Learning Progressions Provide a Clear Map for Designing Standards-Based Assessments

摘要

Criticizing the various science education standards as a dense thicket of undiffer-entiated content is easy to do, and I would say mostly warranted. Although critique is easy, and critics are plentiful, the usual response is to create yet another damned list of facts—when what is needed desperately is a clear map with directions to navigate the thicket. Interpreting the standards through learning progressions may be the way to attain that clear map. The piece by Smith, Wiser, Anderson, and Krajcik (this issue) could prove to be a seminally important piece on learning progressions, a concept that has garnered recent attention. Smith et al. provide guidance not only for assessment but also for instructional design and implementation, and do so far beyond the particular example of matter and the atomic-molecular theory that they used to build their argument.