Sustainability in the Next Generation Science Standards

The recently released Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which provide recommendations for K–12 science education in the United States, include the subcategory topic of human sustainability. This subcategory represents one of five earth and space science topics that the NGSS recommend for high-school science education. Because modern conceptualizations of the terms sustainability and sustainability education are often complex and variable, the authors of this paper sought to identify the version of sustainability that the NGSS articulate. Additionally, they aimed to understand how such a definition of sustainability might influence students' understanding of the relationship between nature and society.

To decipher how the standards articulate sustainability, the authors scrutinized the entire set of documents that comprise the NGSS. Beginning their analysis with the human sustainability topic, the authors traced the disciplinary core ideas found under human sustainability to other topics with identical core ideas. The authors also examined the storylines provided by the NGSS, which demonstrate how disparate ideas are linked in a coherent picture. Additionally, the authors tracked the use of words associated with sustainability, such as social and economic, throughout the NGSS. Furthermore, the authors turned to scientific position papers about sustainability, as well as social scientific research on the meanings of sustainability. From this iterative process, three major themes regarding how sustainability is portrayed in the NGSS emerged: universalism, scientism, and technocentrism.

The authors define the first theme, universalism, as an emphasis on a global system where humanity is rendered as a single variable. With no focus on any specific places, the NGSS seem to prioritize teaching a global system, rather than teaching about global process through local examples. Because of this aggregation of all human activity, there is no accounting for the effect of one group of humans on other groups of humans. According to the authors' analysis, the NGSS portrays all humans as equally contributing to—or suffering from—sustainability challenges. The authors find this universal perspective “troubling, because it obscures the fact OTHER RESEARCH 36 that sustainability-related problems afflict some humans more than others and that human actions, embodied in contemporary policies and social institutions, contribute to poverty, hunger, and environmental vulnerability.” Essentially, humans do contribute to sustainability issues in unequal ways; not understanding this notion translates to a misunderstanding of certain issues.

The second theme, scientism, regards how the NGSS promote a specific epistemological stance, and what types of knowledge are relevant to sustainability issues. Through subtle means, the NGSS express an argument that natural sciences and quantitative methods are the best ways to understand sustainability challenges. In prioritizing science, the standards portray the social dimensions of sustainability as secondary, or less important. According to the NGSS, students are expected to understand sustainability through quantitative calculations and computer simulations. The authors claim that by not depicting sustainability as a complex problem requiring many different types of knowledge, the NGSS imply that sustainability is largely a scientific problem requiring scientific solutions.

Related to this, the authors also note a theme of technocentrism. The embrace of engineering and technology by NGSS makes engineering appear as a central factor in dealing with sustainability issues. Again, the authors argue, such a focus on technology oversimplifies sustainability.

As a result of their analysis, the authors claim that the vision of sustainability evident in the NGSS matches current trends in natural sciences. They argue that this vision resembles ecological modernization, a technology-centered, managerial perspective on sustainability. Such a vision, they argue, is troublesome for K–12 education, as it lacks a strong ethical component and awareness of social complexity. Students who learn about sustainability through such a vision could misunderstand how social and political structures contribute to sustainability challenges; they might be unprepared for a pluralist society that must balance multiple needs and consider multiple sources of information to solve problems.

To counter these issues, the authors recommend systematic collaboration between science educators and social studies educators. Suggesting that science education should approach sustainability through collaboration with other disciplines, they emphasize the importance of recognizing that sustainability cuts across many fields. The authors also caution, however, against simply addressing sustainability both separately and in parallel through curriculum alignment. Such a separation could lead students to think there are two distinct categories of challenges. Rather, teachers should collaborate on planning, design, and implementation of sustainability-focused lessons. Ultimately, learning about sustainability should be more interdisciplinary.