The Relationship Between the Next Generation Science Standards and Classroom Practice in Climate Change Instruction

• In Event: 75.031 - Environmental Education in a Sustainable World

Abstract

This case study presents the efforts of three high school teachers to design and implement climate change lessons in alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Using three conceptual frameworks that organize the assumptions of the environment in the NGSS it is possible to examine how standards inform teachers’ practice. Video recorded instruction of eight climate change-anchored lessons spanning three consecutive years were thematically coded. Results indicate that teachers are inclined to emphasize problematic aspects of the NGSS’s characterization of climate change. Implications of this study reveal opportunities to use standards to design interventions for classroom practice to support diverse students in countering the assumptions about the human-environment relationship embodied in the NGSS.

Authors

• Heather F. Clark, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jarod N. Kawasaki, University of California - Los Angeles

• William A. Sandoval, University of California - Los Angeles