CURRICULUM ALIGNMENT ISSUES
Inquiry-based science is not something to be memorized, but rather a knowledge base that must evolve through explorations and experiences. A science program should identify the content and skills for each grade level in order to provide a developmental foundation of the nature of science. Most school districts have a science curriculum, but process skills and applications of science may not be as well defined as the content. Process skills include collecting, recording and analyzing data; making comparisons; formulating conclusions; designing experiments; making predictions or estimating results; organizing data from observations into tables or charts; sequencing objects or events; comparing or contrasting objects based upon physical properties; explaining cause and effect relationships in an observation; and much more. Does the science curriculum identify the skills students are expected to accomplish at each grade level? Does the science curriculum identify the appropriate applications of scientific principles? Does the science curriculum reflect the true nature of science as described in Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993) and the National Science Standards (National Research Council, 1996)?
Scope and Sequence
Determining the scope and sequence of the science program is of critical importance to curriculum developers and teachers. Defining curriculum expectations is not enough to ensure that students have opportunities to become scientifically literate and well-prepared for the CAPT. Without ongoing articulation between elementary, middle and high school science teachers, programs tend to become isolated islands, with each level never knowing the curriculum expectations and goals at other levels. Teachers need opportunities to talk and share with teachers at other levels. Setting up a process where teachers at different levels can share what they are doing can improve the efficiency of the educational system and help to eliminate redundancies that often occur.
Teachers at all grade levels need time to discuss the science curriculum to ensure that the scope and sequence is appropriate and avoids redundancies. While many curricular models exist, students should have opportunities to study life, earth and physical science during their K-12 experience. The sciences may be integrated, as many national reports and science educators recommend, or studied separately. Since the content portion of the CAPT is equally divided among the life, earth and physical sciences, the instructional program should be balanced among these fields.
The fundamental goal of life science instruction is to help students understand and explain the nature and function of living things. During the 20 th century, the focus of biological research changed from descriptive natural history to investigation, especially at cellular and sub-cellular levels, with evolution as the central, unifying theory.
Physical science relates to basic knowledge and understanding concerning the nature of the universe, as well as physical principles that operate within it. As with other fields, instruction in physical science should take into account how students learn. Students should encounter concepts, principles and laws of physical science at successively higher levels of abstraction over several years.
Earth science instruction helps students understand how earth scientists depict data through maps and other means to interpret objects, their features and structures, and the events and processes that caused them. Instruction should center around the structure of the Earth (lithosphere), water (hydrosphere), air (atmosphere) and the Earth in space.
Content is what students should learn. Curriculum is the way content is organized and emphasized; it includes structure, organization, balance and presentation of the content in the classroom. Scientific knowledge should be organized in a structure that connects discrete pieces of information in meaningful ways. Curriculum that reduces the sheer amount of material covered and that eliminates subject-matter boundaries, allows for greater connections among science, mathematics and technology.
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