The purpose of the revised New York State Learning Standards is to reimagine the educational framework for English language arts and mathematics, with the goal of better supporting educators in their instructional practice and to provide additional guidance on achieving a vision of 21st century literacy across content areas (NYSED, engageNY, 2017). Nearly every facet of modern life encompasses science, engineering and technology skills, and in fact, many of humanity’s most pressing current and future challenges require creative approaches utilizing this dynamic skill-set. Even though many people know how to use technological devices and understand the significance of science and engineering practices, unfortunately, too few U.S. citizens have strong backgrounds in these fields, and many people lack even fundamental knowledge of them.
This national trend has created a widespread call for a new approach to K-12 educational practices in the United States (Next Generation Science & Engineering Practices). MakerSpaces in the classroom are the perfect environment to integrate rigorous content and activate design thinking among students.
The National Research Council's (NRC) Framework describes a vision of what it means to be proficient in science; it rests on a view of science as both a body of knowledge and an evidence-based, model and theory building enterprise that continually extends, refines, and revises knowledge, all of which directly correlate to a MakerSpace environment. The Framework presents three dimensions that will be combined to form each standard: Practices; Crosscutting Concepts; and Disciplinary Core Ideas. To be considered core, the ideas should 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 concept 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
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google
Web Publication Development Date: February, 2020