriculum in the school.

Arthur L.  Costa, Ed.D., is an Emeritus Professor of Education at California State University, Sacramento.  He is Co-Founder of the Institute for Habits of Mind and Co-founder of the Center for Cognitive Coaching. He served as a classroom teacher, a curriculum consultant, and an assistant superintendent for instruction in the Office of the Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools and as the director of educational programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He has made presentations and conducted workshops in all 50 states as well as on six of the seven continents            
Active in many professional organizations, Art served as president of the California Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and was the National President of Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development,  from 1988 to 1989.  He was the recipient of the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Urban Alliance in 2010.