The Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG) of the College of Education of the University of Hawaii is taking the lead in a national consortium of 2 school districts, 13 universities, 29 elementary schools, and its publisher, the University of Hawaii, to develop and disseminate a sequential and integrated curriculum in science, health, and technology for elementary schools, kindergarten through grade 6. The Developmental Approaches in Science and Health (DASH) curriculum focuses on: o teaching the basic concepts of science, health, and technology; o fostering understanding of the relationships among science, health, and technology; o developing the strategies and cognitive skills needed for using scientific, technological, and health-related knowledge; and o fostering awareness of the responsibility of citizens for insuring the appropriate uses of the knowledge and products derived from science, health, and technology. DASH offers an integrated, holistic approach to elementary science education for students. Its content is drawn from the foundational concepts of the biological, physical, and earth sciences, and it incorporates applications of these concepts in health and technology. In accord with the emerging knowledge of cognitive development, DASH content is weighted toward the applied and practical rather than the abstract and theoretical. Learning activities are carefully sequenced to anticipate the cognitive and physical development of children. For Teachers DASH will provide instructional materials that integrate science, health, and technology, alternative instructional strategies for teaching a heterogeneous populations of students, and instructional materials that require minimal preparation time and are easy to organize and manage. Twenty years of experience in developing science curricula at CRDG have provided the grounding in theory and practice on which the instructional design of DASH is based.
