Envisioning the NRC's Framework and the NGSS: Implications for Application in STEM classroom environments
A Framework for K-12 Science Education (the Framework) proposed by the National Research Council helps situate educators in ways to present curriculum to STEM students that aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This blog post is intended for STEM educators, myself included, to focus our attention on ways that STEM students engage, examine, and explore scientific investigation and design apart from traditional science instruction. The vision of the Framework aligned with the NGSS “begin(s) with the students by asking questions and constructing explanations as they use the three dimensions (scientific and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and cross-cutting concepts) together to make sense of phenomena and design solutions.” (pg 81) Educators are challenged to instead of beginning presenting terminology and key facts at the forefront of their STEM lessons to design lesson plans that highly incorporate student learning that leads to student inquiry, complete engagement, and sparks interest. “Investigation and design may take a number of different paths, but each path [should] take students in search of finding evidence to support their explanations and/or a solution.” (pg 83). The article beseeched 21st century teachers to transition from utilizing traditional science classroom activities such as, lectures, tests, lab reports based off the scientific method sequence, initiate-response-evaluate (IRE) teaching method, seatwork, and textbook reading to using the following science investigation and engineering design activities. The chapter listed the following “select features of investigation and design” pedagogy: student access to relevant materials and resources, engagement in arguments based off evidence, opportunities to obtain data and information, participation in sensemaking discussions, embedded assessments, opportunities to ask questions, moments to learn amongst collaborative group work along with teacher guidance. In this new three-dimensional type of student learning requires students to make sense of their environment, the natural and engineered world. In this new Framework vision, teacher-guided student inquiry for understanding is favored over lecturing.
STEM Classroom Examples of Student Experiences during Investigation and Design
Student experiences during investigation and design are focused by the Framework through the lens of science investigation and engineering design. The five following features are presented with classroom examples of future STEM student experiences in my classroom. First, students should be provided opportunities to ‘make sense of phenomena and design challenges.” Students experience this feature when they “develop and ask questions about the causes of phenomena” The next feature that students experience should be opportunities to gather and analyze data and information. Students experience this learning feature when they are able to “analyze data and evaluate information for evidence.” Thirdly, students should experience opportunities to “construct explanations and [to] design solutions. Classroom activities that enhance learning using this feature include providing students with opportunities to “develop arguments for how the evidence supports or refutes an explanation for the causes of phenomena.” The fourth student learning feature used during scientific investigation and design calls for students to “communicate reasoning to [their] self and others.” When students “develop models and artifacts to communicate [their] reasoning,” they experience this science learning feature. Finally the fifth feature, “connect[ing] learning through multiple contexts” focuses educators on providing students with experiences that extend beyond their STEM class in ways that help them “apply [their] learning to make sense of phenomena beyond the classroom.”
STEM Classroom Examples of Use of Discourse in an Engineering Unit
The chapter’s reading continues with expressing how major “productive discourse” is in helping students make sense out of central scientific concepts. Productive discourse is known as scientific talk and its goal is presented as being “to foster uptake of students’ ideas.” (pg 98) Uptake is further defined as being the process where “a student puts forth an idea and other students address that idea instead of offering a new one.” (pgs 98-99) With productive discourse, students push one another to provide evidence of their scientific claims, thus ushering in better clarification while elaboration of facts over opinions is learned to be valued. “These interactions between everyday and scientific ideas, as well as connections between scientific concepts and design decisions, are emergent co-constructions as students engage in scientific reasoning and engineering design.” (pg 99) The authors note that productive discourse is important for engineering units because it fosters student discussion in ways that allow students to learn how to respond to the ideas of others in a professional manner. “This type of interaction requires that teachers and students establish norms that guide both general behaviors - how students interact physically in groups and socially through talk and discipline - specific behaviors, defined in science in part through science and engineering practices.” (pg 99) Having students co-construct classroom disciplinary norms helps in formulating project rubrics for designing, engineering, and constructing prototypes, models, and scientific text manuscripts. Creating student discourse about how projects and assignments are scored helps them to understand what will be required of them. Lastly, productive discourse leading to the establishment of student derived classroom disciplinary norms should include “the types of questions that science and engineering do and do not explore, how the community helps monitor the quality and accuracy of findings.” (pg 99)
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