Creating Science and Engineering Practices in the K12 Classroom: An Initial Survey of the Field

The recently released Framework for K-12 Science Education Standards emphasizes the importance of science and engineering practices to the K-12 classroom. This continues the stress on process and authentic activities that has characterized science education reform over at least the last two decades . It also adds the more explicit inclusion of engineering that has characterized more recent efforts. However, creating these experiences in the classroom is far from trivial. Much of the work looking at the specific structure of such inquiry-based activities at the K-12 level has consisted of either articulating intended goals or rubrics for assessing the degree of inquiry learning. This paper is intended to illuminate the means for achieving those goals and levels by generating a taxonomy of different pedagogical structures used for inquiry activities. We aim to articulate structures that are more general than individual lessons but more specific than broad goals. By systematically reviewing over 300 activities across a variety of curriculum sources, content areas and grade bands, we have validated a set of eight inquiry activity structures: Protocol, Design Challenge, Product Testing, Black Box, Discrepant Event, Intrinsic Data Space, Taxonomy, And Modeling. We further explore how particular structures are better suited to emphasizing engineering in the K12 classroom, and assess the adequacy of engineering practice exercises across subject areas and grade bands. We found the prevalence of activities that included engineering practices to lag behind the prevalence of those including science practices. However, the dominant activity structure including engineering practices – the Design Challenge – was also far better at other activity structures at promoting inquiry-based learning. Promoting inquiry-based teaching has become the central focus of reform in science education for more than two decade. That is, there is a need to move instruction from traditional teaching, where the teacher and text acts as the source of clear, unchanging information to inquiry learning, where students are active constructors of knowledge, work with data and support conclusions with empirical warrants. This was a central feature of the original National Science Education Standards . The new Framework for K-12 Science Standards continues this call, making both the importance of process and the relevance of engineering more explicit. Making this goal a reality, however, has not been easy. The interest in promoting inquiry-based teaching has certainly generated actual instances of inquiry-based instruction specific curricula and instructional plans. These have limits, though, as specific examples rather than broader concepts. In reviewing the state of inquiry as an organizing theme of science education, Anderson stresses “teachers have to be the focal point of a move towards more inquiry-oriented science education”. Our concern, therefore, lies with what conceptual resources have been provided to support teachers in enacting inquiry. At the other end of the spectrum from specific instructional plans, well articulated, abstract goals have been established. Those embedded in the various standards documents are prime examples. But these are aspirational, rather than prescriptive. Our objective is to provide teachers tools that are more general than specific activities, but more concrete that aspirational goals. As part of this goal, we aim to produce a taxonomy of the various pedagogical strategies behind creating experiences with science and engineering practices in the K-12 classroom. In this study, we have reviewed over 300 K-12 science activities from a variety of curricular resources. We have generated and validated a categorization of the structure of these lessons. In addition, by analyzing other aspects of each activity, we highlight several issues with the current state of inquiry learning in general, and engineering education specifically. Nomenclature Before proceeding further, there is an issue of nomenclature to deal with. The new Framework for Science Education does two things to improve terminology. By using the phrase “science and engineering practices” it makes clear the importance of inquiry as a reflection of what scientists and engineers do, not just inquiry as a pedagogical strategy. Second, it explicitly includes engineering, thereby stressing its importance and telegraphing that there are some differences between science and engineering. What is lacking, however, in the Standards documents and the field at large, are umbrella terms for science and engineering, and scientific inquiry and engineering design. There is no doubt that there are important distinctions, and separate terms are often needed. However, there are also important similarities, particularly in noting the difference between inquiry in a science or engineering context and inquiry in other fields such as history, art or literature. The new Framework makes this clear in that two of the eight practices distinguish between science and engineering, but six do not. At a more practical level, in K-12 education, to the extent that students are exposed to engineering, it is in the context of a class that is otherwise called “Science class”. Therefore, our use of the term “inquiry” here is intended in a broad manner. That is, it refers to the variety of investigative practices intended to expand our understanding of the natural and technological world. We mean to distinguish it from other forms of knowledge generation such as history, art or literature. Where we mean to distinguish within this category, we refer to scientific inquiry and engineering design. In our discussion of the work of others, we note their applicability to science and engineering. Likewise, when we refer to “science education”, “science class”, “science activities” etc. we are including engineering under the assumption that it is that part of the institution of K-12 education where experiences of engineering are likely to occur. Supporting Teachers in Conducting Inquiry The most obvious resources lie at the other end of the spectrum of abstraction from specific lesson plans. There are well-established articulations of what inquiry learning needs to include. Table 1 shows the essential features of classroom inquiry as delineated by the inquiry addendum to the National Science Education Standards. Essential Features of Classroom Inquiry 1) Learners are engaged by scientifically oriented questions. 2) Learners give priority to evidence, which allows them to develop and evaluate explanations that address scientifically oriented questions. 3) Learners formulate explanations from evidence to address scientifically oriented questions 4) Learners evaluate their explanations in light of alternative explanations, particularly those reflecting scientific understanding. 5) Learners communicate and justify their proposed explanations. Table 1 From Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards Though one could easily argue that these are incomplete with regard to engineering, any of these are certainly applicable to engineering. The new Framework for Science Education achieves more balanced coverage by delineating eight “science and engineering practices”, shown in Table 2 Science and Engineering Practices 1) Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering) 2) Developing and using models 3) Planning and carrying out investigations 4) Analyzing and interpreting data 5) Using mathematics and computational thinking 6) Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering) 7) Engaging in argument from evidence 8) Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information Table 2 From the Framework for Science Education But these are aspirational goals: they define a target without necessarily providing guidance as to how to get there. Similarly, a number of rubrics have been developed for assessing the degree of inquiry in a given instance of instruction . Most are variants on the Herron Scale, where activities move up in levels as responsibility for conclusions, methods and questions move from teacher to student. These are applicable to both science and engineering contexts. While these can certainly play a role in guiding teacher practice through self-correction, they do not form conceptual resources for generating instruction. Level Problem Ways & Means Answers 0 Given Given Given 1 Given Given Open 2 Given Open Open 3 Open Open Open Table 3 The Herron Scale, take from Shulman and Tamir, based on Schwab and Herron Over the years there have been a number of approaches to defining inquiry for teachers, such as the Inquiry Cycle from White and colleagues or Kuhn and Pease set of ten skills. Bell and colleagues comprised a meta-list of categories used in prior frameworks. What ultimately limits these approaches is that they are not constructed from the point of view of teachers. Rather, they are based on descriptions of either what scientists do or what we want students to do. This means they retain an aspirational rather than guiding character. Consider Harwood’s description of his “activity model for scientific inquiry” as containing “10 activities in which scientists engage as often as necessary through the scientific process”. Similar to the Essential Features of Classroom Inquiry from the NSES, these often have the problem of failing to cover engineering adequately. But they also have a more basic shortcoming. Such a format tells teachers what they should get their students to do, not what teachers should do to get students to do it. Even the Herron Scale is constructed around what teachers should not do. This often instills a subtractive approach to developing inquiry: teachers plan the same underlying activity, but give less instruction. Difficulty in Inquiry Defining what teachers should do, or alternatively, the options available to them, is importan