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Anatomy of a Standard

by Rodger Bybee , presented at the conference: 'Using the NSES to Guide the Evaluation, Selection, and Adaptation of Instructional Materials' - November 1996

Rodger Bybee analyzes the language of a standard (Earth and Space Science, Content Standard D) and discusses what it means to "meet" a standard.

"As a result of their activities in grades 5 through 8, all students should develop an understanding of structure of the earth's system, earth's history, earth and the solar system."

First of all, it says, "As a result of their activities... " Who's "their"? Students. Right at the beginning of the standards statement, we are explicitly saying it is the student that is the referent for this standard. We could have said, "Scientists believe that" or "Scientists know that" or "Science education researchers recommend that". But we said, "As a result of their activities," and we said "activities." We're trying to send the message that we're talking about activities here.

"In grades 5 through 8... " There's something about leaving this in grade level sets. We're looking at an earth science standard. We could have said in 8th grade, but we didn't. We were very sensitive to the fact that if we started saying in grade 9 that this is what the earth science program should be, we are getting very close to, if not in fact, setting the national curriculum, by saying grade levels or time requirements for courses. We were very aware of stating this in this grade span, 5 through 8, students should come to understand structure of the earth system and so on.

It leaves open different designs for curriculum materials. It acknowledges materials such as "Scope, Sequence, and Coordination". It acknowledges materials such as a BSCS program at a grade level. It acknowledges the use of modules. What the grade level set does is leave for the community, either national level curriculum developers, state or local, the option to design the program how [they] see fit. There are a lot of options in there.

The next thing that we put in is that "all students should develop an understanding of..." and we meant "all." Each standard says that. That is an explicit statement of equity. When people look in the Standards and say, "You forgot equity." I say, "No, it's in each and every standard." It says "all students." What that means for the educational system has not yet really been realized. It's like saying, "We're going to raise the temperature in this room. For all people in this room the temperature is going up." No exceptions. From a systems point of view, there are things that will happen in this room, and there are things that will happen out of this room. More energy consumed. Some people benefit. Some people are going to have different kinds of responses to temperature. That's the kind of thinking that we have to engage in a serious way. We were serious about "all."

People say, "Rodger, you didn't really mean 'all' did you? Tell me the truth, right? You couldn't mean 'all'." I said, "Oh yes, we mean 'all'." [They say], "Well, don't you know there are developmentally disabled students, so somewhere we're going to have to do this." I said, "Just wait a minute. Let me give you the way to think about this that I have come to think about it. As a society we live with the principle of justice for all. Have we achieved that? Do we have justice for all? Most people would say no. Do you think we ever will? Well, I don't know. Now let me ask you about that particular principle. Should we change the principle and have justice for a few or some select ones or not worry about who's in the category and who's out, or should we work harder to adjust the system and stay with the principle? We mean [science] for all students."

In order for us to talk about these standards, we began using the term "conceptual organizer." The term "structure of the earth's system, earth's history, earth and the solar system" are the conceptual organizers. Over the time since the Standards have been out, people have found things and said 'this' is the standard. They look at the examples. They look at the essays. They look at anything that they can find in the book and point to it and say, "Here is the standard." or "In the Standards you said thus and so."

In the book there is a very brief essay entitled "Developing Students' Understanding." What we wanted to do is come back as quickly as possible to students, and to the kinds of questions that individuals will have relative to standards, and try and capture some statement that characterizes what this standard may look like in materials, [and] in classrooms.

In that statement we have tried to include things such as students' development, some recognition of student misconceptions, some sense of teaching strategies, and some sense of what instructional materials might be like. We did it in an essay form so it doesn't begin looking or feeling like this is a curriculum, or a list of the five strategies you should use, or the Five E model. It's just a statement; a discussion through the context of teaching and a classroom. In many cases, that will give you a feeling for the standard.

Next is [the] content standard. We received a lot of feedback early on that indicated something like "structure of the earth's system" is simply too broad and too ambiguous. What does that mean if you actually begin designing programs and working with materials? What we did was establish a short list. Working with many of the people in the content working group, we would [ask the] scientists, "Give us the five big ideas here. We don't want a laundry list of a hundred different ideas. We want to really focus on five very important ideas under something like 'structure of the earth's system'."

