ABSTRACT
Science textbooks cover lots of material; in reality, too much material. Science textbooks have often characterized the actual process of doing science into the well-known “scientific method.” Science writing is all about argumentation. In What Science Is and How It Works, Gregory N. Derry devotes an entire chapter to logic, evidence, and argumentation. Presenting the process of science without context is problematic. For sake of being concise, science textbooks omit the history behind what are now considered scientific theories. As described by Bazerman et al, the writing across the curriculum “movement provided systematic encouragement, institutional support, and educational knowledge to increase the amount and quality of writing occurring in such courses as history, science, mathematics and sociology”. Without going into a detailed history, the NGSS were developed in an iterative process involving “practicing scientists, including two Nobel laureates, cognitive scientists, science education researchers, and science education standards and policy experts”.
