Intellectual Conventions Versus Matters of Substance: Elementary School Students as Curriculum Theorists

Elementary school students were interviewed about substantive and conventional aspects of academic knowledge They considered the learning of intellectual conventions (spelling and methods of representing addition) less important than matters of substance (mathematical logic or facts about nature). They also viewed didactic teaching as more appropriate for matters of convention than for matters of logic and fact. These results support the theses that even young students (a) distinguish intellectual conventions from the substance of disciplines and (b) construe intellectual conventions as arbitrary (rather than logically or empirically necessary) social practices that foster communication about matters of substance. We suggest that this distinction might be accorded more attention, for example, in research on the effect of teaching practices on student motivation.