Correlations to Project 2061 Benchmarks in Science Education

The Project 2061 Benchmarks in Science Education is a report, originally published in 1993 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), that listed what students should know about scientific literacy. The report lists facts and concepts about science and the scientific process that all students should know at different grade levels.

The report is divided and subdivided into different content areas. Within each subarea, the report lists benchmarks for students completing grade 2, grade 5, grade 8, and grade 12. The table below shows which benchmarks are met by which sections of the Hubble Diagram project.

This page lists all the Project 2061 Benchmarks met by the Galaxies project. Content headings are listed as Roman numerals, subheadings as letters, grade levels by numbers, and specific points by numbers after the hyphen. For example, benchmark IA8-2 means the second benchmark for eighth grade students in the first content area, first subarea.

The Galaxies project meets the following Project 2061 Benchmarks:

IA8-2, IA12-2, IB5-1, IB5-2, IIIA5-2, IIIA8-2, IVA8-1, IVA8-2.

Benchmarks

IA8-2. Scientific knowledge is subject to modification as new information challenges prevailing theories and as a new theory leads to looking at old observations in a new way.

IB5-1. Scientific investigations may take many different forms, including observing what things are like or what is happening somewhere, collecting specimens for analysis, and doing experiments.

IB5-2. Results of scientific investigations are seldom exactly the same, but if the differences are large, it is important to try to figure out why. One reason for following directions carefully and for keeping records of one's work is to provide information on what might have caused the differences.

IA12-2. From time to time, major shifts occur in the scientific view of how the world works. More often, however, the changes that take place in the body of scientific knowledge are small modifications of prior knowledge. Change and continuity are persistent features of science.

IIIA5-2. Technology enables scientists and others to observe things that are too small or too far away to be seen without them and to study the motion of objects that are moving very rapidly or are hardly moving at all.

IIIA8-2. Technology is essential to science for such purposes as access to outer space and other remote locations, sample collection and treatments, measurement, data collection and storage, computation, and communication.

IVA8-1. The sun is a medium-sized star located near the edge of a disk-shaped galaxy of stars, part of which can be seen as a glowing band of light that spans the sky on a very clear night. The universe contains many billions of galaxies, and each galaxy contains many billions of stars. To the naked eye, even the closest of these galaxies is no more than a dim, fuzzy spot.

NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics

Principles and Standards for School Mathematics was released in 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The standards, a collaboration between education researchers and school mathematics teachers, lists what concepts students should understand, and what skills they should possess, at different stages of their mathematics education.

The report is divided and subdivided into ten different content areas. Within the first six areas, the report lists benchmarks for students completing grade 2, grade 5, grade 8, and grade 12. The table below shows which standards are met by the Spectral Types project.

Content headings are listed as Roman numerals, subheadings as letters, grade levels as numbers, and specific points by numbers after the hyphen. For example, standard IA8-2 means the second standard for eighth grade students in the first content area, first subarea. Content areas VI through X, which concern skill processes in mathematics, are not divided into subareas or grade levels. The standards met by the Galaxies project are:

VA8-1, VIII-2, X-3.

Standards

VA8-1. Formulate questions, design studies, and collect data about a characteristic shared by two populations or different characteristics within one population.

VIII-2. Communicate their mathematical thinking coherently and clearly to peers, teachers, and others.

X-3. Use representations to model and interpret physical, social, and mathematical phenomena.