The Journal of Research in Science Teaching published an excellent article in September called “Reinventing science standards to better support meaningful science learning.” This post discusses strengths of that paper and identifies missing pieces of what colleagues and I believe is needed to reinvent the standards, including revising standards to help students better evaluate information and thereby resist scientific misinformation (e.g., “vaccines cause autism”). The paper is open source, i.e., not behind a paywall, and is available HERE.

The authors, Jeffrey Nordine and David Fortus, make a well-reasoned, carefully documented, and comprehensive argument that current science education standards in many nations, notably the NGSS in the U.S., are poorly aligned with learning theory. In other words, the current standards are unlikely to motivate students to learn science. This is an argument that colleagues and I have been making, too, using different sources and rationales. As a reminder, NAEP recently reported that only 39% of American eighth-graders reported they were interested in their science class.

The fact that an independent analysis points to an identical conclusion to ours, namely that current science education standards lead to instruction that is failing to engage students, is noteworthy. The new article cites a wide variety of papers and reports related to learning theory to support their reasoning and conclusions. The comprehensive set of references, more than 100 in all, is a strength of the paper. To choose just one example of how the article presents clear arguments with supporting citations, the authors write:

“… when learners do not perceive a meaningful purpose (meaningful for them) in the tasks in which they are expected to engage, their motivation to engage with these tasks will decline, and they will be less likely to construct significant new knowledge (Ames 1992; Dweck 1986; Fortus and Touitou 2021).”

Another significant feature of the paper is its recommendation that science education standards should be organized “according to contemporary issues and contexts rather than disciplinary content ideas.” That conclusion echoes part of a recent post on this blog about Pennsylvania’s new science education standards (STEELS), which reads: “I am confident that there are creative ways for other states to incorporate ‘contexts’ into their standards, as Pennsylvania has done.” Nordine and Fortus’s conclusion is also similar to the call that NSTA made years ago in a Position Statement called Teaching Science in the Context of Societal and Personal Issues, which colleagues and I have often cited. Teaching science in contexts that are relevant to students’ current and future lives is engaging because it is meaningful to them.

I welcome Nordine and Fortus’s excellent paper, which is convincingly backed by prior research. However, there are three important ways in which the article falls short, in my opinion. Each of these perspectives provides an additional reason to reinvent science education standards, as well as rationales for the needed changes.

First, as colleagues and I have documented before, there is a misalignment between the admirable goals laid out in A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS standards that were supposedly based on the Framework. Teaching and learning science for citizenship is almost entirely missing from the standards—but it is succinctly summarized in three of the five goals identified on page 1 of the Framework. Those three goals for all students are: possess sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on related issues; become careful consumers of scientific and technological information related to their everyday lives; and, develop competencies to continue to learn science outside school. Together, these goals can be seen as an excellent definition of learning science for citizenship.

Nordine and Fortus seem to confuse understanding science in the way that scientists practice science (in other words, science as described in the NGSS standards) with using science as a citizen uses it. For example, scientists conduct research to understand climate change and use science to develop green energy sources, such as wind turbines. Citizens, on the other hand, do not need to know science in the way that scientists do in order to identify candidates who are concerned about climate change, or weigh the costs and benefits of purchasing an electric vehicle, or decide whether to install solar panels on their home. Furthermore, these decisions require knowledge of information outside the domain of science, whether to weigh benefits versus costs, or to consider the ethics of one decision or another. If learning science for citizenship is an important goal, science education needs to be reinvented to help young people learn about and practice making decisions in their everyday lives as citizens, including as future voters and consumers—decisions that involve science but that are not limited to the perspective of a scientist who is “doing” science.

That raises the second way the article falls short. We agree that the goal of reinvented science education standards should prioritize “students’ ‘informed agency’ over ‘competence,’” as the the paper’s abstract says. We seem to differ, however, about the meaning of ‘informed agency’ in the context of science education. Few students will become scientists or use science, as described in standards, in their jobs. Having some understanding of science in the way that the NGSS standards suggest is a worthy goal but the balance is wrong. Students also need ‘agency’ to make societal and personal decisions that use science but are not equivalent to doing science.

It is not enough to organize science education standards “according to contemporary issues and contexts” if what that means is studying the science behind drinking water purification, or the global greenhouse effect, or pandemic diseases like COVID-19, as the authors suggest. Again, that perspective has value, but only to a point. Reinvented science education standards should also be organized around decisions that ordinary citizens need to make. How should I decide whether to buy bottled water instead of using tap water (which may be contaminated)? What are the costs and benefits of a carbon tax or fee, and should I support one in my state? Is it true that vaccines contain dangerous substances and therefore I should avoid being vaccinated or having my child vaccinated?

Reinvented standards need to put a higher priority on making informed decisions that do not rely on “doing” science. Furthermore, CRISPR, artificial intelligence, robotics and other science-based technologies pose ethical questions that an educated citizenry needs to understand for democracy to function well—knowledge that is not the same as understanding in any detail the science behind these technologies.

That brings us to the third way the article falls short. This is an age of scientific misinformation that is having serious negative impacts, such as falling vaccination rates. We agree with Nordine and Fortus, and with the Framework, that learning how to continue learning science outside of school is critically important. To achieve that goal requires what has been called science media literacy. What is a “scientific consensus” and is this particular claim based on such a consensus? Who is behind a claim that I encounter? What do others say about that claim? Which people or organizations are qualified to make judgments about such a claim allegedly based on science? Who should I trust and why? Reinvented science education standards need to place a much higher priority than the NGSS on learning how to evaluate claims allegedly based on science, which students will encounter throughout their lives, including claims about diets, nutrition, mental health, and other topics we cannot predict and cannot yet teach. These are vital competencies in a science-based world.

In summary, the Nordine and Fortus paper is a valuable and much-needed contribution to the science education literature. Their major conclusion, which is that current science education standards promote instruction that does not align with learning theory, and that therefore fails to adequately engage a majority of students, is important and we believe it is correct. Reinventing science education standards along the lines they suggest, with the addition of the perspectives described above, would result in greater student engagement in K-12 science education and would contribute to an increasingly scientifically literate population, as more broadly defined than in the current standards.

Note: This entire blog can be downloaded as a single PDF file. See the link at the bottom of this page.