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The Science Teacher

July 2012
Vol. 79 No. 5

Science curricula are often criticized for being a mile wide and an inch deep. The result can be a frenetic race through disconnected topics. Both the recently released public draft of the Next Generation Science Standards and A Framework for K–12 Science Education therefore focus on a limited number of core ideas and crosscutting concepts—that is, the Big Ideas of science. The Big Ideas are generalizable—able to unify a wide range of scientific facts. Teaching every concept in the context of some larger Big Idea provides coherence across the science curriculum.


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