Analysis of National and State Science Standards
The National Science Education Standards, and the North Carolina Standard Course of Study (SCS), together provide teachers with a scaffold from which to develop effective science courses. These documents are both distinct and complementary. The National Science Education Standards provides a general vision and philosophy for teaching science. By design, it provides only minimal specifics regarding the science content that students should be taught, instead focusing on the broader themes, processes and skills that science education should emphasize. The North Carolina Standard Course of Study builds on the vision of science education presented by the national standards, fleshing out in greater detail the specific scientific knowledge that students should gain over the course of their schooling. Although these documents are not perfect, they are valuable resources for teachers who hope to provide students with the best science education possible.
The National Science Education Standards represents efforts that have been made in the past few decades to revamp how science is taught in the United States. Published in 1996, the Standards developed out of a number of other efforts to reform science education. For example, one precursor to the Standards was the 1989 publication of Science for All Americans, an initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Project 2061. The aim of the Standards is to “take us beyond the constraints of present structures of schooling toward a shared vision of excellence.” It presents educators and policy makers across the country with an image of what ideal science education should look like and what it should aim to accomplish.
The primary goal of the Standards is to create a scientifically literate society, and this aim is emphasized repeatedly throughout the document. The Standards defines scientific literacy as: 1) understanding and excitement about the natural world, 2) ability to use scientific principles and processes, 3) engagement in public debate regarding science, and 4) use of science to promote economic productivity. Furthermore, the Standards emphasizes that science must be made available to all students. This is important as it underscores the belief that all students can learn science, and makes it a prerogative to not deprive any students of this opportunity.
According to the National Science Education Standards, to achieve these stated goals, science education as it has been traditionally practiced needs to be extensively reformed. It calls for a focus on inquiry as a central theme of science courses. According to the Standards, teachers should emphasize the process of doing science. Thus, a large part of any science class should be devoted to lab exercises and experiential learning. Students should practice using the scientific method, developing research skills, and connecting topics to the larger world. Many experiments should be guided by student interest and questions. Furthermore, instead of focusing on teaching a lot of facts, teachers should emphasize fundamental ideas and the skills needed to explore them. The Standards also recommends a reduction in the number of science topics covered, calling for teachers to instead present a smaller number of topics in greater depth.
In regards to the content of the science curriculum, the Standards emphasizes five unifying concepts that tie science together. Two examples of these concepts are, “systems, order and organization,” and “form and function.” The Standards recommend using these concepts to weave the individual scientific disciplines together. Within each discipline, general guidelines regarding content are provided. For example, within biology, it is stated that students should gain an understanding of the cell, evolution and organismal behavior among other topics. Furthermore, the Standards also calls for an integration of technology and social implications into study of the primary disciplines.
While the National Science Education Standards presents an idealistic view of what science education has the potential to become, the North Carolina Standard Course of Study (SCS) expands on this view by offering teachers more concrete guidance on what breadth of material they actually need to cover. In many regards, the goals of the SCS are the same as those of the national standards. In fact, when discussing the content goals for high school grades, the SCS begins by listing the same five unifying concepts that were formulated for the national standards. Similarly, the SCS also places significant focus on teaching students the process of scientific inquiry, and on pursuing scientific literacy for all students. Furthermore, it calls for a full integration of technology and societal perspectives into the general science curriculum, as does the national standards.
The primary distinction between the National Science Education Standards and the NC Standard Course of Study is that the SCS provides more specific guidelines regarding what topics should be taught. This makes sense, as the U.S. Constitution gives the states primary jurisdiction over education. In North Carolina, the SCS lays out particular competency goals for science education. For example, within biology, one of the competency goals is that students will “develop an understanding of the physical, chemical and cellular basis of life.” Under the umbrella of this goal, teachers are expected to cover topics such as organelles, cell specialization and types of organic molecules.
I think it is interesting that under the content goals for earth science, the SCS specifies that an emphasis should be placed on certain aspects of North Carolina’s geology. For example, it lists that students should be taught about the geological history of North Carolina, and that they should also learn about the state’s wetlands. I am pleased to see this focus on local aspects of earth science. Applying the themes of earth science to the local landscape is one way of increasing the relevance of the topic for students. When I was an undergraduate student in upstate New York, I took a geology course with a strong emphasis on how geological processes had shaped the local landscape. Being able to understand the effects that these processes had on the area in which I was living made the subject far more interesting to me. I imagine the same would be true for most high school students.
