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Intriguing continuing conversation about what/how to teach introductory biology/science.  There were, as I heard it, three arguments presented for traditional content-based approaches, the need to be prepared for subsequent exams/requirements, the opportunity to hear about lots of different things, and the possibility that at least some of what one hears becomes embedded in the unconscious for future rediscovery/use.

For me, the problem with the first argument is that it defaults responsibiity for the educational process at any given stage to the next stage, and in turn to the next stage, and so forth, with no one taking responsibility for/having to think about the overall objective.  In addition, and even more importantly, it encourages students to believe that education is a process of accepting judgements of what is important made by other people rather than enhancing their own ability to make such judgements themselves.

The other two arguments are more interesting to me.  My sense though is that the people making them are people who already have a context within which to assimilate material presented in/by traditional curricula, and who, as a result, have a record of success in traditonal testing contexts.  To put it differently, I think every one's experience is that they learn best/most satisfyingly when material is presented in a way that allows them to personalize it, think about it, fit it into their own contexts.  Some students have more of an internal mechanism/set of resources to do this for particular bodies of material, others have less.  

What this suggests to me is that we should indeed focus more on "teaching for conceptual change," understanding that different students will have different reactions to particular context and need different supports to make it relevant to "conceptual change."  The issue isn't, I think, whether to teach "building blocks," but rather how they're taught, whether students are told what they are or encouraged to help find them for themselves.