Curriculum and Instructional Materials

Curriculum lies at the core of classroom education. High-quality Earth and space science curriculum offers wonderful opportunities to challenge and engage students with inquiry-driven learning and exploration. It guides them through the process of scientific discovery, enabling them to understand key concepts and acquire vital skills. It empowers them to use authentic tools and techniques of Earth and space science, as well as its imagery, visualizations and data. And it makes science real by connecting students to their environments, communities and daily lives.

Curriculum is generated around developmentally-appropriate learning goals. It specifies instructional materials and methods and a program of teacher and student activities designed to achieve these goals. To measure whether these goals are met, it includes multiple forms of embedded assessments. The best curriculum is organized sequentially so that prior learning provides the foundation for later learning, including both content and skill development. The implementation of curriculum requires quality instructional materials, including textbooks, classroom activities, computer and Internet resources, and hands-on materials for the laboratory and field.

Earth and space science education features exemplary instructional materials developed by commercial publishers, colleges and universities, and curriculum developers. The National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and others have funded many innovative curriculum projects. However, their implementation in classrooms is often fragmented and imperfect. There is also an increasing amount of digital Earth and space science data available from the scientific community, distributed by agencies such as NASA, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and others. In most cases, however, neither the instructional materials nor the data are organized and presented in such a way that teachers can readily incorporate them into their teaching. There is a pressing need to organize, inventory, evaluate, and then disseminate these exemplary materials to classroom teachers.

In the 21st century, curricula must reflect new learning strategies and technologies. Curricula should move away from the passive reading of textbooks to dynamic pedagogical approaches that support authentic student investigations and the development of skills of inquiry, exploration and discovery. Curricula need to support student use of current and emerging technologies, such as Web-mediated remote sensing and data visualizations, as essential learning tools in the classroom and at home. The result will be generations of scientifically- and technologically-literate young adults contributing to both the workplace and society.

Recommendations

1. To enhance classroom learning and teaching, K-12 Earth and space science curricula should:
• engage students – Curricula should offer dynamic learning opportunities that are relevant to students' lives and communities.
• be inquiry-based – Curricula should enable students to conduct their own investigations, making scientific observations, offering hypotheses and experiencing the thrill of discovery just as Earth scientists do.
• present the natural processes of Earth as interconnected systems – Students should learn the systems and processes of the Earth's atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere and how they interact.
• utilize space-age perspectives, authentic data and current technologies – Curricula should empower students to utilize the wealth of Earth-orbit images, data and tools that scientists gather, evaluate and disseminate on the Web.
• illustrate how Earth and space science reflects the contributions of and is relevant to diverse populations – Curricula should present the rich diversity of scientists and thinkers who, over time, contributed to our understanding of Earth and space, enabling students to trace the discoveries and technologies that built our knowledge.
• provide opportunities for field research by student – Curricula should allow students to conduct hands-on investigations on their school grounds, in their back yards and throughout their communities.
• be developmentally appropriate – Curricula should be tailored to the grade and skill levels of targeted student populations.
• provide a forum for the development of skills in math, geography, reading and writing – Earth and space science offers broad, multidisciplinary learning opportunities in math, reading and writing that should be embedded in classroom curricula.
• serve as tools for teacher professional development – Curricula should enable and encourage teachers to advance their knowledge and teaching skills in Earth and space science.
  
  

2. Development of K-12 Earth and space science instructional materials should conform to accepted professional practices and standards. These practices and standards include:
• teacher participation in the development process
• pilot and field-testing of materials with students in representative demographic settings
• evaluation of student learning
• scientific review of content accuracy
• alignment with student learning goals derived form the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Science Literacy as well as state science, math, geography and technology education standards.

3. Encourage school systems to teach Earth and space science throughout K-8 and as a full-year course in high school.
   Earth and space science will grow in importance in the 21st century as the public increasingly relies on its findings to inform decisions of social, political, economic and environmental impact. For these reasons, we follow the lead established by the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Science Literacy in calling for Earth and space science to be a strand of science curriculum at every grade level from K-8 and a full-year course at the high-school level. Earth and space science integrates key areas of science, such as biology, chemistry, physics, geology and astronomy, and offers a cohesive educational framework for these disciplines.

