Tag Archives: education

Teaching Science for Citizenship

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The introduction to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) says, “the current education system cannot successfully prepare students for college, careers, and citizenship unless the right expectations and goals are set” [emphasis added]. Similarly, “The goal of the California Next Generation Science Standards (CA NGSS) is to prepare California students to be future citizens and future scientists …” [emphasis added]. Many other states express similar goals.

What does it mean to teach science for citizenship? The panel of experts who deliberated for two years and developed A Framework for K-12 Science Education, the basis for the NGSS, concisely unpacked that concept. The Framework states that in addition to preparing students for college and careers, by the end of grade 12 all students should:

  • 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.

These three goals provide a useful explanation of what science for citizenship means for teachers and students. What is more, these are admirable goals.

Other experts also have advocated teaching science for citizenship and helped define what it means. For example, more than a decade ago Roberts & Bybee—Rodger Bybee was one of the lead authors of NGSS—described Vision II, an approach to science education that reaches beyond scientific theories, facts and methods, which is Vision I, to consider how science interacts with everyday and civic life, including personal, economic, and ethical concerns. They distinguished between a narrow view of science education and a broader one that includes the three goals listed above as well as pure science.

Science teachers’ professional organizations support these broader goals, as explained in an earlier blog post. For example, the National Association of Biology Teachers issued a Position Statement which states that excellent biology teachers “follow an integrated approach by incorporating other subjects, technology, society, and ethics,” where other subjects might include civics, government, history, literature, or science disciplines besides biology.

None of these individuals or organizations want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In other words, teaching scientific theories, facts, and methods is useful and important.

It is a matter of balance. Focusing entirely on preparing students for college and careers, as at least 95 percent of NGSS and state science education standards do, is an unbalanced approach. Science for citizenship is given scant attention.

This is a tragic situation at a time when people need to make life-or-death personal decisions involving science, like getting vaccinated. They need to learn about the role of government in policies related to health, global warming, the safety of food, air and water, and other science-related issues. CRISPR, artificial intelligence, robotics and other science-based technologies pose ethical questions that an educated citizenry needs to understand for democracy to function well. Similarly, government funding for scientific research ultimately depends on public understanding and support.

It is an excellent thing to say that learning science for citizenship is an important goal for K-12 science education. However, that goal is not accurately reflected in science education standards, state tests, and most curricula. It is past time to correct the imbalance.

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

A case study of revising Pennsylvania’s science education standards

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State science education standards can differ significantly from one another, and state standards are what directly affect science teachers, students, principals, and others. The states’ decisions are important, yet they are not well studied or understood.

A case study of the development of new science education standards in Pennsylvania, STEELS, is now available that may be useful as other states revise their standards. I did not want to include too many of my own opinions in the paper, focusing instead on the story in Pennsylvania. But there are useful lessons for other states, and to that end, here are a few additional reflections.

One of the ideas that was new to me and has potential in other states is to specify “contexts” in which certain performance expectations are important but that also allow teachers the flexibility to choose examples within those contexts. For example, two of the eight contexts in which technology and engineering standards are taught in Pennsylvania are “Computation, Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics” and “Medical and Health-Related Technologies.”

Not only does the use of “contexts” put fewer handcuffs on science teachers (“teach exactly this”), but it also has a better chance of allowing curriculum and instruction to change, without revising standards, even as 21st century science and technology continue to change at a rapid rate. If students need to learn more about pandemics and vaccines, or about the benefits and risks associated with artificial intelligence, or about computer chips, teachers should not need to wait decades for science education standards to catch up and be revised. I am confident that there are creative ways for other states to incorporate “contexts” into their standards, as Pennsylvania has done.

Another important lesson learned is about the goals for science education. One need only read current newspaper headlines to realize how important it is that American students learn “science for citizenship.” A Framework for K-12 Science Education spells this out very well, specifying five “overarching goals” for science education, only one of which is to prepare students for college and careers. Three other goals for students in the Framework are: possessing sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on related issues; becoming careful consumers of scientific and technological information related to their everyday lives; and developing competencies to continue to learn about science outside school (e.g., media literacy skills to better evaluate information supposedly based on science). States need to write performance expectations that reflect these broader goals and Pennsylvania’s new standards are at least a small step in the right direction.

The Next Generation Science Standards spells out contradictory goals, as do many state science education standards. On the one hand, standards claim to be promoting “science for citizenship,” a goal that science teachers and their professional organizations strongly support (see the preceding post). On the other hand, the NGSS specifically states that the goal of the standards is far narrower, namely, to prepare students for college and careers. Pennsylvania’s STEELS standards seem to do a better job supporting the goal of teaching science for citizenship than most states do. Others should take notice.

