How can science educators effectively support the integrated 3-dimensional learning called for by the NGSS?
A big challenge facing teachers who are shifting instruction to meet the vision of the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is how to support students’ progress toward achieving the new standards.
The Next Generation Science Assessment (NGSA) group is a multi-institutional collaborative that is applying the evidence-centered design approach to create classroom-ready assessments for teachers to use formatively to gain insights into their students’ progress on achieving the NGSS performance expectations.
We are a high-caliber interdisciplinary team with expertise in:
- science disciplinary knowledge and practice,
- science teaching and learning,
- classroom-based assessment,
- technology-enhanced instruction and assessment, and
- K-12 professional development.
Together, we have a deep understanding of the NGSS and have developed a design process for creating classroom-based, instructionally supportive assessment tasks with accompanying resources that integrate the NGSS dimensions and measure science proficiency.
Our current work:
The NGSA team is developing technology-enhanced assessment tasks, rubrics, and accompanying instructional resources in physical science and life science for middle school classrooms.
Our ongoing work aims to create exemplary tasks that can be used during instruction to garner good evidence that students are building proficiency with the NGSS performance expectations. We currently have a robust set of tasks available in physical science and expect to have our first draft of life science items ready to showcase in late spring 2016.