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Pre-college Science Curriculum FrameworksTo date, curricular frameworks for the undergraduate life sciences have not been developed or adopted nationally. CELS is bringing forward the "Issues-Based Framework for Bio 101" to help fill this void and to encourage widespread dialogue about the undergraduate curriculum. Listed below is a selected compilation of programs that contain curricular recommendations for precollege science classrooms. Although all of these programs articulate overarching principles, concepts, and skills, only the Advanced Placement Program provides specific curricula. Nonetheless, each of these frameworks contributes to shaping the undergraduate biology curricula. Complementing these national resources, the departments of education in individual states may have documents for curricular frameworks and learning results for precollege students. Advanced Placement Program The Advanced Placement (AP) Biology course is designed to be taken by students after the successful completion of a first course in high school biology and one in high school chemistry. It aims to provide students with the conceptual framework, factual knowledge, and analytical skills necessary to deal critically with the rapidly changing science of biology. AP Biology should include the topics regularly covered in a college biology course for majors or in the syllabus from a high-quality college program in introductory biology. The two main goals of AP Biology are to help students develop a conceptual framework for modern biology and to help students gain an appreciation of science as a process. Primary emphasis in an AP Biology course should be on developing an understanding of concepts rather than on memorizing terms and technical details. Essential to this conceptual understanding are the following: a grasp of science as a process rather than as an accumulation of facts; personal experience in scientific inquiry; recognition of unifying themes that integrate the major topics of biology; and application of biological knowledge and critical thinking to environmental and social concerns. The AP Biology exam is developed by the College Board and is administered by Educational Testing Services. Other AP science courses include chemistry, environmental science, and physics. American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) Benchmarks for Science Literacy is the Project 2061 statement of what all students should know or be able to do in science by the end of grades 2, 5, 8, and 12. The recommendations at each grade level suggest reasonable progress toward the science literacy goals expressed in the project's 1989 report, Science for All Americans. Project 2061 continues to develop tools that educators can use to change the way they think about and make use of curriculum materials, instructional strategies, and assessments. Project 2061 is administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). National Research Council Developed by the National Research Council, the National Science Education Standards (NSES) present a vision of a scientifically literate populace. They outline what students need to know, understand, and be able to do to be scientifically literate at different grade levels. They describe an educational system in which all students demonstrate high levels of performance, in which teachers are empowered to make the decisions essential for effective learning, in which interlocking communities of teachers and students are focused on learning science, and in which supportive educational programs and systems nurture achievement. The Standards point toward a future that is challenging but attainableCwhich is why they are written in the present tense. National Science Teachers Association
(NSTA) The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) initiated the Scope, Sequence, and Coordination (SS&C) project to provide science for all students each year in four natural science subjects: biology, chemistry, earth and space sciences, and physics. Foundations in the four areas can be revisited each year from different perspectives and with greater depth as students progress through the sequence. The project materials and pedagogy adhere to two fundamental sets of criteria: the tenets of SS&C and the National Science Education Standards (NSES); the latter were developed by the National Research Council. A principal purpose of this project is to establish, through evidence in the form of valid measures of student achievement, that a program based on SS&C tenets will better enable a representative sample of high school students to achieve the NSES than would traditional instruction with the layer-cake curriculum of one year of biology, one year of chemistry, and one year of physics. |
