1. Learning Sciences Research Institute
October 29-30, 2009
A New Conception of Proficiency in Science: Achieving Coherence Within and Across K-16+
Jim Pellegrino
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago

2. Foci of Today’s Presentation
Achieving Coherence: Past, Present, Future?
Defining Competence to Achieve Coherence
Unpacking the Components of Competence
From NGSS Performance Expectations to Coherence in K-12 Science Education
Beyond K12: From NGSS to AP to MCAT
Final Thoughts

3. Aligning Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment
Jim Pellegrino University of Illinois at Chicago Learning Sciences Research Institute
April 10, 2012
Aligning Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment
Standards
Successful STEM Education Workshop University of Illinois at Chicago

4. Standards & Frameworks as Guides for Reform in K-12 Science
Assessments
Teacher development
Classroom teaching
Curriculum Materials
1/ /2011
7/2011 – 3/2013

5. Issues in U.S. Science Education
Multiple sets of standards – 50 states
Lack of coherent instructional sequences – topics and modules -- mix and match
Lots of “hands-on” but little “minds-on” inquiry activities in modules and kits
Focus on declarative knowledge on tests
Focus on “scientific method” absent content
Poor performance on NAEP science
Poor performance on PISA science

6. Foci of Today’s Presentation
Achieving Coherence: Past, Present, Future?
Defining Competence to Achieve Coherence
Unpacking the Components of Competence
From NGSS Performance Expectations to Coherence in K-12 Science Education
Beyond K-12: From NGSS to AP to MCAT
Final Thoughts

8. New Definition of Competence
Jim Pellegrino University of Illinois at Chicago Learning Sciences Research Institute
4/19/2017
New Definition of Competence
The NRC Science Framework has proposed descriptions of student competence as being the intersection of knowledge involving:
important disciplinary practices
core disciplinary ideas,
and crosscutting concepts with
performance expectations representing the intersection of the three.
It views competence as something that develops over time & increases in sophistication and power as the product of coherent curriculum & instruction  
NRC Science Assessment Committee

9. A Core Idea for K-12 Science Instruction is a Scientific Idea that:
Has broad importance across multiple science or engineering disciplines or is a key organizing concept of a single discipline
Provides a key tool for understanding or investigating more complex ideas and solving problems
Relates to the interests and life experiences of students or can be connected to societal or personal concerns that require scientific or technical knowledge
Is teachable and learnable over multiple grades at increasing levels of depth and sophistication

10. Life Sciences Explanatory
Core Ideas
LS1: From molecules to organisms: Structures and processes
How do organisms live, grow, respond to their environment, and reproduce?
LS2 Ecosystems: Interactions, energy, and dynamics
How and why do organisms interact with their environment? What are the effects of these interactions?
LS3 Heredity: Inheritance and variation of traits
How are characteristics of one generation passed on? Why do individuals differ?
LS4 Biological evolution: Unity and diversity
How can there be so many similarities among organisms yet so many different kinds of plants, animals, and microorganisms?
LS1.A: How do the structures of organisms enable life’s functions?
LS1.B: How do organisms grow and develop?
LS1.C: How do organisms obtain and use the matter and energy they need to live and grow?
LS1.D How do organisms detect, process, and use information about the environment? 10

11. Key Role of Scientific Practices
Developing explanatory core ideas requires engaging in practices to build, synthesize, apply, and refine the ideas over time.
“Standards should include performance expectations that integrate the scientific and engineering practices with the crosscutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas. These expectations should require that students demonstrate knowledge-in-use and include criteria for identifying successful performance.” (NRC 2011, Rec 5).

12. Scientific and Engineering Practices
1. Asking questions and defining problems 2. Developing and using models 3. Planning and carrying out investigations 4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking 6. Developing explanations and designing solutions 7. Engaging in argument from evidence 8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information 12

13. Evolution from Inquiry Standards to Scientific Practices
Social Interaction and Discourse
Emphasis on Knowledge Building
Inquiry
Inquiry

14. Crosscutting Concepts
Some important themes pervade science, mathematics, and technology and appear over and over again, whether we are looking at an ancient civilization, the human body, or a comet. They are ideas that transcend disciplinary boundaries and prove fruitful in explanation, in theory, in observation, and in design.
— American Association for the Advancement of Science
Patterns
Cause & Effect: Mechanism & Explanation
Scale, Proportion & Quantity
Systems and System Models
Energy & Matter: Flows, Cycles and Conservation
Structure and Function
Stability and Change

