![]() For years, we had talked about areas of our curriculum that could be improved, only to result in little action being taken. This year, I wanted to challenge not only myself but my team as well. Starting the ConversationĮvery year, my district mandates that each learning team (PLC) identify a specific area for growth and create a measurable goal to be met by the team. Doing so will hopefully contribute to making these pedagogical shifts less theoretical and more actionable. The intention of this post is to share how my chemistry learning team has chosen to focus on the integration and development of the science practice focusing on planning and carrying out investigations. How do I teach students how to plan an investigation? How do I teach them to think about how they might organize their data effectively? Even if I figure out how to teach these skills, what does an assessment of this look like and how might I go about grading it? These are the types of questions I have been asking myself more and more lately and it has led to some serious shifts in how I intend to plan the rest of the school year. Though lack of training may contribute to this discomfort, a large part of the issue may simply boil down to the inherent abstract nature of the practices themselves. While I don’t think it is a stretch to say few science educators would argue over the validity and importance of these practices, many educators, like myself, are seemingly left with the helpless feeling of what exactly to do with these practices when it comes to teaching and evaluating them. ![]() Such practices were said to “encompass the habits and skills that scientists and engineers use day in and day out.” 2 ![]() To accompany this paradigm shift, authors of the Framework offered a foundation that rested upon the interweaving of content and science practices. Since the release of the National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education 1 in 2011 and the subsequent Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that would follow in 2013, an increasing number of science educators have become familiar with the general idea of placing greater emphasis on science as a way of thinking rather than a body of factual knowledge. ![]()
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