The National Research Council last week released a report that presents a new framework for K-12 science education and identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school.
The new framework is designed to help students gradually deepen their knowledge of core ideas in four disciplinary areas over multiple years of school, rather than acquire shallow knowledge of many topics. And it strongly emphasizes the practices of science – helping students learn to plan and carry out investigations, for example, and to engage in argumentation from evidence.
The overarching goal of the framework, the committee said, is to ensure that by the end of 12th grade, all students have some appreciation of the beauty and wonder of science, the capacity to discuss and think critically about science-related issues, and the skills to pursue careers in science or engineering if they want to do so — outcomes that existing educational approaches are ill-equipped to achieve.
Here’s the outline of the framework:
- Scientific and Engineering Practices
- Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)
- Developing and using models
- Planning and carrying out investigations
- Analyzing and interpreting data
- Using mathematics and computational thinking
- Constructing explanations (for science) and designing
solutions (for engineering) - Engaging in argument from evidence
- Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
- Crosscutting Concepts
- Patterns
- Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation
- Scale, proportion, and quantity
- Systems and system models
- Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation
- Structure and function
- Stability and change
- Disciplinary Core Ideas
- Physical Sciences
- PS 1: Matter and its interactions
- PS 2: Motion and stability: Forces and interactions
- PS 3: Energy
- PS 4: Waves and their applications in technologies for information transfer
- Life Sciences
- LS 1: From molecules to organisms: Structures and processes
- LS 2: Ecosystems: Interactions, energy, and dynamics
- LS 3: Heredity: Inheritance and variation of traits
- LS 4: Biological evolution: Unity and diversity
- Earth and Space Sciences
- ESS 1: Earth’s place in the universe
- ESS 2: Earth’s systems
- ESS 3: Earth and human activity
- Engineering, Technology, and the Applications of Science
- ETS 1: Engineering design
- ETS 2: Links among engineering, technology, science, and society
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