Chapter 11: Power Up or Put Away?: Using Mobile Phones for Authentic Student Investigations

From the 1990s through the early 2000s, the National Science Education Standards (NSES; National Research Council, 1996) and Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993) were the two primary documents used for K–12 science education curricular development across the United States. The majority of state education departments in the United States framed their guidelines for science education around what the NSES deemed as most valuable for K–12 students to know (Hollweg & Hill, 2003). The intent behind the NSES was to create a coherent, comprehensive resource that provided a consensus of what science content was important to know in school, and what methods should be used to deliver it (Hollweg & Hill, 2003). The NSES described learning science as an “active process,” meaning that “science is something that students do, not something that is done to them” (National Research Council, 1996, p. 20). However, while the NSES was strongly influential on many fronts, it did not escape from detractors.