What are the Crosscutting Concepts?

The NRC Framework describes crosscutting concepts as those that bridge disciplinary boundaries, having explanatory value throughout much of science and engineering. Crosscutting concepts help provide students with an organizational framework for connecting knowledge from the various disciplines into a coherent and scientifically based view of the world. These concepts are: Patterns; Cause and Effect; Scale, Proportion, and Quantity; Systems and System Models; Energy and Matter; Structure and Function; and Stability and Change. The Framework also emphasizes that these concepts need to be made explicit for students because they provide an organizational schema for interrelating knowledge from various science fields into a coherent and scientifically-based view of the world.