Course assignment - Reflection 1

This week I am going to do a reflection about the Next Generation Standards (NGSS). NGSS are a group of standards created with a clear objective that encourage students in all their educational phases to look into Science as an interesting field that can be part of their lives. Having new standards would help not only students but also teachers to better understand how science can be applied in all daily activities and how science can be an exciting career for more and more students every year.

Despite the state educational standards, the NGSS are looking to complement them (State standards) to give students the opportunity to experiment Science and engineering embedded in their real contexts. In this way besides of having only the theoretical knowledge, hands-on experiences give students the opportunity to relate all the different aspects of their lives with the power of Science and engineering.

But why new standards? Technology has evolved and exists in all fields. Every single day new experiments and procedures are created to enhance human’s life and to better understand our world. However, there are a lot of students that have misconceptions about Science education. According to Gormally (2016) students relate a scientist as lonely persons who use lab coats and who know everything. This image is the image of science that NGSS are looking to change in the minds of students.

Having new standards will allow schools all over the country to change the stereotype of science as boring and unreachable. Having new standards in this information era then, will allow students to have a different perspective of what is to do science.

An interesting aspect of the NGSS is that the standards are constructed around three dimensions: the type of practices that can be applied in the classroom, the crosscut concepts that can be applied in different science areas and are used in the standards, and the connection with the disciplinary core ideas that allow students to have enough knowledge to expand their knowledge. Another interesting aspect is that NGSS create relations between practice, content and the connections created from them.

It is important to emphasize that NGSS give teachers flexibility to apply them in their classes. The standards include goals and a guide of progression that students should acquire in the different school levels, this goals are stated and explained to avoid confusions in their application in the classrooms.

One more feature of NGSS is the addition of different appendixes that explain all the different aspects considered in their creation, like implementation, core ideas progression, engineering design, the connection of NGSS with the common core standards for literacy in science and technical subjects, etc. This features can help teachers to better understand what are the expectations for each grade level and to plan the better way to achieve them in class. In sum, having new standards is an excellent way to develop more research and the opportunity to create more exciting practices in science classes, in which students have the opportunity to apply science in their lives not only as part of a class but maybe as a career plan.

References 
Gormally, C. & Marchut, A. (2016). "Science isn't my thing" Exploring non-science majors' science identities. Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research.

NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For states, by states. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.