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1. Conceptual Development of Pre-Service Teachers through Verification versus Guided-Inquiry Physical Science Laboratories

   Meadows, S. (April 2019, Annual meeting program - American Educational Research Association)

   Verification laboratory instruction lacks opportunities for students to pose questions, generate hypotheses, and/or determine experimental procedures. Students in such settings often follow prescribed instructions towards a predetermined outcome. However, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) calls for more inquiry-based approaches through science and engineering practices. This pre/post comparison study investigates the impact of a new guided inquiry-based laboratory curriculum versus an existing verification-based laboratory curriculum on the physical science content knowledge of 98 preservice elementary educators. The results show no differences in disciplinary chemistry/physics items but show a significant difference in integrated items for the guided-inquiry laboratory. Such findings indicate the value of guided versus verification-inquiry for integrated explanations and have important implications for teacher education in light of NGSS. 

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2. Remote Labs 2.0 to the Rescue: Doing Science in a Pandemic

   Jiang, Rundong; Li, Chenglu; Huang, Xudong; Sung, Shannon; Xie, Charles (July 2021, The science teacher)

   null (Ed.)

   Laboratory experiences are a staple of science education (National Research Council 2006): Not only do they provide students with an avenue to acquire authentic skills needed for scientific research, referred to as science and engineering practices by NGSS, but they also allow students to go beyond rote memorization of facts to deepen their understanding of science through inquiry. 

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3. Implementing NGSS-designed Curriculum Materials: Promising Results from an Efficacy Study

   Feng, Mingyu; Murphy, Robert; Harris, Christopher J.; Rutstein, Daisy; Loper, Suzanna (April 2022, Paper presented at 2022 AERA Annual Meeting)

   The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) reflect an ambitious vision for science education where students investigate phenomena or solve problems through using and applying disciplinary core ideas in concert with science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts. Because the NGSS are so different from prior standards, the need for high-quality curriculum materials is especially great. As new curricula go to scale, it will be important to conduct evidence-based research on their efficacy. We conducted a randomized experiment to examine the efficacy of a widely available NGSS-designed middle school curriculum for improving seventh grade students’ learning in physical science. A hierarchical linear modeling approach was applied to analyze student learning outcomes as measured by an NGSS-aligned assessment. Initial findings demonstrate evidence of promise of the curriculum materials for supporting three-dimensional teaching and learning. The findings provide support for further research on NGSS-designed materials at other grade levels and within other science domains. 

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4. Students’ Epistemic Connections Between Science Inquiry Practices and Disciplinary Ideas in a Computational Science Unit

   Dabholkar, Sugat; Irgens, Golnaz Arastoopour; Horn, Michael; Wilensky, Uri (June 2020, International Conference of the Learning Sciences)

   Teaching science inquiry practices, especially the more contemporary ones, such as computational thinking practices, requires designing newer learning environments and appropriate pedagogical scaffolds. Using such learning environments, when students construct knowledge about disciplinary ideas using inquiry practices, it is important that they make connections between the two. We call such connections epistemic connections, which are about constructing knowledge using science inquiry practices. In this paper, we discuss the design of a computational thinking integrated biology unit as an Emergent Systems Microworlds (ESM) based curriculum. Using Epistemic Network Analysis, we investigate how the design of unit support students’ learning through making epistemic connections. We also analyze the teacher’s pedagogical moves to scaffold making such connections. This work implies that to support students’ epistemic connections between science inquiry practices and disciplinary ideas, it is critical to design restructured learning environments like ESMs, aligned curricular activities and provide appropriate pedagogical scaffolds. 

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5. K-12 Engineering and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): A Network Visualization and Analysis

   Reitsma, René F.; Hoglund, Brian Gordon; Chaker, Dua; Marks, Andrea Marks; Soltys, Michael. (June 2020, 2020 ASEE Annual Conference and Expo)

   We present an interactive network visualization of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and its coverage by collections of aligned curriculum. The visualization presents an alternative to the usual presentation of the NGSS as a set of linked tables. Users can view entire grade bands, search for or drill down to the level of individual NGSS standards or curricular items, or display groups of standards across grade bands. NGSS-aligned curriculum collections can be switched on and off to visually explore their NGSS coverage. Viewing the NGSS and associated curriculum this way facilitates navigating the NGSS and can help with assessment of alignments as lacking or anomalous. Modeling the NGSS as a network also allows for the computation of network metrics to provide insight into core characteristics of the network. It also provides for detecting anomalies and unexpected patterns. 

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