use of schema.org#about to reference the subject of educational resources

[GerbenKD]

Not sure whether this is exactly the right place for this, but here goes.

I'm aligning educational content to different curriculum frameworks using LRMI. I'm going back and forth between using direct properties (teaches, educationalLevel, etc.) and AlignmentObjects. One aspect in particular confuses me a bit and that is the educational subject.

In the scope notes on the educationalSubject alignment type it is mentioned that schema.org#about should be used for particular topics, not the more general educational subject. However, in the smart publisher guide you mention that the schema.org about property should be used to describe the subject of an educational resource.

Since the guide has been updated more recently than the scope note, am I right to assume that the use of the about property has changed?

[philbarker]

This is a reasonable place to ask.

One part is certain: use the direct properties rather than AlignmentObjects with the same alignment type, so use teaches and educationLevel. But you do need to use an AlignmentObject for educational subject.

There is definitely some conceptual overlap in the coverage of teaches, educationalSubject and about, and the degree of overlap, or even the applicability of some of the properties, varies depending on context (e.g education system, formal/informal education). This might help: in many education systems there exist curriculum standards or frameworks detailing what students should learn at various stages of their education: each stages is an educationalLevel. These frameworks are normally divided into broad areas, e.g. Mathematics, History, Sciences, Languages -- with native and other languages being treated differently, and some subjects are formulated in a way that doesn't really exist outside of the school system ( e.g. in Scotland we have RMPS, religious, moral and philosophy studies). Typically in secondary school each of these will have dedicated teachers. Each of these broad divisions can be referenced by an alignment with type educationalSubject. Under these broad subjects the curriculum standards or frameworks will often list learning objectives / attainment targets or similar which can be referenced using the teaches property. Finally the about property can indicate topicality, which may be something under the educationalSubject.

Example, for https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/ztqmhyc with reference to the National Curriculum for England and Wales [This curriculum is a PDF doc with no numbering of the subjects or attainment targets, which makes it difficult to reference the details]:

• Educational Level: Key Stage 3
• Educational Subject: Numeracy and Mathematics
• teaches: "use integer powers and associated real roots (square, cube and higher), recognise powers of 2, 3, 4, 5 and distinguish between exact representations of roots and their decimal approximations"
• about: mathematics, arithmetic, exponentiation

I know that sometimes a resource covers wider scope so it teaches all of the Educational Subject, and the name of education subject may be the same as about keyword, but often the distinctions still exists, for example the Educational Subject of History as defined for the Scottish National Curriculum has different contents to that of the English National Curriculum (), and about History would cover both.

Hope that helps.

[GerbenKD]

Thanks for your very quick and elaborate reply. This definitely helps. So given your examples, I wonder why there is no direct property educationalSubject (since the other alignment types have direct properties)? I remember reading some discussions in other places that it would be too similar to the about property, or is there more to it?

[philbarker]

So given your examples, I wonder why there is no direct property educationalSubject (since the other alignment types have direct properties)?

I wondered the same when writing that reply! I chair the LRMI Working Group, so it'll go on the agenda at some point when we have time. You are right that similarity/overlap with about has been one factor.

[GerbenKD]

Thanks for the answers so far. I actually have related question about schema.org:about, which I would use for topicality. I would like to say something about that alignment relation, like the creator, or other properties. There is no equivalent alignmentType right? So what would be a good approach there? Use educationalSubject in this case?

[philbarker]

@GerbenKD you could use an AlignmentObject for that. We suggest a limited vocabulary for alignmentType and in principle you could use your own extended vocabulary with any concept you define. This would have limited interoperability with other users, but for internal use it would be fine. On the other hand, you are hitting a general problem with the LRMI/schema.org model, and with RDF in general, which the problem of making statements about a statement. You might want to investigate more general solutions such as named graphs and RDF-star.

[acka47]

It might be of interest wrt this discussion: In the well advanced draft of AMB (Allgemeines Metadatenprofil für Bildungsressourcen = General metadata Profile for Educational Resources), we are using about with two different educational subject classifications we publish as SKOS files (Higher Ed subject classification and Schulfächer-Systematik). I think we decided against educationalSubject some years ago because of the rather complex modelling and because we don't need this approach when the target frameworks are represented in SKOS.