The Next Generation Science Standards:
4. Science and Engineering Practices
Professor Michael Wysession
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Washington University, St. Louis, MO
michael@seismo.wustl.edu
The Scientific Method
The scientific method is a way to ask and answer
scientific questions by making observations and doing
experiments.
The steps of the scientific method are to:
• Ask a Question
• Do Background Research
• Construct a Hypothesis
• Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
• Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
• Communicate Your Results
The Scientific Method
The scientific method is a way to ask and answer
scientific questions by making observations and doing
experiments.
The steps of the scientific method are to:
• Ask a Question
• Do Background Research
• Construct a Hypothesis
• Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
• Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
• Communicate Your Results
The Practices: Justification
An Extension of “Inquiry-Based” Learning:
Because the term “inquiry,” extensively referred to in
previous standards documents, has been interpreted over
time in many different ways throughout the science
education community, part of our intent in articulating the
practices in Dimension 1 is to better specify what is meant
by inquiry in science and the range of cognitive, social, and
physical practices that it requires.…..
The Practices: Justification
An Extension of “Inquiry-Based” Learning:
…. As in all inquiry-based approaches to science teaching,
our expectation is that students will themselves engage in
the practices and not merely learn about them secondhand.
Students cannot comprehend scientific practices, nor fully
appreciate the nature of scientific knowledge itself, without
directly experiencing those practices for themselves.
The Practices: Justification
Connection between Content and Practice:
State standards have traditionally represented Practices
and Core Ideas as two separate entities.
Observations from science education researchers have
indicated that these two dimensions are, at best, taught
separately or the Practices are not taught at all.
This is neither useful nor practical, especially given that in
the real world science and engineering is always a
combination of content and practice.
The Practices: Justification
Connection between Content and Practice:
• It is important to note that the Scientific and Engineering
Practices are not teaching strategies -- they are
indicators of achievement as well as important learning
goals in their own right.
• As such, the Framework and NGSS ensure the Practices
are not treated as afterthoughts.
• Coupling practice with content gives the learning context,
whereas practices alone are activities and content alone
is memorization.
• It is through integration that science begins to make
sense and allows student to apply the material.
The 8 Practices
The eight practices of science and engineering, the
Framework identifies as essential for all students to learn,
and describes in detail, are listed below:
1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for
engineering)
2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking
6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing
solutions (for engineering)
7. Engaging in argument from evidence
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
The Practices: Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles:
1. Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight
practices over each grade band
The Practices: Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles:
1. Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight
practices over each grade band
2. Practices grow in complexity and sophistication
across the grades
Developing and Using Models
The Practices: Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles:
1. Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight
practices over each grade band
2. Practices grow in complexity and sophistication across
the grades
3. Each practice may reflect science or engineering
The Practices: Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles:
1. Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight
practices over each grade band
2. Practices grow in complexity and sophistication across
the grades
3. Each practice may reflect science or engineering
4. Practices represent what students are expected to
do, and are not teaching methods or curriculum
The Practices: Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles:
1. Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight
practices over each grade band
2. Practices grow in complexity and sophistication across
the grades
3. Each practice may reflect science or engineering
4. Practices represent what students are expected to do,
and are not teaching methods or curriculum
5. The eight practices are not separate; they
intentionally overlap and interconnect
The Practices: Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles:
1. Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight
practices over each grade band
2. Practices grow in complexity and sophistication across
the grades
3. Each practice may reflect science or engineering
4. Practices represent what students are expected to do,
and are not teaching methods or curriculum
5. The eight practices are not separate; they intentionally
overlap and interconnect
6. Performance expectations focus on some but not all
capabilities associated with a practice
The Practices: Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles:
1. Students in grades K-12 should engage in all eight
practices over each grade band
2. Practices grow in complexity and sophistication across
the grades
3. Each practice may reflect science or engineering
4. Practices represent what students are expected to do,
and are not teaching methods or curriculum
5. The eight practices are not separate; they intentionally
overlap and interconnect
6. Performance expectations focus on some but not all
capabilities associated with a practice
7. Students need only focus on one aspect of a
practice, not the full grade or grade-band description
Developing and Using Models
Practice 1: Asking Questions
and Defining Problems
Students at any grade level should be able to ask questions
of each other about the texts they read, the features of the
phenomena they observe, and the conclusions they draw
from their models or scientific investigations.
