Research verifies the effectiveness of many of the curriculum and instruction initiatives implemented to improve student achievement.  Yet, many schools still have not reached their achievement goals. The scholarly work of Michael Fullan, author of Leading a Culture of Change, offers insight: “Too many piecemeal projects with superficial implementation create overload, fragmentation, incoherence and confusion.”  A systemic approach for improvement is needed in order for schools to improve.

For the past 100 years, traditional instruction has centered on topics and facts associated with a field of study.  Erickson (1998) maintains that we must engage students beyond the level of memorizing individual facts around a topic, if we are to raise standards of performance.  She has used the phrase, “concept-based instruction” to describe this way of organizing instructional units.  Additionally, Guthrie, Wigfield, and Perencevich (2004) indicate that a deeper conceptual understanding seems to work as a catalyst for motivation and engagement, therefore motivating adolescents to read. 

Brooks & Brooks (1993, p. 46) claim that, “Much of traditional education breaks wholes into parts and then focuses separately on each part.  But many students are unable to build concepts and skills from part to wholes.”  This is where a curriculum unit developed around a major concept or idea, and builds related skills and facts around and toward the greater concept, will help to develop and enable comprehension and higher cognitive thought patterns.  CBI allows teachers to transform their traditional topic/fact-based classrooms from students studying isolated facts within a subject area, to a system for learning where students are learning facts through understanding concepts, essential understandings and hypotheses within and across subject areas.