15. Coherence across K-12 Learning complex explanatory ideas…
…unfolds over time
…requires revisiting core ideas in new contexts that force students to extend them
…requires that students engage in tasks that force them to synthesize and apply ideas
“Standards should be organized as progressions that support students’ learning over multiple grades. They should take into account how students’ command of the concepts, core ideas, and practices becomes more sophisticated over time with appropriate instructional experiences.” (NRC 2011, Rec. 7)

16. A Progression of Explanatory Ideas
9-12
6-8
3-5
K-2
Molecular model of biochemical reactions for matter and energy in food.
Chemical reactions model for matter and energy in food, drawing on particle model of matter and energy transfer model.
Simple food model: food consumed or produced is made of matter and provides energy for organisms.
General needs model: Organisms get what they need to survive from the environment.

17. NRC Framework’s Goals for Teaching & Learning
Coherent investigations of core ideas across multiple years of schooling
More seamless blending of practices with core ideas
Performance expectations that require reasoning with core disciplinary ideas
explain, justify, predict, model, describe, prove, solve, illustrate, argue, etc.
Core
Ideas
Practices
Crosscutting Concepts

18. Foci of Today’s Presentation
Achieving Coherence: Past, Present, Future?
Defining Competence to Achieve Coherence
Unpacking the Components of Competence
From NGSS Performance Expectations to Coherence in K-12 Science Education
Beyond K-12: From NGSS to AP to MCAT
Final Thoughts

20. Two Major Features of the NGSS
Built on the idea of Progressions in the Sophistication of Student Understanding - as previously articulated in the NRC Framework
Include a new “Architecture” with a focus on Performance Expectations that draw from the intersections of disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and cross-cutting concepts

21. A New Architecture for Expressing Standards

23. Pluses & Minuses of Relying on Performance Expectations
+ Avoid vague cognitive verbs – “know” & “understand” + Stated as claims about students in terms of what they are supposed to be able to do to demonstrate their knowledge + Identify progressions as part of expectations - Don’t tell us how to get there – curriculum materials and instructional practices - Need to be “unpacked” in terms of the forms of evidence needed to support the student claim

24. NGSS as the Basis for Aligning C-I-A
Jim Pellegrino University of Illinois at Chicago Learning Sciences Research Institute
April 10, 2012
NGSS as the Basis for Aligning C-I-A
NRC
Framework
& NGSS
Successful STEM Education Workshop University of Illinois at Chicago

25. Some Challenges for Curriculum and Instruction
Build coherently in a given grade and across grades
Provide time for students to engage in the practices and explore ideas in depth
Provide support for students to become proficient with the practices
Create opportunities for students to interact with each other in productive ways
How to integrate engineering
How to support and include Language Learners

26. Some Challenges for Professional Development
Practices may be unfamiliar to teachers
Knowledge of crosscutting concepts and some core ideas may be incomplete for some teachers
Thinking about learning progressions within and across grades
Some teachers will need to make major changes in instructional approach
Making connections across disciplines and to mathematics and ELA
Others……

27. Challenges for Assessment (and Curriculum & Instruction)
To develop situations and tasks that integrate the three dimensions.
To develop situations and tasks that can assess where a student can be placed along a sequence of progressively more complex understandings of a given core idea, and successively more sophisticated applications of practices and crosscutting concepts.
To develop situations and tasks that assess the connections between the different strands of disciplinary core ideas (e.g. using understandings about chemical interactions from physical science to explain phenomena in biological contexts).

28. Three Important Questions
Is this an impossible task given the size and scope of the changes necessary?
How does this relate to college and career ready and to STEM ready in higher ed?
Is there somewhere we can look for help in figuring this out?

29. Foci of Today’s Presentation
Achieving Coherence: Past, Present, Future?
Defining Competence to Achieve Coherence
Unpacking the Components of Competence
From NGSS Performance Expectations to Coherence in K-12 Science Education
Beyond K-12: From NGSS to AP to MCAT
Final Thoughts

30. Published in
Feb 2011
Published in
Fall 2011

31. Structure of the AP Biology Curriculum Framework
4 Big Ideas
Enduring Understandings
Science Practices: Science Inquiry & Reasoning
Essential Knowledge
Learning Objectives

