Spiral Curriculum
“A spiral curriculum is one in which there is an iterative revisiting of topics…”
Content in a spiral curriculum increases in complexity over time, building upon previous iterations, such that learners ‘loop back’ to related ideas at higher and higher levels of comprehension.
- Revisiting topics/content
- Increasing levels of complexity
- New learning is related to previous learning
- Competence of students increases
At the CVM, we are using the EPAs of the CBVE curriculum to build our spiral. Each EPA is a “day one” professional skill set we expect of our students, subdivided across 4 years, with each year repeating topics while adding to their complexity as we spiral up.
The spiral curricular approach reinforces content by providing continuous exposure across all four years of the program. This approach supports learning advanced content via strategic scaffolding. Students learn to synthesize clinical practices from a vast array of pre-clinical knowledge as they transition from simple to complex iterations of content.
Overall, the spiral curricular approach provides more flexibility than siloed course plans.