A National Academies committee has begun a two-year study aimed at creating a framework for developing new national standards for science education. The committee will evaluate evidence to determine how well standards-based educational reform has worked, including the redesign of Advanced Placement courses by the College Board. It will seek to identify which core ideas in the life, physical, earth and applied sciences should be included, as well as which “cross-cutting ideas,” such as casual reasoning, evaluating, using evidence and mathematization, which is the use of math to represent relationships in nature.

The study’s goals include identifying and prioritizing small sets of core principles in each of the science disciplines, and determining how disciplinary and cross-cutting ideas intersect at grades 4, 8 and 12.

Filed under: K-12 Education News

Tags: Research, Research on Learning, Science