Lipstick for 2-D inquiry Doesn'

This book aims to elucidate the keystone of the 2012 Framework’s and the NGSS’s 3-D model of classroom practice: the crosscuttings concepts (CCC). Yet it does little more than put lipstick o... See More

This book aims to elucidate the keystone of the 2012 Framework’s and the NGSS’s 3-D model of classroom practice: the crosscuttings concepts (CCC). Yet it does little more than put lipstick on 2-D inquiry and call it 3-D. By shouting the same invocations science teachers have been hearing since the Frameworks appeared, the authors avoid the big question: Why did 3-D practice never take hold in American classrooms other than as seven checkboxes on the district science curriculum form? The answer is on every page. The first chapter’s second paragraph, the lead-off anecdote, is classic 2-D inquiry. The conceptual dimension throughout the book is little more than seven vocabulary terms spread thinly atop of classic inquiry-learning activities. The authors test credulity with their illogical arguments for why only seven concepts cut across all science, explicitly excluding, for example, energy transformation and evolution. But the Framework’s committees of scientists, researcher-experts, and the NSTA say it’s so. Teachers are expected to accept this without a murmur; instead, they have quietly turned away and ignored the impractical. The authors do not provide any generic definition of the cognitive entities called transferable concepts, of which the CCCs are examples, since children create their own version of reality. Apparently none of the seven CCCs can be defined other than by lengthy example. Nor can they be differentiated into subconcepts or organized in a way to create conceptual storylines, in parallel with the content storylines presented in chapter 12. Can’t the conceptual dimension be coherent, structured, and scaled for lesson and unit design? Apparently not. The book’s answer is that as many of the seven CCCs as possible should be blended with DCIs and SEPs to energize student inquiry. But a blender mixes to the point of uniformity and distaste—not good fare for curious kids. The authors justify their dicta by asserting that scant research on conceptual knowledge transfer is available. Perhaps they are unaware of the cognitive science and neurobiology stretching back decades that provide concrete, precise, and effective guidance on constructing a conceptual dimension to learning—the NRC’s Framework lists no references other than its own 1996 list of five “Unifying Concepts,” suspiciously the same.