“As you think about priorities and shift into adoption, planning is essential. You need to have a clear vision for science education before you look at materials.”

Partner Organization Director

School system leaders set the vision for science instruction. To do this effectively, leaders think carefully and strategically about what it takes to support students in meeting the high expectations of today’s science standards.

A science leadership team provides the necessary infrastructure and accountability for implementing the standards, which includes, among other things, ensuring all educators: (A) have access to high-quality materials, (B) are prepared to use those materials effectively in the classroom, and (C) are able to measure student learning through standards-aligned assessments.

Developing a team and strategy are foundational steps that set the stage for the rest of the work to implement the standards. Without a team and strategy, the process can be unclear or haphazardly implemented, which reduces the chances for meaningful, sustained shifts to take root in a system. When science leaders engage stakeholders around a common vision, backed by a careful plan for achieving that vision, students' science learning experiences and outcomes improve.

“High-quality materials call for lots of student discourse; teachers blend in with everyone else. When we have high-quality materials that teachers can use, teachers can start to create learning environments where students are leading the conversation.”

District Science Leader

“I’m shocked and amazed by how teachers are open to learning through this process. Instructional materials that show what it looks like for students to be scientists and own their learning offer teachers a deeper understanding of the standards. Materials have to support and scaffold instructional shifts.”

Professional Learning Provider

Why Materials Matter

While the standards lay out the skills and knowledge students should have acquired by the end of instruction, a high-quality curriculum designed for the standards charts the pathway that helps students reach proficiency in the standards. Instructional materials are a key to achieving equity because they have a huge impact on learning experiences and outcomes for students, particularly those living in poverty and from non-dominant communities.

The Features of High-Quality Materials

High-quality materials designed for today’s science standards enable students to use grade-appropriate ideas, practices, and concepts to make sense of relevant phenomena or to design solutions to actual problems. With these materials, educators can create environments where students have multiple opportunities to build on prior knowledge, share ideas, and make use of the practices of scientists and engineers.

It’s challenging to update old curricula to ensure they are designed for today’s science standards. The most effective materials that reflect the innovations of the Framework are built from the ground up. Many curriculum developers are making progress creating new, high-quality curricula.

Selecting High-Quality Materials

As educational leaders plan the implementation of new science standards, one of the most important decisions they face is selecting instructional materials to support student learning. This process is most effective when it begins by engaging a variety of stakeholders in meaningful dialogue, learning about the features of quality materials, and carefully evaluating materials for alignment to today’s science standards. A review process that includes stakeholder buy-in, clear criteria, and careful evaluation of evidence from the materials enables schools and systems to select the best possible materials.

“Professional development is essential and expensive, and leaders are hungry for it. We need to offer safe spaces for continuous learning at all levels.”

Regional Science Leader

"Even if you give teachers high quality materials, they still need professional learning opportunities to know how to use them.”

Science Education Researcher

Curricula designed for today’s science standards call on teachers to shift their instructional approach from sage-on-the-stage to guide-on-the-side. Standards-designed materials give students the opportunity to make sense of the world around them by observing real-world phenomena, bringing their own ideas and experiences to the table, asking questions, and investigating those questions. For teachers and leaders alike, this is a significant change.

To realize those shifts, educators need more than professional learning that just unpacks the standards. They need high-quality, ongoing professional learning experiences that are closely tied to what teachers actually do in the classroom. Curriculum-based professional learning enables educators to experience, practice, and reflect on NGSS-designed materials. Such professional learning can deepen educators’ expertise in: (A) science content, including their understanding of disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and scientific and engineering practices; (B) science pedagogy, including practices that support rigorous student learning; and (C) strategies for meeting the needs of all learners.¹ These professional learning opportunities honor educators’ experience and expertise by aligning meaningful support with quality curriculum.

Once school systems select high-quality and aligned materials designed for today’s science standards and establish a professional learning plan, teachers need a safe space to learn, try out strategies, and receive feedback. Meanwhile, science leaders need ongoing training and support around what to look for in classrooms to promote teacher growth. Instituting these opportunities can generate the greatest change in teacher practice and student learning.

¹https://www.nap.edu/read/21836/chapter/2?term=three+important+pieces+of+professional+learning#3

“It takes a lot of policy and advocacy work to be sure the school board supports this type of work. How can you change the narrative to show you’re having success? What’s the work around social justice that matters to your community, and how does science play a role? How do you get the momentum and support to move on the things that really matter?”

Partner Organization Director

Today’s science standards represent a shift in learning goals from memorizing facts to developing a deeper understanding of ideas, practices, and concepts that can be used to make sense of the world. That shift has implications for measuring whether students have met their learning goals. Just as instruction must change, so must assessments. They should be focused on making sense of uncertainty associated with a phenomenon or problem by using both science knowledge and practices, together.

High-quality assessments are an important tool to support better science outcomes and signal needed changes in instruction. The field is still developing support for educators to monitor their students’ learning. However, rather than having one test as the sole measure of success, a more effective strategy is to have a coherent system of assessments that includes varied and innovative assessment opportunities to gather information for different audiences and purposes (e.g., classroom teachers to inform instruction, district and state leaders to inform programmatic and policy decisions).

“For everything that is happening in the classroom, we need infrastructure and funding. We need to think carefully about what we do with materials. We need people with more knowledge to support the changes we want to see in classrooms.”

District Science Leader

The innovations of today’s science standards call for states and districts to shift their approach to student learning, materials selection, professional learning, elementary science schedules, scope and sequence, and funding. Classroom teachers are dedicated to doing their part to transform science classrooms, but they can’t succeed without supportive systems and communities of practice. Investing in our students’ futures will require careful attention to the infrastructure required to improve science teaching and learning and investments in resources for students and educators.