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Next Generation Science Standards: A call to action for the geoscience community
GSA TODAY | FEBRUARY 2015 Nicole D. LaDue, Dept. of Geology and Environmental
Geosciences, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois 60115,
USA, and Cheryl Brown Manning, Evergreen High School,
Evergreen, Colorado 80439, USA
How do we ensure the health of our geology departments with a
steady stream of majors and build an informed public prepared to
make important decisions on geoscience issues? The Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a critical step, and they
require the support of geoscientists nationwide.
The NGSS demonstrate an expanded emphasis on earth-science
topics (such as natural resource distribution, human impacts on
climate, and geologic history) compared to previous standards
(NGSS, 2012; National Research Council, 1996). The NGSS present a
rare opportunity to significantly improve K–12 earth-science educa-
tion nationally because they (1) include up-to-date, timely topics
important for public decision making; and (2) increase the rigor and
prominence of earth-science content in K–12 classrooms. However,
adoption of the NGSS requires state-level legislative action. Without Practices. For example, students must demonstrate that they can
support from geoscientists at the state level, the implementation of
NGSS nationwide is threatened.
High-quality K–12 earth-science education is important for
recruiting the necessary workforce to meet society’s needs.
Although recent enrollment in geoscience majors has dropped
less than 3% in 2013, there is a predicted shortfall of 150,000
geologists to meet the workforce demands in the next decade
(Wilson, 2014). The need to boost enrollment to meet this
demand is hampered by the lack of quality K–12 earth-science
education. Earth science has the fewest trained teachers at the
primary and secondary levels, and only 28% of high-school
students take an earth-science class (Wilson, 2014). There is also
no geoscience Advanced Placement (AP) course. Despite this
lack of earth sciences at the secondary level, more than half of
geology graduates report having taken a middle or high school
earth-science course (Wilson, 2014), suggesting that those who
do have K–12 earth sciences exposure may be more likely to
pursue geoscience majors.
High-quality K–12 earth-science education is important for
geoscience literacy. The public is facing challenging and complex
decisions about geoscience topics, such as fracking and carbon
emissions. Inadequate K–12 earth-science education leads to
misunderstandings about the process of science and uninformed
speculation about the causes of earthquakes, volcanoes, land-
slides, climate change, flooding, massive storms, and droughts—
obfuscating and politicizing the impacts of natural disasters on
public safety (Smith, 2006). The structure of the NGSS, which
infuses science practices and content, has the potential to
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substantially improve public understanding of the challenges we
face as a population with respect to natural disasters, natural
resources, economics, and ecological systems. Improved geosci-
ence literacy will lead to an improved response to critical geologic
issues, such as the costs and benefits of geologic resources,
resource development and consumption, and local and national
economic well-being (Smith, 2006).
The structure of the NGSS effectively links the content to the
practice of geoscience. Built upon the Framework for K–12 Science
Education (National Research Council, 2012), 26 states collabo-
rated to create the first set of standards to be adopted by multiple
states. The NGSS present a new opportunity for the geosciences
because they have an expanded emphasis on earth science
(Wysession, 2014) and are built directly upon a set of geoscience
literacy documents developed by the scientific community
(Wysession et al., 2012). An important feature of the NGSS is the
integration of three dimensions: (1) Disciplinary Core Ideas,
(2) Crosscutting Concepts, and (3) Science and Engineering
“analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to
Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other
Earth systems” (NGSS, 2012, HS-ESS2-2). This performance
expectation demonstrates how the science practice of analyzing
data to support the claim is applied to the relevant earth systems
Disciplinary Core Idea and connects the Crosscutting Concept of
feedbacks across the science disciplines. This structure requires
teachers to engage students in the process of science, rather than
presenting geoscience as a set of facts.
The NGSS development process involved stakeholders from
science, science education, higher education, and industry and
several rounds of public feedback were sought before publication.
Numerous groups and associations strongly support the NGSS,
including the American Geophysical Union, the Geological
Society of America, the National Academy of Science, and the U.S.
Army, as well as energy, technology, and insurance companies
(NGSS, 2014a, 2014b). This demonstrates the importance of the
NGSS for developing the scientifically literate population neces-
sary for continued national and economic stability and success.
CHALLENGES
The adoption of the NGSS by individual states has been slow for
numerous reasons, including the lack of federal incentives and an
emphasis on the Common Core State Standards Initiative
(Heitlin, 2014). However, the greatest controversy is focused on
the earth-science standards because they include politically
controversial topics: climate change; costs and benefits of explora-
tion, development and use of natural resources; and evolution,