Categories and Criteria for Pedagogical Analysis Scheme (Modified from Project 2061)

Category I: Identifying and Maintaining a Sense of Purpose: Part of planning a coherent curriculum involves deciding on its purposes and on what learning experiences will likely contribute to achieving those purposes. But while coherence from the designers' point of view is important, it may be inadequate to give students the same sense of what the are doing and why. This category includes criteria to determine whether the material attempts to make its purposes clear and meaningful to the student and genuinely relates lessons to the unit purpose.

• Criterion I.1 Unit Purpose: Does the material convey an overall sense of purpose and direction that is understandable and motivating to students?
• Criterion I.2 Activity Purpose: Does the material convey the purpose of each activity and its relationship to others?
• Criterion I.3 Activity Sequence: Does the material involve students in a logical or strategic sequence of activities (versus a collection of activities) that build toward understanding of a benchmark/s?

Category II: Taking Account of Student Ideas: Fostering better understanding in students requires taking time to attend to the ideas they already have, both ideas that are incorrect and ideas that can serve as a foundation for subsequent learning. Such attention requires that teachers are informed about prerequisite ideas/skills needed for understanding a benchmark and what their students' initial ideas are&endash;in particular, the ideas that may interfere with learning the scientific story. Moreover, teachers can help address students' ideas if they know what is likely to work. This category examines whether material contains specific suggestions for identifying and addressing student ideas.

• Criterion II.1 Prerequisite knowledge/skills. Does the material specify prerequisite knowledge/skills that are necessary to the learning of the benchmark?
• Criterion II.2 Alerting the teacher to commonly held ideas. Does the material alert teachers to commonly held student ideas (both troublesome and helpful) such as those described in Benchmarks Chapter 15: The Research Base?
• Criterion II.3 Assisting the teacher in identifying student's ideas. Does the material include suggestions for teachers to find out what their students think about familiar phenomena related to a benchmark before the scientific ideas are introduced?
• Criterion II.4 Addressing student commonly held ideas. Does the material explicitly address commonly held student ideas?

Category III: Engaging Students With Phenomena: Much of the point of science is explaining phenomena in terms of a small number of principles or ideas. For students to appreciate this explanatory power, they need to have a sense of the range of phenomena that science can explain. "Students need to get acquainted with the things around them&endash;collect them, handle them, describe them, become puzzled by them, ask questions about them, argue about them, and then try to find answers to their questions." (SFAA, p. 201)

• Criterion III.1 Variety of Phenomena. Does the material provide multiple and varied phenomena to support the benchmark idea?
• Criterion III.2 First-hand Experiences. Does the material include activities that promote first-hand experiences with phenomena when practical, or provide students with a vicarious sense of the phenomena when not practical?

Category IV: Developing and Using Scientific Ideas. Science for All Americans includes in its definition of science literacy a number of important yet quite abstract ideas&endash;e.g., atomic structure, natural selection, modifiability of science, interacting systems, common laws of motion for earth and heavens. Such ideas cannot be inferred directly from phenomena and the ideas themselves were developed over many hundreds of years as a result of considerable discussion and debate about the cogency of theory and its relationship to collected evidence. Science literacy requires that students see the link between phenomena and ideas, see the ideas themselves as useful, and become skillful at using them. This category includes criteria to determine which the material attempts to provide links between phenomena and ideas, to express ideas in ways that are accessible and intelligible to students and to demonstrate the usefulness of the ideas varied context.

• Criterion IV.1 Building a Case. Does the material develop an evidence-based argument for benchmark ideas?
• Criterion IV.2 Introducing Terms. Does the material introduce technical terms only in conjunction with experience with the idea or process and only as needed to facilitate thinking and promote effective communication?
• Criterion IV.3 Representing Ideas. Does the material include accurate and comprehensible representations?
• Criterion IV.4 Connecting Ideas. Does the material explicitly draw attention to conceptual connections among benchmark ideas?
• Criterion IV.5 Demonstrating/Modeling Skills and Use of Knowledge. Does the material demonstrate/model or (suggest how teachers can demonstrate/model) skills or the use of knowledge?
• Criterion IV.6 Practice. Does the material provide tasks or questions for students to practice skills or use of knowledge in various situations?

Category V. Promoting Student Thinking about Phenomena, Experiences, and Knowledge. No matter how clearly materials may present ideas, students will make their own meaning out of it. Constructing meaning well is aided by having students make their ideas and reasoning explicit, hold them up to scrutiny, and recast them as needed. This category includes criteria for whether the material suggests how to help students express, think about and reshape their ideas to make better sense of the world.

• Criterion V.1 Providing Opportunities for Students to Express Ideas. Does the material routinely include suggestions for having each student express, clarify, justify, and represent his/her ideas? Are suggestions made for when and how students will get feedback from peers and the teacher?
• Criterion V.2 Guiding Student Interpretation and Reasoning. Does the material include tasks and/or question sequences to guide student interpretation and reasoning about experiences with phenomena and readings?
• Criterion V.3 Encouraging self-monitoring. Does the material suggest ways to have students check their own progress?

Category VI. Assessing Progress: There are several important reasons for monitoring student progress toward specific learning goals. Having a collection of alternative can ease the creative burden on teachers and increase the time available to analyze student responses and make adjustments in instruction based on them. This category includes criteria for whether the material includes sufficient goal-relevant assessments.

• Criterion VI.1 Alignment to Goals. Assuming a content match between the curriculum material and the benchmark, are assessment items included that match the same benchmark?
• Criterion VI.2 Application. Does the material include assessment tasks that require application of ideas and avoid allowing students a trivial way out, like using a formula or repeating a memorized term without understanding?
• Criterion VI.3 Embedded. Are some assessments embedded in the curriculum along the way, with advice to teachers as to how they might use the results to choose or modify activities?
•  Criterion VI.3 Embedded. Are some assessments embedded in the curriculum along the way, with advice to teachers as to how they might use the results to choose or modify activities?

 Category VII. Enhancing the Learning Environment: Several other important consideration are involved in the selection of curriculum materials&endash;for example, whether they provide teachers with help in creating a classroom environment where all can succeed. There can influence such things as teacher confidence or whether or not students are receptive to learning whatever content is emphasized. The criteria listed in this category provide reviewers with the opportunity to comment on these and other important features.

•  Criterion VII.1 Teacher Content Learning. Would the material help teachers improve their understanding of science, mathematics, and technology necessary for teaching the material?
•  Criterion VII.2 Classroom Environment. Does the material help teachers to create a classroom environment that welcomes student curiosity, rewards creativity, encourages a spirit of healthy questioning, and avoids dogmatism?
•  Criterion VII.3 Welcoming All Students. Does the material help teachers to create a classroom community that encourages high expectations for all students, that enables all students to experience success, and that provides all different kinds of students a feeling of belonging into the science classroom?
•  Criterion VII.4 Connecting beyond the unit. Does the material explicitly draw attention to appropriate connections to ideas in other units?