---
title: "Science education"
chunk: 5/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_education"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:54.994028+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Next Generation Science Standards ====
Science education curriculum in the United States is outlined by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which were released in April 2013. The purpose of the NGSS is to establish a standardized Kindergarten to 12th Grade science curriculum. These standards were instituted in hopes that they would reform the past science education system and foster higher student achievement through improved curriculum and teacher development. The Next Generation Science Standards are made up of three components listed as follows: disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts. These are referred to as the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards. Within these standards, there is emphasis on alignment with K-12 Common Core state standards. The dimension entitled "science and engineering practices" focuses on students' learning of the scientific method. This means that this dimension centers around practicing science in a hands-on manner, giving students the opportunity to observe scientific processes, hypothesize, and observe results. This dimension highlights the empirical methods of science. The dimension entitled "crosscutting concepts" emphasizes the understanding of key themes within the field of science. The "crosscutting concepts" are themes that are consistently relevant throughout many different scientific disciplines, such as the flow of energy/matter, cause/effect, systems/system practices, patterns, the relationship between structure and function, and stability/change. The purpose of outlining these key themes relates to generalized learning, meaning that the effectiveness of these themes could lie in the fact that these concepts are important throughout all of the scientific disciplines. The intention is that by learning them, students will create a broad understanding of science. The dimension entitled "disciplinary core ideas" outlines a set of key ideas for each scientific field. For example, physical science has a certain set of core ideas laid out by the framework.

==== Science Education and Common Core ====
Common Core education standards emphasize reading, writing, and communication skills. The purpose of these standards for English and Mathematics was to create measurable goals for student learning that are aligned with the standards in place in other nations, such that students in the United States become prepared to succeed at a global level. It is meant to set standards for academics that are rigorous in nature and prepare students for higher education. It is also outlined that students with disabilities must be properly accommodated for under Common Core standards via an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Under these standards, the comprehension of scientific writing has become an important skill for students to learn through textbooks.

==== Science Education Strategies ====
Evidence suggests, however, that students learn science more effectively under hands-on, activity and inquiry based learning, rather than learning from a textbook. It has been seen that students, in particular those with learning disabilities, perform better on unit tests after learning science through activities, rather than textbook-based learning. Thus, it is argued that science is better learned through experiential activities. Additionally, it has reported that students, specifically those with learning disabilities, prefer and feel that they learn more effectively through activity-based learning. Information like this can help inform the way science is taught and how it can be taught most effectively for students of all abilities. The laboratory is a foundational example of hands-on, activity-based learning. In the laboratory, students use materials to observe scientific concepts and phenomena. The laboratory in science education can include multiple different phases. These phases include planning and design, performance, and analysis and interpretation. It is believed by many educators that laboratory work promotes their students' scientific thinking, problem solving skills, and cognitive development. Since 1960, instructional strategies for science education have taken into account Jean Piaget's developmental model, and therefore started introducing concrete materials and laboratory settings, which required students to actively participate in their learning.
In addition to the importance of the laboratory in learning and teaching science, there has been an increase in the importance of learning using computational tools. The use of computational tools, which have become extremely prevalent in STEM fields as a result of the advancement of technology, has been shown to support science learning. The learning of computational science in the classroom is becoming foundational to students' learning of modern science concepts. In fact, the Next Generation Science Standards specifically reference the use of computational tools and simulations. Through the use of computational tools, students participate in computational thinking, a cognitive process in which interacting with computational tools such as computers is a key aspect. As computational thinking becomes increasingly relevant in science, it becomes an increasingly important aspect of learning for science educators to act on.
Another strategy that may include both hands-on activities and using computational tools is creating authentic science learning experiences. Several perspectives of authentic science education have been suggested, including: canonical perspective - making science education as similar as possible to the way science is practiced in the real world; youth-centered - solving problems that are of interest to young students; contextual - a combination of the canonical and youth-centered perspectives. Although activities involving hands-on inquiry and computational tools may be authentic, some have contended that inquiry tasks commonly used in schools are not authentic enough, but often rely on simple "cookbook" experiments. Authentic science learning experiences can be implemented in various forms.  For example: hand on inquiry, preferably involving an open ended investigation; student-teacher-scientist partnership (STSP) or citizen science projects; design-based learning (DBL); using web-based environments used by scientists (using bioinformatics tools like genes or proteins databases, alignment tools etc.), and; learning with adapted primary literature (APL), which exposes students also to the way the scientific community communicates knowledge. These examples and more can be applied to various domains of science taught in schools (as well as undergraduate education), and comply with the calls to include scientific practices in science curricula.

==== Informal science education ====