32. Curriculum Framework: Big Ideas
The unifying concepts or Big Ideas increase coherence both within and across disciplines. A total of Four Big Ideas:
The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life.
B I G I D E A 1
Biological systems utilize energy and molecular building blocks to grow, reproduce, and maintain homeostasis.
B I G I D E A 2
Living systems retrieve, transmit, and respond to information essential to life processes.
B I G I D E A 3
Biological systems interact, and these interactions possess complex properties.
B I G I D E A 4

33. Building Enduring Understandings
For each Big Idea, there are enduring understandings which incorporate core concepts that students should retain. Total of 17 enduring understandings across the four Big Ideas.
The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life.
B I G I D E A 1
Enduring Understanding 1.A: Change in the genetic makeup of a population over time is evolution
Enduring Understanding 1.B: Organisms are linked by lines of descent from common ancestry
Enduring Understanding 1.C: Life continues to evolve within a changing environment
Enduring Understanding 1.D: The origin of living systems is explained by natural processes

34. AP Science Practices: Level 1
Jim Pellegrino
Jim Pellegrino
January 28, 2010
AP Science Practices: Level 1
Use representations and models to communicate scientific phenomena and solve scientific problems.
Use mathematics appropriately.
Engage in scientific questioning to extend thinking or to guide investigations within the context of the AP course.
Plan and implement data collection strategies in relation to a particular scientific question.
Perform data analysis and evaluation of evidence.
Work with scientific explanations and theories.
Connect and relate knowledge across various scales, concepts, and representations in and across domains.
Learning Sciences Research Institute University of Illinois at Chicago 34

35. AP Integrating the Content and Science Practices
Essential Knowledge 1.B.2
Phylogenetic trees and cladograms are graphical representations (models) of evolutionary history that can be tested
Content
Science Practice
Learning Objective
Science Practice 5.3
The student connects phenomena and models across spatial and temporal scales +
Learning Objective (1.B.2 & 5.3)
The student is able to evaluate evidence provided by a data set in conjunction with a phylogenetic tree or a simple cladogram to determine evolutionary history and speciation

36. What’s The Impact Of Curriculum Changes On New AP Biology Exam?
Because of use of Big Ideas….in 2008, 12% of questions had something to do with evolution In new exam, 35% of questions have something to do with evolution Because of emphasis on science practice and mathematical skills…new types of questions are being asked, e.g., grid-ins Because of use of evidence…the number of Multiple Choice questions was reduced from 100 questions on last year’s exam to 63 on this year’s exam.

37. The New AP Exam
No test items will focus on low cognitive level/declarative knowledge/recall
For each exam item, students will either produce the evidence (CR) or engage with the evidence (SR/MC)
explain
justify
predict
evaluate
describe
analyze
pose scientific questions
construct explanations
construct models
represent graphically
solve problems
select and apply mathematical routines

39. Foci of Today’s Presentation
Achieving Coherence: Past, Present, Future?
Defining Competence to Achieve Coherence
Unpacking the Components of Competence
From NGSS Performance Expectations to Coherence in K-12 Science Education
Beyond K-12: From AP to MCAT
Final Thoughts

40. What’s Left to Do? – A LOT!!!
We need to translate the standards into effective models, methods and materials for curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Need to unpack & clarify performance expectations
Need precise claims & evidence statements
Need task models & templates
We need to use what we know already to evaluate and improve the assessments that are part of current practice, e.g., classroom assessments, large-scale exams, etc.

41. Science Assessment: Grand Challenges

42. Will We Have Assessments Worth Teaching With & To?
Jim Pellegrino University of Illinois at Chicago Learning Sciences Research Institute
April 10, 2012
Will We Have Assessments Worth Teaching With & To?
Desires and timelines of the policy community may conflict with the capacities of the R&D & Practice communities
Worst thing we could do is leap to designing a new “NGSS Aligned” High Stakes Test
Standards are the beginning not the end – not a substitute for the thinking and research needed to define progressions of learning that can serve as a basis for the integration of curriculum, instruction and assessment.
Successful STEM Education Workshop University of Illinois at Chicago

43. Assessment Should not be the “Tail Wagging the Science Education Dog”
Jim Pellegrino University of Illinois at Chicago Learning Sciences Research Institute
4/19/2017
NGSS
Assessment
NRC Science Assessment Committee 43

44. “The perfect is the enemy of the good."
Jim Pellegrino -- UIC
April 9, 2011
Voltaire
“The perfect is the enemy of the good."
AERA 2011: New Orleans