Principled procedures are descriptions of the kinds of actions teachers will use to guide their interactions with educators, parents, and their learners. They are based on their beliefs, wisdom of practice, research, and ethical considerations for the manner in which people want to be treated with each other, everything in school, and outside school to support a sustainable Earth.
Last edited - July 1, 2026
Principled Procedures for Science Educators & Curriculum Designers
Pedagogical
1. Teachers plan alone and with colleagues within and across disciplines and grade levels. They plan inquiry-based science programs for learners by knowing developmentally appropriate multidimensional science goals and plan sequences to achieve those goals based on learners' knowledge, skill, and interests.
2. Teachers continually and systematically assess learners' multidimensional understanding and use of science literacy. They continually gather authentic data on learners through multiple methods with their own, learners and colleagues' observations of learners' actions and in-actions to make inferences about their understandings. They analyze the information alone, with learners, and colleagues and make recommendations to help learners set and achieve goals, assess them, and report their progress to teachers, parents, and other interested people.
3. Teachers facilitate science literacy by using science inquiry. They model and encourage learners to take responsibility for their use of scientific procedures, processes, skills, and attitudes to understand scientific ideas and the nature of that understanding in a manner that can be used responsibly in a variety of real life situations. They achieve this by using methodologies consistent with theory and wisdom of practice - such as a learning cycle. They see assessment as ongoing and integrate it into their methodology seamlessly to include diagnostic, formative, summative, and generative for all dimensions of science literacy.
4. Teachers design and manage learning environments to facilitate learners collaboration to take responsibility for the understanding and learning of all members of the community by nurturing collaboration among students, structuring experiences to help learners increase theirs and others scientific communication abilities, and increasing their appreciation for the skills, attitudes, and values of scientific inquiry in a variety of environments. They assure time is available for safe extended meaningful scientific investigation with different groupings of learners who seek intellectual rigor with respect of each others diverse ideas, skills, and experiences in a manner that encourages them to share the content and context of their work.
Professional
1. Teachers continually and systematically assess their teaching. They gather data of their teaching actions and in-actions from personal, learners, and colleague observations. They inquire, analyze, reflect on the data, and draw conclusions to guide future actions and in-actions to improve learners' understanding and ability.
2. Teachers actively participate through truly democratic means in the development of K-12 school science programs. They seek, for all K-12 educators, sufficient and consistent allocation of resources, sufficient class time for science, continual professional development, and time to plan, implement, assess, and evaluate quality science programs at every grade level.
3. Teachers are citizens who are curious and actively continue learning science by investigating and reflecting on all dimensions of science as it relates to different topics and situations. They continue to use scientific inquiry and reasoning in their daily lives to increase their personal science knowledge.
4. Teachers develop professionally alone and with colleagues an appreciation for lifelong learning and professional development through research and experiential knowledge to validate and generate new knowledge about how learners learn science and teachers facilitate that learning.
Philosophy - science
Philosophy Statement:
Science involves knowledge of science concepts, the processes of science, an attitude to participate in science, and the understanding of the perspectives of science.
As children naturally explore their environment they begin to develop the processes of conceptualizing knowledge. These processes can be nourished and facilitated when students enters school so each can further develop their individual process skills to become a scientific literate member of society.
The process which all learners should develop include: observation, classification, measurement, communication, spatial relationships, predicting, making inferences, hypothesizing, interpreting. controlling variables, experimenting and defining operationally. These processes are essential for a citizen in our modern world learn and be able to use to analyze information.
In an encouraging environment students will be successful as they learn how to use these processes to gain knowledge of their world through their exploration. Learners do not absorb theses processes through written text alone. They need to manipulate and interact with objects, situations, each other, and a variety of equipment. They need to relate the incoming information to previously learned information.
Students posses a desire to maintain a sense of organization and balance in their conception of the world. When they encounter a new experience that does not fit easily into their existing schemata, disequilibration is felt. They adjust to these new ideas by assimilating incoming information to an existing scheme. The more the connection with the existing scheme, the better the ideas are understood. If the new information can not fit into an existing scheme, the information is accommodated with a new scheme being build or an existing one being modified. Children learn when they can organize and adapt their experiences in their own meaningful ways. This can be used to assist their learning if they are allowed to choose many of their own learning experiences. This in turn will maintain their motivation to continue in their quest of knowledge and continue to explore their world with the scientific method as their tool.
As children grow and mature in their understanding of science knowledge, processes, and positive attitudes for science they will begin to see the benefits and limitations of science. This will afford them an opportunity to develop a perspective of how science can be used to understand the world and how it can't.
A good science curriculum therefore, addresses these four areas: knowledge as concepts, processes of the scientific methods, attitudes for successful participation in science, and a perspective of science.