The Next Generation Science Standards: 3. Engineering / Nature of Science

Professor Michael WysessionDepartment of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Washington University, St. Louis, MOmichael@seismo.wustl.edu

Engineering

Engineering Concepts are fully integrated throughout the NGSS

They appear in all 3 Foundation Boxes (Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, Crosscutting Concepts)

Engineering Design

DefineAttend to precision of criteria

and constraints and considerations likely to limit

possible solutions

Develop solutionsCombine parts of different

solutions to create new solutions

OptimizeUse systematic processes to iteratively test and refine a

solution

Engineering Concepts

1. The Interdependence of Science, Engineering, and Technology The fields of science and engineering are mutually supportive, and scientists and engineers often work together in teams, especially in fields at the borders of science and engineering. Advances in science offer new capabilities, new materials, or new understanding of processes that can be applied through engineering to produce advances in technology. Advances in technology, in turn, provide scientists with new capabilities to probe the natural world at larger or smaller scales; to record, manage, and analyze data; and to model ever more complex systems with greater precision. In addition, engineers’ efforts to develop or improve technologies often raise new questions for scientists’ investigations. (NRC, 2012, p. 203)

Engineering Concepts

Engineering Concepts

2. The Influence of Science, Engineering and Technology on Society and the Natural World

Together, advances in science, engineering, and technology can have—and indeed have had—profound effects on human society, in such areas as agriculture, transportation, health care, and communication, and on the natural environment. Each system can change significantly when new technologies are introduced, with both desired effects and unexpected outcomes. (NRC, 2012, p. 210).

Engineering Concepts

Nature of Science

One goal of science education is to help students understand the nature of scientific knowledge. NGSS presents eight major themes and grade level understandings about the nature of science. Four themes extend the scientific and engineering practices and four themes extend the crosscutting concepts.

The matrix describes Nature of Science learning outcomes for the themes at grade bands for K-2, 3-5, middle school, and high school. Appropriate learning outcomes are expressed in selected performance expectations and presented in the foundation boxes throughout the standards.

Nature of Science

Using examples from the history of science is another method for presenting the nature of science. It is one thing to develop the practices and crosscutting concepts in the context of core disciplinary ideas; it is another aim to develop an understanding of the nature of science within those contexts. The use of case studies from the history of science provides contexts in which to develop students’ understanding of the nature of science……

Nature of Science

…. In the middle and high school grades, for example, case studies on the following topics might be used to broaden and deepen understanding about the nature of science.• Copernican Resolution• Newtonian Mechanics• Lyell’s Study of Patterns of Rocks and Fossils• Progression from Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics• Lavoisier/Dalton and Atomic Structure• Darwin Theory of Biological Evolution and the Modern

Synthesis• Pasteur and the Germ Theory of Disease• James Watson and Francis Crick and the Molecular

Model of Genetics