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White Paper: Measuring Science Instructional Practice: A Survey Tool for the Age of NGSS

Abstract

"Ambitious efforts are taking place to implement a new vision for science education in the United States, in both Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) adopted states and those states creating their own, often related, standards. In-service and pre-service teacher educators across the United States are involved in supporting teacher shifts in practice toward the new standards. With these efforts, it will be important to document shifts in science instruction towards the goals of NGSS and broader science education reform. Survey instruments are often used to capture instructional practices, however existing surveys primarily measure inquiry based on previous definitions and standards, and with a few exceptions disregard key instructional practices considered outside the scope of inquiry. A comprehensive survey and a clearly defined set of items aligned to new science education reforms does not exist. To address this need, we developed and validated a Science Instructional Practices (SIPS) survey instrument that is appropriate for NGSS and other related science standards. Final subscales include: Instigating an Investigation, Data Collection and Analysis, Critique, Explanation and Argumentation, Modeling, Traditional Instruction, Prior Knowledge, Science Communication, and Discourse."

See Related:
-- SIPS Survey and Scoring Sheet
-- Journal Article