NBPTS AYA Science key terms

The NGSS design in which disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts are woven together in a single lesson or unit rather than taught as separate strands.

A small set of powerful, widely applicable science ideas that anchor curriculum across grade bands, such as matter and its interactions or ecosystem dynamics, functioning as the content pillar of three-dimensional learning.

The behaviors scientists and engineers actually use, including asking questions, developing models, planning investigations, analyzing data, constructing explanations, arguing from evidence, and obtaining and communicating information.

A lens such as patterns, cause and effect, systems thinking, energy and matter flow, or stability and change that connects ideas across scientific disciplines and helps students see unifying structure in phenomena.

A research-based description of how understanding of a concept typically develops from novice to more sophisticated reasoning across grades, used to sequence instruction and set realistic expectations for student thinking.

Anchoring a unit in an observable, puzzling event or system that students can investigate directly, so that questions, evidence, and explanations arise from the phenomenon rather than from a topic list.

A public classroom artifact where students post questions about an anchoring phenomenon and track which questions are being investigated, answered, or revised, making inquiry visible and student-owned over a unit.

The practice of making a claim, supporting it with evidence, and justifying the reasoning that links evidence to claim, while responding to critique from peers using shared scientific criteria.

A scaffold that structures an explanation as a claim, the data or observations supporting it, and the scientific principle explaining why that evidence supports the claim; useful for both writing and discussion.

Teaching in which students generate questions, design and carry out investigations, and build explanations from data, with teacher guidance varying along a continuum from structured to open inquiry.

The deliberately supported difficulty students experience while working at the edge of their competence; it builds persistence and conceptual change rather than signaling that instruction has failed.

Vygotsky's notion of the range between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with skilled support, guiding how much scaffolding a teacher provides and when to remove it.

Temporary, targeted supports such as sentence frames, models, graphic organizers, or teacher questioning that let students succeed at a complex task and are faded as competence grows.

A stable, intuitive idea that conflicts with accepted science, such as heavier objects falling faster; it resists correction unless instruction elicits it and provides disconfirming evidence.

The process by which a learner restructures existing ideas rather than simply adding new facts, typically requiring that the old idea be found unsatisfying and a new one intelligible, plausible, and fruitful.

Ongoing gathering and use of evidence about student thinking during instruction to adjust teaching and give feedback, as distinct from evaluating learning at the end of a unit.

Evaluation of student achievement at the end of a period of learning, used to report or certify attainment against standards rather than to shape instruction in the moment.

A task in which students apply knowledge and practices to a realistic problem or phenomenon, judged with a rubric that describes levels of quality in reasoning and communication.

A scoring guide listing criteria and describing levels of performance, ideally shared with students in advance so they understand what quality looks like and can self-assess.

A repeating loop of clarifying the learning target, eliciting evidence, interpreting it against criteria, and giving feedback that moves the learner forward, with students as active participants.

Planning that begins with the desired results and acceptable evidence of learning, and only then designs learning experiences, keeping instruction aligned to what will actually be assessed.

The principle that learning objectives, instructional activities, and assessment tasks should all target the same cognitive demand, so students are assessed on what they were actually taught to do.

A framework for planning multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression so that a wide range of learners can access the same rigorous science content.

Purposefully varying content, process, product, or environment in response to readiness, interest, and learning profile, while keeping the same core learning goal for all students.

Designing instruction that draws on students' cultural knowledge, languages, and community experiences as resources for learning science, and that examines whose perspectives and examples are centered.

The skills, experiences, and bodies of knowledge families and communities hold, such as gardening, repair, or caregiving expertise, which can be elicited and connected to science instruction.

The pattern in which students of particular races, languages, or disability categories are over- or under-represented in advanced science courses, gifted programs, or disciplinary actions.

Differences in access to qualified teachers, lab facilities, rigorous coursework, and enrichment rather than differences in student ability, framing inequity as a system condition to be corrected.

A learner's sense of being the kind of person who can do and belong in science, shaped by recognition from others, competence, and the perceived value of science to their community.

A student's belief in their capability to succeed at a specific science task, built mainly through mastery experiences, vicarious models, persuasion, and interpretation of physiological states.

Understanding how scientific knowledge is developed and warranted, including that it is empirical, tentative, creative, socially negotiated, and influenced by human values and culture.

The capacity to engage with science-related information and issues, evaluate evidence and sources, and make informed personal and civic decisions about science and technology.

A real-world problem at the intersection of science and society, such as water policy or vaccine mandates, that has no single technical answer and requires weighing evidence, values, and tradeoffs.

Responsibility for the humane and responsible treatment of living organisms and environments in classroom investigations, including approval processes, handling standards, and disposal of materials.

Proactively identifying hazards, applying engineering controls and safe procedures, enforcing personal protective equipment, and knowing emergency and reporting protocols before any investigation begins.

A recurring, collaborative team of educators who examine evidence of student learning together, share practice, and hold each other accountable for improved results over time.

A cyclical collaborative process in which teachers plan a research lesson together, observe one member teach it while collecting evidence on student thinking, then revise and reteach.

Systematically examining one's own instructional decisions and their effects on students, using artifacts, video, or feedback, and converting the analysis into concrete changes in practice.

Reasoning about components, interactions, feedback loops, and emergent behavior in a system, such as a food web or climate model, rather than treating parts in isolation.

Using representations, from diagrams to simulations to mathematical relationships, to explain, predict, and revise understanding of a phenomenon as new evidence accumulates.