What are the Disciplinary Core Ideas?

The National Research Council (NRC) defines disciplinary core ideas as those that focus K–12 science curriculum, instruction, and assessments on the most important aspects of science disciplinary content knowledge. In order to identify the relevant core ideas for K–12 level science, the NRC Framework Committee developed and applied a set of criteria.  To be considered "core", the ideas had to meet at least two of the following criteria and ideally all four: Have broad importance across multiple sciences or engineering disciplines or be a key organizing principle of a single discipline; Provide a key tool for understanding or investigating more complex ideas and solving problems; Relate to the interests and life experiences of students or be connected to societal or personal concerns that require scientific or technological knowledge; Be teachable and learnable over multiple grades at increasing levels of depth and sophistication. Design teams working in four domains—life sciences, physical sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering and technology—supported the work of the Committee on core ideas by examining related research and key documents. These included recent research on teaching and learning science, much of which has been summarized in previous reports from the NRC—How People Learn, Taking Science to School, Learning Science in Informal Environments, Systems for State Science Assessment and America’s Lab Report. The Committee and design team members also reviewed the NAEP 2009 Science Framework, the College Board Science Standards for College Success, the National Science Teacher Association's Science Anchors initiative, and such seminal documents as the National Science Education Standards developed by the NRC and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy developed by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).