Abstract:

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that have been recently developed in the United States, integrate learning across three-dimensions (disciplinary content, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts). The NGSS are written as a set of Performance Expectations (PEs) that integrate the three dimensions into a set of PEs against which student performance is to be assessed. One of the science practices is "Mathematical and Computational Thinking", and it explicitly includes student development and use of computational models in science. In this presentation I will discuss the the structure of the NGSS, and focus on the "Mathematical and Computational Thinking" practice. I will illustrate how this is combined with a variety of disciplinary content and crosscutting concepts. I will also illustrate what is meant by "computational models" in the NGSS by examining observable features of a student performance that indicate whether a student has met the PE or not.

Keywords:

Science standards, computational modeling.