Chapter 11: Assessing Essential Science of Nascent Inquirers

What is essential science that all American students will need to know for the 21st century? At what age should educators begin to guide learners towards the development of this essential science knowledge? In this chapter, I define essential science as knowledge that is a fusion of science content knowledge and science practices, that develops slowly over time, and that is often dynamic and therefore best represented through representations such as simulations. The chapter also presents the argument that if we value essential science for all learners, we need environments that will foster and assess learning of this knowledge at all stages of the learning trajectory, including nascent learners who are embracing types of essential science such as prediction-making and explanation-building about focal science topics for the first time. Building on existing work to foster and evaluate elementary and middle school students’ development of explanation-building about biodiversity and ecology, this chapter presents and illustrates three features available with existing and emerging technologies for the assessment of essential science throughout a learning trajectory, with special emphasis on formative assessment for nascent inquirers as they are embarking on their first efforts to develop essential science knowledge.