What Research Says About K-8 Science Learning and Teaching

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Tensions with EstablishedPracticesWe face challenges implementing theTSTS recommendations because someestablished school and classroom practicescreate tensions. One tension is thatthe current state of affairs finds scienceinstruction disconnected and frequentlyseparating the teaching of conceptsfrom the teaching of processes, skills,and practices. For example, in many K-8science inquiry programs the emphasisis on domain-general skills (e.g., distinguishobservations from inferences)without any attention being given tohow these skills relate to the disciplinaryknowledge under study—processeslearning goals are separated from theconceptual learning goals.Then there is the tension of far toomany objectives, benchmarks, andstandards at individual grade levels andgrade bands. This is the recognizedproblem of U.S. science curriculabeing a “mile wide and an inch deep.”Many existing curricula, standards,and assessments in the U.S. comprisetoo many disconnected topics givenequal priority. The important unifyingthemes and principles of science aregetting lost in favor of concept coverage.Core knowledge (e.g., propertiesof matter), science practices (e.g.,building and refining models thataccount for evidence), and scientificdiscourses (e.g., collecting, analyzing,and representing data from observationsand experiments) are not beingcarried over from one school year tothe next, nor even from one moduleto the next within a school year. Coreknowledge and practices should becentral to science curriculum content,accessible to students in kindergarten,and have potential for sustained explorationacross K-8.Conceptual knowledge, scientificreasoning, understanding how scientificknowledge is produced, and participatingin science all represent elementsthat are intimately intertwinedin the doing of science. Another tensionfor implementing the TSTS recommendationsis too much sequencingvariation in the implementationof the standards. The use of modularunits shared across classrooms, andthat jump from one topic to another,work against the development ofcoherent learning progressions. Modulesdo provide flexibility for sharingmaterials and textbooks among teachersand across classrooms, but withoutcareful consideration the enactedsequence can confuse rather thanenlighten young science learners.The research on young children’sthinking suggests that children arecapable of abstract reasoning andtheory building from very early agesin select domains. The researchon infants and pre-K children, andresearch on children’s alternative conceptions,demonstrates that studentsdo arrive at school with core knowledge,and as they experience the worldaround them they do develop explanations—albeitnaïve ones at times. 20 Principal n November/December 2007www.naesp.org
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What Research Says About K-8 Science Learning and Teaching

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