Science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts make up the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These ‘BIG THREE’ relationships form the foundation of the NGSS because they are the foundation of innovation in STEM industries as well.
When we give students the opportunity to figure out phenomena at the core of STEM components – science, technology, engineering and math – in the classroom, we provide them with the opportunity to think like scientists and engineers, while strengthening their own critical thinking skills.
Understanding the Relationship Between Components in STEM Education
The history of STEM education in the U.S. goes back to the 1800’s, when the country began working to promote the engineering and agricultural skills needed to support a growing nation. Today, we use the acronym STEM to refer to the 21st century career fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (with an A sometimes included to refer to the Arts), after the National Science Foundation (NSF) coined the term in the 1990’s.
When we look at the relationships between the four key components of STEM, the study and practice of science is about gaining knowledge from experimentation, while engineering uses scientific knowledge to produce technology that solves problems. Math supports these three components with the tools for quantifying or measuring, then communicating information.
3 Dimensions of NGSS and Effective STEM Instruction
When we think about effective STEM instruction, teachers should be providing authentic learning opportunities where students are empowered to discover and take risks with each component and see how they work together in action. For example, scientists and engineers cannot design an effective experiment, or build a working engineering model, without the math skills required to test, analyze, and report on their results.
NGSS-instruction requires students to use what they learn in different situations and contexts. To achieve this level of mastery, they need the time and space to practice the critical thinking skills that make scientists and engineers most effective in the real world – thinking outside the box, investigating and problem solving, developing and testing their own models, and analyzing information from diverse sources – just to name a few. STEM instruction provides a real-world link to the study of science and an opportunity to practice skills like these in action.
To see how this works in NGSS-led classrooms, picture a three-legged stool, with each of the three dimensions a leg that is helping to hold up the seat. The seat represents the performance expectations for NGSS, while the dimensions support student mastery of the standards, including their ability to demonstrate that understanding.
The 3 Dimensions of Next Generation Science Standards
The three dimensions of science learning related to NGSS include:
- Science and engineering practices are the skills dimension, similar to what we find with the Common Core math practices. They describe the behaviors that scientists and engineers engage in as they investigate questions and solve problems. An example is the practice of developing and using models. One reason scientists develop models is to demonstrate how the parts of a system work together and influence one another. With NGSS, students are expected to be able to develop models, to evaluate the evidence provided by the model, and to gain insights into the phenomenon being modeled.
- Disciplinary core ideas are the content leg. NGSS content is dynamic and showcases how core ideas interact with other areas of content in a system. NGSS disciplinary core ideas are designed to focus learning on the most important aspects of science. They are also selected for their ability to be teachable and learnable over multiple grades as students progress through their studies and build on the knowledge they have learned. For example, take the disciplinary core idea of cycles of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems. With NGSS, students should understand that matter cycles and that energy transfers among the living and nonliving components of an ecosystem. With a complex concept like this, you can see how students will strengthen their knowledge through years of study as they continue to engage disciplinary core ideas, connecting them together in new ways for deeper understanding.
- Crosscutting concepts are those concepts that can be applied across all domains of science. They provide a framework that helps students to understand the connected nature of scientific concepts across domains. Crosscutting concepts are the systems nature of how phenomena manifest in nature. Consider the crosscutting concept of systems and system models. To understand how the ecosystem functions, one must understand the whole of an ecosystem as well as the parts that make it up.. The function of a system can be generalized to many natural, human-made, living and non-living situations, hence it is a crosscutting concept.
3 Dimensions of NGSS in Action
What do the three dimensions look like in action in an NGSS-based curriculum? Consider a lesson that uses the NGSS 3 dimensions to support the performance expectation of developing a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.
For example, students could develop a model of a food web to analyze how matter cycles and energy transfers through both the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem. They might then use their model to extend their reasoning and answer a question related to how the cycling of matter and flow of energy changes when an invasive species is introduced to the ecosystem, observing and evaluating the connections in the system.
NGSS 3 Dimensional Learning and STEM: Making the Connection to Engage Students
The example above highlights a key shift in NGSS education – the performance expectation that students showcase their knowledge and skills in the context of developing an understanding of phenomena. As they design and develop this model, the students are building out their own understanding of what “energy transfer” and “matter” mean, while they use those concepts to actively engage in the STEM components, lead their own investigation into a real-world phenomenon, and report their conclusions.
When we are committed to NGSS 3 dimensional learning in the classroom, students have the opportunity to think creatively and critically about how to solve real-world problems. They are building a better understanding about the world around them and the critical thinking skills to strengthen that knowledge now and in the future. We are engaging the next generation of STEM leaders, who will need to know how to question, analyze, evaluate, problem-solve, create, and innovate to push the boundaries of the STEM industries as we know them today and reinvent them in the future.
