Elementary preservice teachers' use of the crosscutting concepts to plan NGSS-aligned science lessons in explicit versus non-explicit contexts

Abstract

As one of the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the crosscutting concepts (CCCs) have a presumably equal role in science teaching and learning as the science and engineering practices (SEPs) and disciplinary core ideas (DCIs). While much research has focused on teachers' understanding and use of the DCIs and SEPs, less research has characterized how teachers use the CCCs in combination with the SEPs and DCIs to plan lessons aligned with the three-dimensional vision of the NGSS. This study examined the lesson plans of elementary preservice teachers (n = 53) in two science methods courses; one course which asked the PSTs to explicitly use CCCs in their lesson plans and one course that did not. We analyzed how the teachers' use of CCCs in their lesson plans influenced alignment to the three-dimensional vision of the NGSS. While we found higher CCC use in the course that explicitly asked the preservice teachers to use them, the difference between courses was not significant. More importantly, regardless of context, when the CCCs were used often, across the entire lesson, and were a good “fit” with a lesson's DCI, and anchoring phenomenon those lessons were more aligned with the NGSS.

Department(s)

School of Teaching, Learning and Developmental Science

Document Type

Article

DOI

10.1111/ssm.18344

Publication Date

12-1-2025

Journal Title

School Science and Mathematics

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