The SCS presents a thorough list of topics to be covered in science courses, and at first this list may seem to be restrictively detailed. However, as I look more carefully at the topics listed, I find that, for the most part, they do seem to represent the essential components of each discipline. It is hard to imagine teaching biology without covering topics such as photosynthesis, DNA, evolution, and the diversity of organisms, all requirements of the SCS. Similarly, it would be impossible to leave students with a clear understanding of chemistry without covering topics such as subatomic particles, the periodic table, or the concept of the mole, also included in the SCS. Thus, I feel like the SCS presents teachers with a useful outline of science topics that students should become familiar with during high school.
Although I believe that the national and state standards, particularly when taken together, provide a good guide to science education, they also both present a number of potential problems. First, with regards to the National Science Education Standards there is a risk that it comes across as too idealistic. Certainly, idealism is an essential component of educational progress. However, the vision for what science education should be like, as presented in the national standards, is so far from the actual reality of how science has traditionally been taught in high schools, that educators reading the Standards may have a hard time seeing how to even begin to implement it. Traditionally, science students have been asked to memorize a lot of factual information. Although science education has always had a lab component, it is fairly recently that emphasis has shifted towards making science classes more process focused than knowledge focused. While the national standards present many inspiring ideas regarding this type of reform, they offer little practical advice for the steps that individual teachers can take to execute these suggestions.
The NC Standard Course of Study also presents an idealistic view of science education, promoting the vision of a more unified curriculum with a greater emphasis on student inquiry. However, simultaneously it provides teachers with a fairly detailed guide to the content they must cover. This focus on content may frustrate teachers who feel that it leaves them little room to individualize their teaching. Also, the breadth of content required under the state standards may make implementing inquiry based science education difficult. Labs and other “learning-by-doing” type activities take much more time to implement then more traditional methods of direct instruction. With an extensive curriculum to cover, many teachers may have difficulty incorporating all of the experiential learning opportunities that they would like to use. As I think about beginning my own science teaching career, I find myself both inspired and overwhelmed by the national and state standards. I agree with the majority of what the standards propose for science education. However, at the same time, I am left wondering how I will be able to provide my students with this ideal picture of education, while also teaching the necessary content.
A concern of many teachers in recent years has been the increased focus on testing. In North Carolina, end-of-course standardized tests are based on the SCS. The fact that students must pass these high-stakes tests, offers teachers another incentive for paying close attention to the state science standards during lesson planning. A benefit of both the state standards and the end-of-course tests is that they are a way to assure that all of North Carolina’s students receive an equally high-quality science education. A problem is that many teachers may be concerned about having to “teach to the test.” However, ideally, a North Carolina science teacher who covers the topics included in the SCS should have no need to be concerned about this, as her students should be well prepared for the end-of-course test simply by having completed a science course in-line with state guidelines.
The discussion of standardized testing brings up yet another important distinction between the state and national standards. While the North Carolina state standards do not specifically mention assessment, they are the basis for multiple choice end-of-course tests. Meanwhile, the National Science Education Standards calls for a shift away from the measurement of direct knowledge and towards more comprehensive methods of assessment. In other words, it promotes methods of assessment that consider the general understanding of students, but also their ability to reason and implement scientific inquiry. These types of assessment are often difficult to accomplish through the use of standardized tests. A positive aspect of the national standards is that it does offer some suggestions for questions that could be asked on state or national science assessments that would try to assess higher level thinking skills. Also encouraging is the emphasis it places on getting teachers more involved in the creation of large-scale tests. These assessment reforms seem quite useful, but actually implementing them is likely to be challenging.
Overall, I think that the National Science Education Standards and the NC Standard Course of Study provide positive visions of where science education should be heading. The integrative view of science education that is encouraged in the standards has the potential to improve teaching strategies, and in doing so lead to a more scientifically literate public. I believe that currently the greatest challenge presented by the standards is how to successfully implement both the process-based and content-based suggestions in a complementary way. Accomplishing this task will take the combined efforts of educators, policy makers and the scientific community, all working collectively to create positive change. This will probably be difficult. However, if the vision of the North Carolina state and national standards can be realized it will signal a great step forward for science education.