PATHWAYS TO PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS THROUGH INTEGRATE AND INVESTIGATION (Invited Presentation)

Performance expectations in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) go beyond a learning outcome for a single lesson or class period. Instead, they represent what a student should be able to do after substantial time spent engaging in all aspects of investigation and design, making use of the science and engineering practices and cross-cutting concepts to deepen their understanding of disciplinary core ideas. In a classroom where students are engaged in investigation, you would likely see small groups of students gathered around datasets, analyzing and interpreting them, then reporting back to their peers about their findings and working together to develop solutions to complex problems.

This kind of classroom is expected and embedded throughout the InTeGrate materials (https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/index.html), developed and tested with NSF funding. Although InTeGrate materials were designed primarily for undergraduate courses, they were also designed to be adaptable to a variety of settings, including the high school science classroom. Teacher participants in an August, 2018, workshop explored the InTeGrate materials and made use of a "practices web" developed by Nyman and St.Clair (2016) to illustrate how students can build their understanding of phenomena through engaging in science and engineering practices as facilitated by InTeGrate modules.

The outcomes of the workshop include four pathways to performance expectations that are available on the InTeGrate website (https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/ngss/pathways_PEs.html): Investigating the ocean system, Investigating the cycling of carbon, Investigating Earth’s climate and human impacts, and Investigating water as a resource. Each pathway includes an annotated graphic of the practices web and a step-by-step description that includes what students are doing, what the instructor is doing, formative and summative assessments, and links to the materials. Participants found the web to be a useful tool for being explicit about the use of the practices and for illustrating that authentic investigations take a variety of pathways through the practices.