For engineering, they should ask questions to define the
problem to be solved and to elicit ideas that lead to the
constraints and specifications for its solution.
(NRC Framework 2012, p. 56)
Practice 1: Asking Questions
and Defining Problems
Practice 2: Developing and
Using Models
Modeling can begin in the earliest grades, with students’
models progressing from concrete “pictures” and/or physical
scale models (e.g., a toy car) to more abstract
representations of relevant relationships in later grades,
such as a diagram representing forces on a particular object
in a system.
(NRC Framework, 2012, p. 58)
Practice 2: Developing and
Using Models
Practice 3: Planning and
Carrying Out Investigations
Students should have opportunities to plan and carry out
several different kinds of investigations during their K-12
years.
At all levels, they should engage in investigations that range
from those structured by the teacher—in order to expose an
issue or question that they would be unlikely to explore on
their own (e.g., measuring specific properties of
materials)—to those that emerge from students’ own
questions.
(NRC Framework, 2012, p. 61)
Practice 3: Planning and
Carrying Out Investigations
Practice 3: Planning and
Carrying Out Investigations
Practice 4: Analyzing and
Interpreting Data
Once collected, data must be presented in a form that can
reveal any patterns and relationships and that allows results
to be communicated to others.
Because raw data as such have little meaning, a major
practice of scientists is to organize and interpret data
through tabulating, graphing, or statistical analysis.
Such analysis can bring out the meaning of data—and their
relevance—so that they may be used as evidence.
Engineers, too, make decisions based on evidence that a
given design will work; they rarely rely on trial and error.
(NRC Framework, 2012, p. 61-62)
Practice 4: Analyzing and
Interpreting Data
Practice 5: Using Mathematics
and Computational Thinking
Although there are differences in how mathematics and
computational thinking are applied in science and in
engineering, mathematics often brings these two fields
together by enabling engineers to apply the mathematical
form of scientific theories and by enabling scientists to use
powerful information technologies designed by engineers.
Both kinds of professionals can thereby accomplish
investigations and analyses and build complex models,
which might otherwise be out of the question.
(NRC Framework, 2012, p. 65)
Practice 5: Using Mathematics
and Computational Thinking
Practice 6: Constructing Explanations
and Designing Solutions
The goal of science is the construction of theories that
provide explanatory accounts of the world.
A theory becomes accepted when it has multiple lines of
empirical evidence and greater explanatory power of
phenomena than previous theories….
Practice 6: Constructing Explanations
and Designing Solutions
….In engineering, the goal is a design rather than an
explanation.
The process of developing a design is iterative and
systematic, as is the process of developing an explanation
or a theory in science.
Engineers’ activities, however, have elements that are
distinct from those of scientists.
These elements include specifying constraints and criteria
for desired qualities of the solution, developing a design
plan, producing and testing models or prototypes, selecting
among alternative design features to optimize the
achievement of design criteria, and refining design ideas
based on the performance of a prototype or simulation.
(NRC Framework, 2012, p. 68-69)
Practice 6: Constructing Explanations
and Designing Solutions
Practice 7: Engaging in
Argument from Evidence
The study of science and engineering should produce a
sense of the process of argument necessary for advancing
and defending a new idea or an explanation of a
phenomenon and the norms for conducting such
arguments.
In that spirit, students should argue for the explanations
they construct, defend their interpretations of the associated
data, and advocate for the designs they propose.
(NRC Framework, 2012, p. 73)
Practice 7: Engaging in
Argument from Evidence
Practice 8: Obtaining, Evaluating,
and Communicating Information
Any education in science and engineering needs to develop
students’ ability to read and produce domain-specific text.
As such, every science or engineering lesson is in part a
language lesson, particularly reading and producing the
genres of texts that are intrinsic to science and engineering.
(NRC Framework, 2012, p. 76)
Practice 8: Obtaining, Evaluating,
and Communicating Information