A Framework for k-12 Science Education And

Next Generation Science Standards

Presentation by Helen Quinn (Chair,NRC Board on Science Education)

for the Nevada State Board of Education

Next Generation Science Standards

• Stage 1 NRC Framework –July 2011

• Stage 2 Achieve and 26 State teams

Next Gen Standards – released April 2013

Stage 3 State Adoptions

Stage 4 Implementation

A Framework for K-12 Science Education

Product of National Research Council (Board on Science Education) study

9 scientists (all NAS members, 2 Nobel )

9 education experts (research and practice)

Public input on preliminary draft

www.nap.edu free to download

Framework Standards

Instruction

Curricula

Assessments

TeacherPreparation

and development

Framework task

• What are the most important ideas in science for k-12 students?

• Things every student needs to know something about or be able to do

International survey gave no fixed pattern of what is taught and when!

Three Dimensions

• Scientific and engineering practices

• Crosscutting concepts

• Disciplinary core ideas

Demands instruction that is 3 dimensional

• NGSS –standards as performance tasks that involve all 3

Goals of the Framework

• Coherent investigation of core ideas across multiple years of school

• More seamless blending of practices with core ideas and crosscutting concepts

• Attention to aspects of engineering that support science learning and science application

NGSSS closely based on Framework

**Scientific and Engineering Practices

1. Asking questions and defining problems

2. Developing and using models

3. Planning and carrying out investigations

4. Analyzing and interpreting data

5. Using mathematics and computational thinking

6. Developing explanations and designing solutions

7. Engaging in argument from evidence

8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

** Discourse intensive!

*Crosscutting Concepts

1. Patterns

2. Cause and effect: mechanism and explanation

3. Scale, proportion and quantity

4. Systems and system models

5. Energy and matter: flows, cycles and conservation

6. Structure and function

7. Stability and change

*All require models!

What is a core idea? –for k-12

• Broad importance across disciplines

or key in a single discipline• Tool for understanding or investigating more

complex ideas and solving problems• Relates to student life experiences or

connected to key societal or personal concerns

• Teachable and learnable over multiple grades with increasing sophistication

Next Generation Science

NGSS task

• Create a multi-state network

• Develop standards based on framework

• Standards as performance expectations blending practices, cross-cutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas (dci)

• Engage science educators

• Form broad state teams and implementation plans

Lead State Partners

Multiple rounds of review

• 7 times for state teams

• AAPT, NSTA etc invited to review parts

• 2 times for public

• Real changes made based on input

Example

Middle School – Matter and its Interactions

1. Performance expectations

2. Framework basis

3. Connections

Example:MS MAtter

Implementation

• Requires multiple years of work

• New coalitions forming to support the work

• Colleges and Universities have a role to play –changes in teacher preparation

AND in science courses

Building Capacity (BCSSE)

State level science ed leadership teams

• 40+ state teams active

• Plans for adoption and implementation

• Share ideas on changes, challenges and opportunities

No state need do it all alone!

What changes?

An evolution not a revolution

Less

• Detailed vocabulary

• Disconnected lessons

• Rote problems

• Teacher lecture

More

• Student discourse and argumentation

• Student developed MODELS

• Open ended problem solving

Multidimensioned performance expectations

• Stress what students can do with knowledge, not memorized knowledge

• Different habits of mind required

willing to undertake familiar practices

in familiar knowledge domain

to tackle unfamiliar problems

What comes next

• State decisions on adoption

• Professional development

• New or revised curriculum materials

• New Assessments

A multiyear agenda, aligned to that already

underway for math and language arts Common Core

Standards are not curriculum

• Knowledge in pieces, even when given as performance expectations

• Curriculum must be designed to be coherent, sequenced and connected

• States and Districts will share efforts and materials developed with network

Overlap with common core

• Student discourse

• Reasoned thinking

• Argument from evidence

Central themes across curriculum

CCSS ELA, Math and NGSS Practices

Argument

• Any argument involves a claim, evidence and reasoning

• Evidence may support or refute claim

• What differs across disciplines is

what counts as evidence

Establish a common school and classroom culture of respectful discourse

An example of new emphasis

• Practice: Developing and Using models

• Cross-cutting concept:

Systems and system models

• Not just those given to students by others, but those they construct to make their mental models more explicit

IQST Assessment: Modeling Smell

•Lesson 15: student models– 75% of students create a particle model, 25% a mixed model– 68% of students include odor particles that are moving in straight

lines until they collide into each other; 32% include both odor and air

Your teacher opened a jar that contained a substance that had an odor. Imagine you had a very powerful microscope that allowed to see the odor up really, really close. What would you see?

Models make thinking visible and explicit

• What system is being studied?

• What (artificial) boundary delimits the system under study?

• What are its components or subsystems?

• How do the components interact?

• What (matter or energy) flows into or out of system?

• What forces act across boundary?

Model building and observation

As in art, so in science, the attempt to represent drives to more careful observation of what is being represented

Decisions must be made:

what to foreground,

what to leave out

how to revise…

Models in science and engineering

• Diagrams and charts with key• Mathematical models (next slide)• Concept maps• System models (diagrams plus lists, labels….)• Simulations• Flowcharts ……

Models often contain analogies (eg heart as a pump)

Models in mathematics

• A graphical relationship between variables

• An equation connecting multiple variables

• A map showing distributions or quantities

• Statistical distributions and probability relationships

How science understanding develops

• Multiple opportunities to hear and use science ideas (develop and refine models and explanations, solve design problems)

• Rich contexts – desire and opportunity to engage and

contribute

• Appropriate supports, including

acceptance of flawed (non-scientific) language and emerging (grade level target) understandings

NGSS supports deeper learning

• Fewer topics

• More connections

• More building on prior knowledge

• More student modeling and argumentation

• More applications through engineering design

Research shows these shifts are needed