Authors

Cary Sneider

Document Type

Report

Journal/Book Title/Conference

NCETE

Publication Date

2011

First Page

1

Last Page

12

Abstract

Today‘s high school science teachers find themselves in a period of transition. For the past decade there have been calls for replacing a narrow focus on science education—the traditional courses in physics, chemistry, biology, and Earth and space science—with a broader curriculum on STEM (that is, the four allied fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). However, at present there are no guidelines on what that broader curriculum should include or how it should be designed, and the gulf that has separated science and mathematics seems as wide as ever, despite decades of efforts to bridge the two disciplines. Next Generation National Standards for Science Education are currently being written, but they will not be released until at least 2013. To meet the challenge this paper suggests that educators look to the Technology and Engineering Literacy Framework for the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as a source of principles on which to start the process of remodeling the high school science curriculum to better prepare our students to enter the STEM world of the 21st century.

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