The Nature of Science in NGSS

Where is the Nature of Science in NGSS? And why haven't I seen this before?

Standards focusing on the nature of science made their way into the Next Generation of Science Standards after public comments on drafts found the available standards lacking in that area. Yet the addition of such standards focusing on understanding the nature of science are unknown to most high school science teachers, even those who regularly use NGSS in their lessons.

This lack of familiarity with the supplemental standards about the nature of science seems to stem from how they are included (sort of included) within NGSS. The official documentation on them claims that these standards are NOT their own dimension of standards, but merely extensions of the Science and Engineering Practices and the Crosscutting Concepts. But they are not listed with the Practices or Crosscutting Concepts. The standards about the nature of science are listed alone, in an appendix, that is very rarely referenced within the main body of NGSS. It is an afterthought that was never truly integrated into the parts of NGSS that are regularly used by educators.

Are the Nature of Science standards worth using? (YES!)

The eight themes (each with 2-5 standards for the high school level) of the nature of science standards are:

1. Scientific Investigation Use a Variety of Methods

2. Scientific Knowledge is Based on Empirical Evidence

3. Scientific Knowledge is Open to Revision in Light of New Evidence

4. Science Models, Laws, Mechanisms, and Theories Explain Natural Phenomena

5. Science is a Way of Knowing

6. Scientific Knowledge Assumes an Order and Consistency in Natural Systems

7. Science is a Human Endeavor

8. Science Addresses Questions About the Natural and Material World

Clearly we want our students to understand that science uses many methods (#1) but that all of those methods rely on empirical evidence (#2). We want them to know that what is known about the natural and material world (#8) has changed over time (#3) as people make new discoveries (#7). They should know that models and theories (#4) give us a way of understanding (#5) the order and consistency of nature (#6).

These understandings are foundational for students' scientific literacy. But sometimes our classes get so wrapped up in counting valence electrons and calculations with Newton's second law that we don't explicitly call attention to these broad understandings about how science works as a whole.

Why aren't the NGSS Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas sufficient for students to gain scientific literacy around the nature of science?

Those of us who teach science intrinsically understand each of these nature of science themes, and many of us assume that our students will, by virtue of sufficient exposure to science content and labs, pick up these understandings as they go along. Yet research shows that most students don't learn these ideas from only related exposure. Understandings about the nature of science must be explicitly taught in order for most students to learn them.