Flashback to Lexington, Kentucky, young AJ sitting in science class memorizing fact after isolated fact. The periodic table of elements. Equations of motion. The continental layout of Pangaea. One after the other. For twelve years.
If there was one practice that was essential to my success in science, it would be learning how to make flashcards. I used a lot of flashcards. I would write a science word or idea on the front and the definition on the back. That single practice of memorizing isolated facts via flipping flashcards helped me achieve a B-occasional-A status in the sciences. Based on my science education, it's no wonder that if asked in 7th grade what a scientist does, I would likely have said, "...memorizes scientific facts about the universe and pours chemicals in beakers from time to time."
Memorizing science facts, however, may be a dying fad.
According to the National Research Council - a research council of premier educational minds - it's more important to know how to do good science than to memorize isolated facts about science. Why? Because this is the information age. Anyone with a mobile phone and data plan can look up facts about black holes or tectonic plates. It takes a real scientific mind to know how to do a proper scientific experiment.
Therein lies the shift in science education through the Next Generation Science Standards.
What does this mean for Dever and all the other schools across the nation adopting NGSS standards? It means fewer standards taught in science and a deeper focus on teaching science and engineering practices, developing experiments, and evaluating the validity of scientific ideas.
For instance, this will mean students spend much less time memorizing the names of skeletal bones and more time designing an experiment to measure the weight of different species skeletons.
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