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2 Guiding Assumptions and Organization of the Framework
Pages 23-38

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From page 23...
... , America's Lab Report [2] examined the role of laboratory experiences in high school science instruction, and Learning Science in Informal Environments [3]
From page 24...
... Children Are Born Investigators The research summarized in Taking Science to School [1] revealed that children entering kindergarten have surprisingly sophisticated ways of thinking about the world, based in part on their direct experiences with the physical environment, such as watching objects fall or collide and observing plants and animals [11-16]
From page 25...
... Similarly, students can engage in scientific and engineering practices beginning in the early grades. Focusing on Core Ideas and Practices The framework focuses on a limited set of core ideas in order to avoid the cover age of multiple disconnected topics -- the oft-mentioned mile wide and inch deep.
From page 26...
... Because learning progressions extend over multiple years, they can prompt educators to consider how topics are presented at each grade level so that they build on prior understanding and can support increasingly sophisticated learning. Hence, core ideas and their related learning progressions are key organizing principles for the design of the framework.
From page 27...
... However, the theories, models, instruments, and methods for collecting and displaying data, as well as the norms for building arguments from evidence, are developed collectively in a vast network of scientists working together over extended periods. As they carry out their research, scientists talk frequently with their colleagues, both formally and informally.
From page 28...
... Hence, we include both engineering practices and engineer ing core ideas in this framework. Connecting to Students' Interests and Experiences A rich science education has the potential to capture students' sense of wonder about the world and to spark their desire to continue learning about science throughout their lives.
From page 29...
... STRUCTURE OF THE FRAMEWORK Based on the guiding principles outlined above, we have created a framework -- comprised of three dimensions -- that broadly outlines the knowledge and prac tices of the sciences and engineering that all students should learn by the end of high school: Dimension 1 describes scientific and engineering practices. • Dimension 2 describes crosscutting concepts -- that is, those having applica • bility across science disciplines.
From page 30...
... Dimension 3: Disciplinary Core Ideas The continuing expansion of scientific knowledge makes it impossible to teach all the ideas related to a given discipline in exhaustive detail during the K-12 years. A Framework for K-12 Science Education 30
From page 31...
... With these ends in mind, the committee developed its small set of core ideas in science and engineering by applying the criteria listed below. Although not every core idea will satisfy every one of the criteria, to be regarded as core, each idea must meet at least two of them (though preferably three or all four)
From page 32...
... It is also informed by a recent report from the NRC on engineering education in K-12, which highlights the linkages -- which go both ways -- between learn ing science and learning engineering. Just as new science enables or sometimes demands new technologies, new technologies enable new scientific investigations, allowing scientists to probe realms and handle quanti ties of data previously inaccessible to them.
From page 33...
... These progressions do not specify grade bands because there was not enough available evidence to do so. For the disciplinary core ideas, we provide a set of grade band endpoints for each component idea that describe the developing understanding that stu dents should have acquired by the ends of grades 2, 5, 8, and 12, respectively.
From page 34...
... The idea behind these choices is not that young children cannot reason abstractly or imagine unseen things but that their capacity to do so in a scientific context needs to be developed with opportunities presented over time. There is ample opportunity to develop scientific thinking, argumenta tion, and reasoning in the context of familiar phenomena in grades K-2, and that is the experience that will best support science learning across the grades.
From page 35...
... 5. National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council.
From page 36...
... . Science College Board Standards for College Success.
From page 37...
... 24. National Research Council.


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