About a week ago, on January 8, the second draft of the Next Generation Science Standards were released for public comment. This state-led effort headed by the National Research Council and the NSTA, aims to develop new K-12 science standards based on the most current research in science and science learning.
Describing a vision of what it means to be proficient in science, each standard will be made up of three dimensions- Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Disciplinary Core Ideas.
Practices emphasizes the skills necessary to engage in inquiry-based science as well as to investigate engineering design and STEM principles such as critical thinking and problem solving. As many teachers agree, teaching the "T" and "E" in STEM are the most difficult, so these new standards will be a useful guide in strengthening a state or district curriculum.
Cross-cutting Concepts are a way to incorporate skills that bridge multiple disciplines. Most of us would probably call them cross-curricular skills. "These concepts need to be made explicit for students because they provide an organizational schema for interrelating knowledge from various science fields into a coherent and scientifically-based view of the world."