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

Additional note: To my surprise, an excellent video presentation of my paper was created using Google’s NotebookLM. It is shocking how good the video is, complete with images and narration, and especially because it takes little more than the push of a button to create these from any source, or sources. The YouTube video is HERE.

A shout-out to science teacher professional organizations

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Key professional organizations for science teachers “get it” about the importance of teaching students to resist misinformation, and about why science education should aim to achieve broader goals than only preparing students for college and careers. The fact that science teachers are on the front lines and hear from students every day is one reason why their professional associations understand students’ need to resist misinformation better than state boards of education and other education policymakers. Everyone knows that TikTok, Instagram, and other social media used by young people (and adults, too) often disseminate scientific misinformation. Science teachers can help mitigate the harm.

One constructive action is that The Science Teacher, a bimonthly publication of the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA), runs a regular column in every issue called Fact-or-Faux. These articles provide lessons and other resources teachers can use to help their students evaluate the quality of science-related information, including information they find online. The articles, which first appeared in the January 2024 issue, are available free of charge at https://shipseducation.net/misinfo/library.htm.

Also, all three of the NSTA K-12 teacher journals published articles about a database of more than 70 lessons and related resources to teach students about effectively evaluating information. That database was created by the nonprofit Media Literacy Now with financial support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The searchable database is available, free of charge, at https://medialiteracynow.org/impact/science/. It includes lessons for all K-12 grade levels.

In 2023, partly in response to the conference and papers reported in the preceding blog post, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) published a Letter to the NABT Community encouraging teachers to include science media literacy in biology and life science classrooms. NABT’s journals, like the NSTA journals, have published multiple articles providing lessons and other resources related to finding trustworthy information and resisting misinformation. Interestingly, professional organizations “got it” early. As long ago as 2016 the National Science Teaching Association issued a Position Statement called Teaching Science in the Context of Societal and Personal Issues.

Today another article was published in Edutopia describing a lesson to help students distinguish between factual videos and fakes, such as those created by artificial intelligence. Sixth-grade science students were presented with four short, kid-friendly videos and asked to decide which one is factual. The lesson proved highly engaging.

Teaching about misinformation is not part of the NGSS or most states’ science education standards. And although science education standards sometimes claim to have broad goals, such as helping students apply science to societal and personal issues, in fact they focus almost entirely on preparing students for college and careers and largely ignore how science can be used in people’s everyday lives. No wonder NAEP reported that in 2024 only 39% of American eighth-graders reported they were interested in their science class.

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

Some important conferences and reports

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Since the last blog post, in June 2022, the Moore Foundation, an anonymous donor, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have supported important work about science education standards and about scientific misinformation. We appreciate their commitment, as well as the work of dozens of teachers, state and local policymakers, media experts and others who attended two invitational conferences leading to papers and reports, and contributed their thinking.

A conference was held at Stanford University in February 2023 called “Reinventing Scientific Literacy for an Age of Misinformation: NGSS 2.0?” Several papers and a website were among the results. One paper is a short Policy Brief by Jonathan Osborne (Kamalachari Professor of Science Education emeritus at Stanford) and Andy Zucker called Current Science Education Standards: The Good, the Bad and the Missing. A more extended discussion of recommendations in the Policy Brief is a paper by Osborne, Zucker, and Pimentel called Where Next for Science Education Standards?  

Those two papers and a number of others related to science education in an age of misinformation are available, free of charge, at https://sciedandmisinfo.stanford.edu/resources.

Another outcome of the Stanford conference was that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute provided support for a conference held in July 2023 to help answer the question: What should students learn in
K-12 science classes to help them better evaluate scientific information and resist misinformation? The result of the work at the conference was a short paper called Learning to Find Trustworthy Scientific Information by Andy Zucker and Erin McNeill (then CEO of the nonprofit Media Literacy Now). That paper identifies four areas in which science teachers can and should help students become lifelong learners of trustworthy science and resist misinformation. These areas are:

  • learn to evaluate the credibility of sources of scientific information;
  • learn more about the scientific enterprise, such as the nature and importance of a “scientific consensus”;
  • apply media literacy competencies when searching for information; and,
  • become more aware of one’s own thinking and behavior.

The next post on this blog will identify some of the impressive steps that have been taken by science teacher professional organizations, including NSTA and NABT, that are well aligned with the reports. These steps are a thoughtful response to the science misinformation crisis.