Starting in 2007, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) developed and published the Common Core standards, laying out the content areas in English and Math considered essential knowledge for the K-12 curriculum (1). The intention was to incorporate best practices and standardize the various state standards that were then current, creating a coherent set of national standards. Following this, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences developed a similar set of standards for scientific disciplines, published in 2011 as the Framework for K-12 Science Education (2). The framework presents a detailed description of essential content in the disciplines of Life Science, Earth/Space Science, Physical Science, and Engineering. As described on their website, “The Framework provides a sound, evidence-based foundation for standards by drawing on current scientific research—including research on the ways students learn science effectively—and identifies the science all K–12 students should know.“
A key aspect of the Framework is the emphasis on scientific practices as opposed to a focus on scientific facts; that is, students should be as attentive to the process as to the content. Expressed another way, the process is an integral part of the content. The Framework is available as a download from the National Academy of Science through the National Academies Press (3). The document presents the essential ideas for all students in each discipline as a set of “Grade Band Endpoints” for end of grade 2, end of grade 5, end of grade 8, and end of grade 12. The Framework does not include content areas intended for advanced or AP level courses.
Following the release of the Framework, the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science created the Next Generation Science Standards* in a process managed by Achieve.org (4). This work, later transferred to WestEd, comprised a more succinct set of learning goals for each of the age groups described above. This set of standards reads as a set of learning outcomes, without a specific roadmap to reach these goals. In fact, the NGSS can seem to be an oddly specific and somewhat arbitrary set of goals, if one is not familiar with the K-12 Framework as background. That statement is not intended as criticism, but as clarification for those who read the NGSS without familiarity with the Framework.
Development of the K-12 Science Framework, and the subsequent Next Generation Science Standards, has brought a measure of uniformity to the content areas of physical science for all grades. In general, in a world where all information is available at our fingertips, it is necessary that students:
– learn how to apply science knowledge to their interactions with the world:
– understand how this information is attained and continues to evolve; and
– have the opportunity to develop a big-picture sense of how this all fits together.
Action Science seeks to create this coherent picture; a through-line of our knowledge of the physical world, together with ample opportunity for a genuine hands-on experience to seek evidence for and provide experience in the material presented. Science is not a collection of facts, but a process of learning – both for the individual student and for society as a whole. Intended for an audience beginning in 6th grade, Action Science covers all of the Physical Science material in the K-12 framework and the NGSS up through the 8th grade expectations, along with a significant amount of the material expected through 12th grade. As such, this set of texts can be the standard physical science texts through 10th grade. Of the additional material specified in the guiding documents through grade 12, much of it requires more sophisticated mathematical skills and/or more developed abstract thinking skills than can be expected of students prior to 11th grade. That material is therefore left to discipline-specific texts and advanced science courses.
*NGSS, Next Generation Science Standards, and the NGSS logo are registered trademarks of WestEd. Neither WestEd nor the lead states and partners that developed the Next Generation Science Standards were involved in the production of this product, and do not endorse it.