Broadening Students' Idea of What It Means to Be Good at Science

        In this article in The Science Teacher, Minnesota curriculum specialist Marta Stoeckel says that when students are asked what it means to be good (i.e., smart) at science, they often say it’s about quickly getting the right answers to a teacher’s or test-maker’s questions. But when Stoeckel and a high-school physics teacher discussed the idea with students, kids’ definition of science chops expanded to include the following:

• Posing interesting questions;
• Making connections between ideas;
• Representing and communicating ideas clearly;
• Using evidence to construct explanations and arguments;
• Working systematically and persistently;
• Using multiple representations and translating between representations;
• Taking risks and trying ideas, even if it means making a mistake. 

Stoeckel and the teacher worked with students to assess their own science thinking skills and those of classmates, significantly broadening the way they thought about what’s involved in high-quality science cognition. 

      “Helping students understand that science is not just about right answers and requires a wide range of skills,” Stoeckel concludes, “is key to the reforms in the Next Generation Science Standards. Aided by this teacher’s efforts, students recognized many ways to be good at science and saw the ways their peers demonstrated those skills… Finding ways for students to give each other recognition reflectively is an important step in ensuring that students not only see that being good at science involves a range of skills, but that they have those skills.”

“Expanding What Counts As Good at Science” by Marta Stoeckel in The Science Teacher, July 7, 2025 (Vol. 92, #4, pp. 49-57); Stoeckel can be reached at mrstoeckel@gmail.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1125 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.