Our Vision for Meaningful Science Learning and Performance

“A major goal for science education should be to provide all students with the background to systematically investigate issues related to their personal and community priorities. They should be able to frame scientific questions pertinent to their interests, conduct investigations, and seek out relevant scientific arguments and data, review and apply those arguments to the situation at hand, and communicate their scientific understanding and arguments to others.” (National Research Council, 2012, p. 278)

We argue that the design of meaningful science learning opportunities requires explicit attention to students' interests and identities as important dimensions to the traditional 3Ds.

While instructional materials aligned with the NRC Framework are now available, teachers still need support with assessing student learning in ways that are consistent with this vision for meaningful science learning and performance and engage students’ interests and identities.

In response, the 5D Assessment Project, a NSF-funded collaboration between BSCS Science Learning and the University of Colorado Boulder, developed a suite of research-driven, open-access tools and processes to help teachers and/or teacher leaders develop from scratch or customize assessments to be more aligned with this “five dimensional” Framework vision. These tools and processes can be used with any set of instructional materials. In addition, they can be used to identify alternative phenomena contexts to support phenomenon-based instruction.