ABOUT BARLEY EDUCATION ASSOCIATES, LLC

Barley Education Associates was started in the mid-1990s by a group of master teachers in western Massachusetts dedicated to developing the three-dimensional (3-D) model of curriculum, teaching, and learning, starting with science. The 3-D paradigm focuses on teaching all students in the classroom question-based creative problem solving and critical thinking. Its central proposal is that there are three categories of learning outcomes: content, skill, and transferable concept. The 3-D model includes the 2-D inquiry model that combines content and skill as well as the 1-D model of rote learning.

Barley has combined academic research with action research in the classroom to develop rigorous conceptual structures for K-12 science and math education, classroom materials for teaching conceptual understanding, associated professional development materials, and sophisticated web databases that enable teachers to differentiate their instruction to student needs and interests while maintaining a clear focus on conceptual understanding and inquiry-based investigations.  In the early 2000s Barley began developing and publishing lessons, units, and courses for classroom teachers through its online database. The key to making the database useful to teachers searching for the right lesson at the right time for the right student for the right purpose is its menus of selection criteria, developed with the help of over 200 practicing teachers. Barley then expanded into micro-publishing other teachers’ creative lessons by starting The Curriculum Cooperative (CCo-op; “see-see-co-op”). Membership is earned by submitting a lesson to the database. Members share lessons among themselves and the CCo-op sells site licenses to its database of lessons, access to their authors, and the expertise of its members and mentors (all new members are assigned an online member-mentor).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Venezuela to American expatriates, Dr. Leighton lived in Barbados, Beirut, and Geneva before emigrating to the United States as a college freshman. He began his career teaching technology and physics in a college-town high school in western Massachusetts. In 1980, continuing to teach full time, he earned a master’s from the University of Massachusetts Amherst for developing a 7–12 textbook on applying the concept of energy transformation to homesite renewable-energy systems in project-based, multi-tracked classes. It was informed by both his science background and living off-grid for 17 years with his wife and their three children. Besides raising their own food, he and his family erected a wind generator and used a battery system for electricity, a wood furnace for heat, solar panels for hot water, and citizen-band radio for communication. The effectiveness of the concept-based and hands-on curriculum led to his doctoral research, starting in the mid-1980s, on the nature of conceptual understanding: “What are the other universal and timeless STEM concepts that, like energy, transfer to questions that excite students across phenomena near and far?”  

His 1994 dissertation included the first draft of his taxonomy of objective science concepts and, before the advent of the internet, the plans for what have become the online teachers’ Curriculum Library and the Curriculum Cooperative. As one of the few experts on conceptual understanding, he was heavily involved in developing the first set of national science standards, published in 1996. Still in the classroom full time, he continued his research for the next 30 years across 12 schools in New England, teaching science, math, and technology from second grade to Advanced Placement to community college. Along the way, he has been a department chair, acting district curriculum director, academic dean, senior researcher at the Education Development Center in Boston, and founder of the Center for Concept-Based Education in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he coined the term three-dimensional curriculum, adopted by the 2013 Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Throughout, he was a national professional development provider, working with some 500 school districts across the country, and a developer and writer for the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), a state requirement for students to receive a high school diploma.  

Each venue served a purpose in the development of what is now a comprehensive, practical, classroom-tested K–12 model of three-dimensional classroom practice. It is shaped by three radical innovations: a taxonomy of transferable concepts, an online Curriculum Library indexed to capture students’ curiosity, and the Curriculum Cooperative, which transforms the STEM teaching profession.