Unit 2: Exploring the Nature of Thermal Phenomena
X. Making Connections to Educational Policies
What does doing science and engineering involve? Unit 1 introduced common practices such as collecting, analyzing and interpreting data as well as engaging in argument from such evidence. Doing science and engineering also involves ways of thinking that bridge across different science domains. What concepts, for example, do biologists, physicists, and chemical engineers all use in their studies?
A. Learning about the US Next Generation Science Standards: Crosscutting Concepts
Many US states have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) for guiding science instruction in their schools. In addition to the science and engineering practices introduced in Unit 1, these standards articulate a group of concepts that are common across many science disciplines. Both the science and engineering practices and these crosscutting concepts are intended to help students learn about and participate in the nature of science.
Question 2.16 What relevant crosscutting concepts have you used in exploring light and thermal phenomena?
- Go to https://www.nextgenscience.org/get-to-know
- Click on Appendix G, scroll down the first page to the list of seven crosscutting concepts that scientists and engineers use across many different contexts:
- Patterns. Observed patterns of forms and events guide organization and classification, and they prompt questions about relationships and the factors that influence them.
- Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation. Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. A major activity of science is investigating and explaining causal relationships and the mechanisms by which they are mediated. Such mechanisms can then be tested across given contexts and used to predict and explain events in new contexts.
- Scale, proportion, and quantity. In considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different measures of size, time, and energy and to recognize how changes in scale, proportion, or quantity affect a system’s structure or performance.
- Systems and system models. Defining the system under study—specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model of that system—provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science and engineering.
- Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation. Tracking fluxes of energy and matter into, out of, and within systems helps one understand the systems’ possibilities and limitations.
- Structure and function. The way in which an object or living thing is shaped and its substructure determine many of its properties and functions.
- Stability and change. For natural and built systems alike, conditions of stability and determinants of rates of change or evolution of a system are critical elements of study
- Scan the discussion of these crosscutting concepts to see what they are and read about any that you