4. Develop a set of core learning goals for Earth and space science education that expands and elaborates the goals set forth in National Science Education Standards.
   There is a need for greater coherence in curriculum development at the state and local levels. The National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy set forth in broad strokes the learning objectives for K-12 science education. However, as state and local education authorities work to develop specific versions of these standards in the form of state frameworks and district curricula, they would benefit from specific, detailed descriptions of the learning goals embodied in the standards. These specific core learning goals and assessments to accompany them should be developed by a national-level working group comprised of leading Earth and space science educators and scientists.

5. At the high-school level, Earth and space science should be approved as a lab science with a level of depth and rigor akin to biology, chemistry and physics.
   As a field of science and as a course of study, Earth and space science has changed dramatically since the time when it was often regarded as a lesser science in the panoply of high-school courses. Now Earth and space science is widely considered an essential element of a science-literate society, helping us to understand and deal with a growing array of issues of local, national and global importance. Furthermore, the scope and depth of knowledge encompassed in Earth and space science has deepened, including the integration of fundamental concepts in geology, oceanography, meteorology, astronomy and biology. As a lab science, Earth and space science has moved over the past few decades from what might have been a few experiences with rock identification, to a rich array of challenging field work, lab experiments and increasing use of advanced computer-based visualizations. The National Science Education Standards underscore this importance by confirming that Earth and space science should be a standard part of elementary, middle- and high-school science programs.
   Therefore, every state should ensure that Earth and space science is approved as a lab science, satisfying graduation requirements in the same way that physics, chemistry and biology do. Similarly, colleges and universities should accept Earth and space science as meeting high-school science requirements.

6. Create and sustain an instructional materials review process and a database of reviews maintained at the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE).
   Districts, schools and teachers are confronted with a wide range of Earth and space science instructional materials that they may select in developing curricula, but nowhere is there an accessible database of objective, authoritative reviews of these materials. DLESE, as a portal to high-quality digital resources, should also be encouraged to develop, via its users, high-quality reviews of these resources. A review process and panels comprised of teachers, administrators, curriculum developers and scientists need to be created to review these materials according to criteria consistent with DLESE criteria.

7. Encourage closer collaborations between publishers of mainstream textbooks and developers of innovative materials and technology.
   Textbooks are the dominant vehicle for classroom instruction. Rather than view innovative curriculum materials as an add-on or replacement of textbooks, publishers and developers should collaborate to infuse the innovations into revisions of the textbook programs. This will create a powerful entrée for teachers who rely on the textbooks to explore alternative approaches.

8. Develop a matrix of reviewed instructional materials at each grade level for Earth and space science, mapped to National Science Education Standards/Benchmarks for Science Literacy.
   In order for exemplary instructional materials to be used in classrooms, teachers, schools, and districts must know about them and they must be keyed to appropriate grade levels. This matrix should be updated annually and made available on the Web and in print. The matrix will include links for each item to the DLESE database of reviews so that potential users can obtain further objective information about the materials. These materials should include both commercial and non-commercial products.

9. Develop vignettes of exemplary instruction, curricula and assessment aligned with the core learning goals for Earth and space science.
   In this report, we advocate substantial changes in the methods and materials that teachers use in Earth and space science instruction. To clearly convey the nature of these changes, curriculum developers, working with scientists, should develop vignettes that illustrate how these new methods and materials are used in classroom settings at grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. These vignettes should be produced as printed descriptions (with text and images) and as live-action videos of classroom instruction. They should be widely disseminated to state and local curriculum leaders, teachers, parents, and Earth and space science professionals. NSF or similar federal agencies should fund creation of these vignettes.

10. Develop mechanisms to create awareness of and disseminate the core learning goals, reviewed instructional materials and vignettes for K-12 Earth and space science.
    The objective review of Earth and space science instructional materials, the creation of a database of these reviews, and the organization of these materials into a matrix linking them to grade levels will be of little use if practitioners do not use these resources. Therefore, mechanisms should be developed to create awareness of them. These mechanisms would include regular meetings with national, state and district leaders to inform them of the availability of exemplary materials, Web links on DLESE to the reviews and the matrix, focused mailings to curricular leaders, and distribution to NSF dissemination centers and pre-service educators. These materials should also be disseminated to textbook publishers to serve as models for future development.