That was a challenge. We really meant it. We can't have a long list. The category -- "Fundamental Concepts and Principles that Underly the Standards". These are the concepts and principles that one should look for as one looks at materials, assesses textbooks, and so on. In essence it helps define the standards. What did we mean by structure of the earth's system? What would characterize structure of the earth's system? What one might look for in educational materials and what would we expect students to know about the structure of the earth's system? This is where we defined that. In most cases, we did try to attend to the writing, and the first sentence is the primary idea. The second, third, fourth sentences elaborate that and clarify what we meant by the concept.

The statement you'll see in the Standards is a statement of the content. This is not something like a behavioral objective or a teaching objective. It does not say what the experience of the student should be. It also is not a performance assessment. We try to state the content here in a way that adults in science education would understand -- adults who would be responsible for curriculum materials, assessments, professional development, [and educating] teachers.

It's important to understand that where this goes is to a translation. There was no intention that this particular statement appear in a textbook or curriculum materials. This defines the content. It's also essential for the community to define what is acceptable evidence and what is the form of the evidence that students understand. What does it look like when you see it in the classroom or in a national assessment or in an international assessment? If you say, "The student understands this," what does it look like, because this tells you what the content is, not what either the student behaviors or the student output or the performance. It doesn't indicate that. If we would have done this as a performance assessment, or any kind of an assessment item, you have the national test on the national standards. We stopped way short of that, and we did it consciously.

You can look in the Standards, and see about abilities, and something to take to the materials you're looking at. Where we'll go with the standards has to do with the cognitive abilities that are expressed in the standard. To use evidence and logic to construct explanations; it's cognitive ability. We also included understandings about scientific inquiry. Simply understanding that scientists do inquiry, and there are certain things about inquiry that the students can know or should understand about inquiry.

I tried to be clear about what is the standard. The only perfect match to the Standards or Benchmarks would be the Standards or the Benchmarks themselves. Anything else is going to have omissions and changes. The difficult issue for you or for anybody evaluating materials is making a judgment about what can we leave out, and why are we leaving something out. Whether you design a year-long program or the full K - 6 program there are some things that have to be left out of a particular set of materials. That's one way, foreshadow something in a day. [That's] why we have to look at the school science program, not just the materials.

What does it mean to meet a standard? You hear individuals saying, "Well, I have these materials, they'll meet the Standards." No, go back to the Standards, and note that it said "all students will understand structure of the earth's system". Meeting the standards is all students understanding the structure of the earth's system. It is an outcome, a learning outcome that meets the standards. We can provide materials that give opportunities for the students to meet the standards, but just having the right set of materials doesn't equate to meeting the standards.

What does it mean to translate the content standards into instructional materials? What you will see in any particular set of materials is some translation of that content standard. What was in the individual's mind who developed the materials? I would encourage you to look at it and ask some other questions like, what were the assumptions about learning that went into the translation of the standard into the materials?

What is the relationship of the content standards within the instructional materials? The key term in there is "within." Any set of instructional materials will probably have opportunities for not only the content, in this case the subject matter of earth science, but there may be opportunities to learn about inquiry, either abilities or understandings, or nature of science, or other things such as science and personal and social perspectives.

There are a lot of opportunities. One of the things to attend to as you look at instructional materials is what are we pulling to the foreground [and] what stays in the background? How does that happen? Is that explicit in the materials? Is it something that's in the teacher's guide? How does it happen? Where does foreground, background go back and forth? Just because you did hands-on activities for a full year doesn't necessarily mean that you've met--or the students had the opportunities to fully meet -- the inquiry standards. Those are the kinds of things to think about.

Finally, what is the role of other standards and the evaluation of instructional materials? Other standards that I'm referring to have to do with teaching standards, professional development standards, the assessment standards, [and] program and system standards. We put all of those into one package to help the educational community. How are they addressed, if at all? What would be the appropriate way to address them? Can you find the teaching standards, for instance, in the teacher's guide? Is there something, not about the standard explicitly, but something that helps the teacher move into the teaching standards? Is there something from a professional development point of view that you can identify, for example, [in] the teacher's guide? Where would you go to look for these areas if you're considering the other standards in a particular set of instructional materials?

Footnote:

1. The book referred to in the talk is:

Bybee, Rodger, et. al. National Standards & the Science Curriculum. (Kendall Hunt, 1996) ISBN: 0-7872-2589-4

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