New Science Framework Paves Way for Standards
With the goal of sparking big changes in K-12 science education across the country, an expert panel convened by the National Research Council today issued a framework to guide the development of new national standards in the subject.
Top priorities include promoting a greater emphasis on depth over breadth in understanding science and getting young people to continually engage in the practices of both scientific inquiry and engineering design as part of the learning process. Another goal is to promote what the panel calls greater “coherence” in the teaching of science as students progress through school, with the core scientific concepts revisited at multiple grade levels to build on prior learning and help facilitate a deeper understanding.
Now that the framework is complete, Achieve, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, will work with states and outside experts to craft a set of what’s being billed as “next generation” science standards for elementary and secondary education, expected out by fall 2012. Organizers say they hope that states from coast to coast will ultimately choose to adopt the standards to replace existing ones.
The effort comes amid strong and growing concerns about the need to improve student achievement in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—and as the 45 states that adopted common-core standards in math and English/language arts attempt to implement them.
“Many of those states are feeling, if we’re doing common things in math and English/language arts, why not in other areas?” said Helen R. Quinn, who chaired the NRC panel and is a professor emeritus of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University.
“The goal is better science education, and I would say, certainly at the early grades, more science, too,” said Ms. Quinn, who laments that the subject “has almost disappeared” at the K-3 level.
The framework is built around three major dimensions: scientific and engineering practices; cross-cutting concepts that unify the study of science and engineering; and core ideas in four disciplinary areas—physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering, technology, and the applications of science.
Funding to develop both the framework and the new standards comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. (The foundation also underwrites coverage of district and high school reform in Education Week.)
The congressionally chartered NRC issued a draft last summer, but made significant revisions in response to public feedback, though Ms. Quinn emphasized that the final product still keeps to the core agenda for revamping science education.
The National Science Teachers Association, based in Arlington, Va., issued a statement praising the framework as holding the potential to bring about “transformational changes” in science education, especially with the focus on better engaging students and bringing close attention to the practices of science.
That said, Francis Q. Eberle, the group’s executive director, cautioned that there’s plenty of work ahead to see if the framework really can spur widespread change.
“That’s the big question,” he said in an interview. “It really will depend on the ways in which it gets implemented. There are many steps: articulation into standards, then what happens for teachers, teacher preparation, for curriculum, for assessments. We’re at the beginning of a journey here.”
The NRC panel itself was mindful of those challenges.
“The committee emphasizes that greater improvements in K-12 science and engineering education will be made when all components of the system ... are aligned with the framework’s vision,” the document says.
Advances in Learning
An 18-member committee that included experts in education and science from a variety of disciplines designed the framework. It lays out the broad ideas and practices that students should learn and that are intended to serve as the foundation for the new standards.
The new science framework comes more than a de