Last month in a blog post, I raised questions about the new framework for a new generation of science standards, funded by the Carnegie Corporation, and developed by the National Research Council. In particular I looked at the scant criticism that exists in the literature of the current science standards (NSES). In that post I called attention to a 1998 issue of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, in which professor Alberto J. Rodriquez published a critical review essay in which he argues that the NRC’s 1996 Science Standards uses a discourse of invisibility to lay out its massive reform for science education. He claims that the standards do not directly address the ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and theoretical issues that influence learning in contemporary American schools. Rodriques goes further to suggest that equity must be a guiding principle in science education, and the standards should reflect this same principle.

The new framework was published last month and educators had an opportunity to complete a form that was used to provide “feedback” to the framwork’s developers. The 190 page report entitled “A Framework for Science Education: Preliminary Public Draft” outlines a framework by the Committee on Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards.

In an article in Education Week, Professor William Wraga, identifies “dangerous blind spots in the common-core standards.” In particular Dr. Wraga is critical of the common-core standards lack of attention to interdisciplinary curriculum, and the role of schools in preparing students for citizenship. In the latter he suggests that “disciplinary myopia” has led to standards that are overly technical and steeped in discipline concepts, processes and practice. He suggests, and we would agree, that interdisciplinary curriculum can lead to greater understanding by seeking connections among the disciplines. S-T-S, science-related social issues, and a lived curriculum ought to be starting points for a science curriculum; unfortunately this is not the case in the new science framework.

Wraga also focuses in on the unfortunate single purpose of schooling as depicted in the common standards, and that is that education should be in the service of economic interests. We see this in news reports each Spring when test scores are released which typically lead to “a sky is falling” mentality amongst chief school officers, governors, and other politicians. Repeated attention to international test results leads to unfounded comparisons among countries. Wraga sees this as a narrow function of schooling, and wonders why vocational, social, civic, cultural, and individual goals give way to a single goal, which he identifies as the academic goal.

The same criticisms can leveled at the framework for science education in that NRC’s Framework is steeped in a disciplinary approach to content. In fact, the word “interdisciplinary” is found only twice in the framework, and one of these was part of one of the committee member’s biography. The science framework is neatly organized into four traditional content areas: life, earth, and physical science, as well as engineering and technology. The framework does identify cross-cutting ideas, but this is not at all what science educators would view as anything remotely close to interdisciplinary curriculum.

For over a century, science reform efforts have have been put forth in a variety of ways perhaps beginning with the Committee of Ten report in 1895, which set us on the path of disciplined approach to curriculum.  Although progressive ideas were part of reform, for example Dewey’s laboratory school at the University of Chicago, Jackman’s Nature Study Movement (c. 1910), and the Progressive Education Movement (c. 1930s), the traditional school, and its focus on academics and basics dominated educational reform.  The goals of science education were articulated through successive NSSE yearbook publications in 1932 (A Program for Science Teaching), 1947 (Science Education and American Schools), and 1960 (Rethinking Science Education); the “golden age” NSF alphabet curriculum projects of the 1960s and 1970s; at the behest of hundreds of national reports starting with the 1983 “A Nation at Risk” claiming that schooling should instill global competitiveness amongst our students; The AAAS Project 2061 benchmarks for science literacy; the 1994 National Science Education Standards; the implementation of state-wide standards and high stakes tests for student, teacher, and school performance accountabiliy; the acceptance by 48 states of common standards in literacy & mathematics; and now the coming of a new generation of science standards.

Does the new framework offer a new set of goals for science education, and do these goals reflect the nature of K-12 science teaching?  Although the framework offers “a less is more lesson” by limiting the number of “core ideas” in each of the four content area, the framework is linear, and there is no upfront conviction that science in the real world is interdisciplinary, nor are there examples.  True, the framework has a chapter on cross-cutting elements including cross-cutting concepts such as patterns, cause and effect, scale, stability (the science processes of earlier reform efforts).  It also discusses the importance of topics in engineering, technology and science, but these ideas are not integrated into the actual framework.  They appear as of secondary importance.

The framework was not developed by K-12 teachers, or science educators, each possessing not only the content knowledge to develop a framework, but bring to the table the professional experience of working with K-12 students, the actual nature of classroom life, and anecdotal evidence & research so important to an understanding of 21st Century school.  I am not suggesting that professional scientists should not be involved in the development of the framework.  I am suggesting that teachers and science educators need at the core or center of this development, not on the outside looking in.

Rodriguez, A. (1997). The dangerous discourse of invisibility: A critique of the National Research Council’s national science education standards Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34 (1), 19-37 DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1098-2736(199701)34:13.0.CO;2-R