DESIGN FRAMEWORK

In designing the units, we used a process called learning-goals-driven design . The central idea is to identify learning goals, and use the goals to guide all phases of curriculum and activity design, continuously evaluating whether the activities are aligned with the target objectives. We combine these guidelines about process with considerations for criteria of sound pedagogy the curriculum needs to exhibit, drawn from our design principles described above and the analytical procedure from Project 2061, such as taking account of students' prior conceptions, providing first-hand experience with phenomena, providing a sense of purpose connected to the target science in each activity, and so on. Our learning-goals-driven design process includes several steps: (1) identifying and clarifying national standards, (2) specifying learning performances to meet standards, (3) creating assessments and rubrics linked to the learning performances, (4) identifying learning tasks, (5) contextualizing the unit though a driving question and anchoring events, (6) producing an instructional sequence including both student and teacher materials, (7) pilot testing materials, and (8) receiving feedback from teachers and external reviewers. Although we list these steps in a linear fashion, the process is dynamic with later components in the design process, such as instructional sequence, feeding back to inform earlier components, such as learning performance. The Figure below illustrates the iterative nature of the process.