This document summarizes key principles for selecting and organizing content for teaching. It discusses: 1. Guiding principles for selection including validity, significance, balance, interest, and feasibility. Content should meet standards, interests, developmental levels, and be comprehensive but not superficial. 2. Cognitive content includes facts, concepts, principles, theories and laws. It emphasizes conceptual understanding over isolated facts. Subject matter also includes skills and affective elements. 3. Skills involve thinking, such as critical and creative thinking, and problem solving. Affective elements refer to teaching values and attitudes through modeling good behavior and reinforcing it, in addition to the cognitive explanation of values.

1. Republic of the Philippines
MINDANAO STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
Fatima, General Santos City
SELECTION AND
ORGANIZATION OF CONTENT
Presented by: Do-ong, Eunice P.
Presented to: Prof. Salome
France- Sestina
ED 107 (MTH 10:30-12:00)

2. Learning Objectives: Upon the successful completion of
this lesson, students will be able to:
Enumerate and explain the guiding principles in the selection and
organization of content.
Explain the qualities in the selection and organization of content.
Enumerate and explain the content of cognitive, skill and affective
elements.

3. Guiding Principles in the Selection and Organization of Content
1. Observe the following qualities in the selection and
organization of content:
 Validity- Teaching the content that we ought to teach according to
national standards explicit in the Basic Education Curriculum; to realize
the goals and objectives of the course as laid down in BEC.
 Significance- What we teach should respond to the needs and interests
of the learners.
 Balance- Content includes not only facts but also concepts and values.
 Self-sufficiency- Content fully covers the essentials. Learning content
is not “mile-wide-and-inch-deep”.
 Interest- Teacher considers the interest of the learners, their
developmental stages and cultural and ethnic background.

4.  Utility- Answers the question, “Will this content is of the use to the
learners?
 Feasibility- The content is feasible in the sense that essential content
can be covered in the amount of time available for instruction.
2. At the base of the structure of cognitive subject matter content are
facts. We can’t do away with facts but be sure to go beyond facts by
constructing an increasingly richer and more sophisticated knowledge
base and by working out a process of conceptual understanding.
Few ways by which we can help our students (Ormrod, 2000):
 Providing opportunities for experimentation- Encourages the students
to come up with their own procedure and end up discovering something new.
 Presenting the ideas of others- Present ideas of others
who worked hard over the years to explain phenomena.

5.  Emphasizing conceptual understanding- The emphasis goes
beyond facts. We integrate and correlate facts, concepts, and values in a
meaningful manner.
Specific strategies that can help teachers to develop
conceptual understanding in their students (Ormrod, 2000):
1. Organize units around a few core ideas and themes
2. Explore each topic in depth
3. Explain how new ideas relate to students’ own experiences and to
things they have previously learned.
4. Show students- through the things we say, give or use- that
conceptual understanding of subject matter is far more important than
knowledge of isolated facts
5. Ask students to teach to others what they have learned
6. Promote dialogue by encouraging our students to
talk about what they learn
7. Using authentic activities by incorporating lessons
into “real world” activities.

6. 3. Subject matter is an integration of cognitive, skill, and
affective elements.
The Structure of Subject Matter Content
COGNITIVE (Ormrod, 2000)
Fact- an idea or action that can be verified (e.g., names and dates of
important activities, population of the Philippines).
Concept- a categorization of events, places etc. (e.g., the concept
furniture includes objects like tables, chairs, beds, desks and etc.)
Principle- relationship(s) between among facts and
concepts (e.g., The number of children in the family is related to the
average scores on nationally standardized achievement tests for those
children.)
Hypotheses- educated guesses about relationships
(principles)

7. Theories- set of facts, concepts and principles that regulate human
underlying unobservable mechanisms that regulate human learning,
development and behavior. They explain why principles are true. (e.g.,
Piaget’s theory on cognitive development)
Laws- firmly established, thoroughly tested principle or theory (e.g.,
Thorndike’s law of conservation and energy)
SKILLS
Thinking Skills- refer to the skills beyond recall and comprehension.
They are the application of what was learned, synthesis, evaluation and
critical and creative thinking.
Divergent thinking- enables you to generate a diverse
assortment of possible solutions to a problem. From the diverse
possible solutions, you arrive at the best possible
answer. It includes:

8.  Fluent thinking- Generation of ideas, thought flow is rapid
 Flexible thinking- Variety of thoughts in the kinds of ideas generated
 Original thinking- Differs from what’s gone before
 Elaborative thinking- Embellishes on previous ideas or plans. It uses
prior knowledge to expand and add upon things and ideas (Torres, 1994).
Convergent thinking- Narrowing down from many possible thoughts to
end up on a single test thought or an answer to problem
Problem Solving- Problem solving is made easier when the problem is
well-defined.
Techniques to better define the problem (Ormrod, 2000):
 Break large problems into well- defined
 Distinguish information needed
 Identify techniques to find needed information

9. We can also solve the problem by the use of an algorithm (means
following specific, step-by-step instructions) and heuristics (a general
problem-solving strategy for a solution that sometimes leads to an
effective solution and sometimes does not).
Metaphoric thinking- Uses analogical thinking, a figure of speech
where a word is used in manner different from its ordinary designation to
suggest or imply parallelism or similarity.
Critical thinking- It involves evaluating information or arguments in
terms of their accuracy and worth (Beyer, 1985). It takes a variety of forms:
 Verbal reasoning- Evaluating the persuasive techniques
found in oral and written language.
 Argument analysis- Discriminate reasons that do and
do not support particular conclusions

10.  Hypothesis testing- Evaluating the value and data and research
results in terms of the methods used to obtain them.
 Decision making- Weighing the pros and cons of each proposed
alternative approach.
Creative thinking- “producing something that is both original and
worthwhile (Stenberg, 2003). For this thinking, we must develop:
 Awareness- The ability to notice the attributes of things in the
environment so as to build a knowledge base that is the beginning of
all other forms of creative thinking.
 Curiosity- The ability and inclination to wonder
about things and mentally explore the new, novel, unique
ideas
 Imagination- The ability to speculate about things
that are not necessarily based on reality
 Fluency- The ability to produce a large quantity of
ideas

11.  Flexibility- The ability to look at things from several different
perspectives or view points
 Originality- the ability to produce new, novel, unique ideas
 Elaboration- the ability to add on to an idea; to give details; build
groups of related ideas or expand on ideas
 Perseverance- The ability to keep trying to find an answer; to see a
task through completion
Manipulative Skills- The learning of these manipulative skills begin
with naïve manipulation and ends up in expert and precise manipulation.
(AFFECTIVE) Interactive attitudes and values
The cognitive dimension—when we teach the value of honesty we ask the
ff. questions: what is meant by honesty? Why do I have to be honest? The
affective dimension—you have to feel something towards honesty. You
have to be moved towards honesty as preferable to dishonesty. The
behavioral dimension—you lead an honest life.

12. How can we teach values?
 By deutero-learning. Your students learn by being exposed to the
situation, by acquainting himself with a setting, by following models,
pursuing inspiration and copying behavior. YOUR CRITICAL ROLE AS
MODELS IN AND OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM CANNOT BE OVER-
EMPHASIZED.
 By positively reinforcing good behavior.
 By teaching the cognitive component of values in the
classroom.
SOURCE: Corpuz R., Salandanan G.,
Principles of Teaching 1,
Lorimar Publishing, Inc., 2008

13. THANK YOU
and
GOD BLESS!!!