The most obvious ramifications of the wide-scale adoption of
the NGSS are that significant changes will be required in almost
all areas of science education. The NGSS are merely the end
points, describing what all students should know and be able to
do at the end of grade level for K−5, and at the end of grade
band for 6−8, and 9−12. How students get to these end points
will require the development of new curriculum materials, new
assessments, and extensive support for teachers, both those
already in the field and those who are enrolled in teacher
education programs. However, what is not quite so obvious is
that the NGSS should also affect the science courses in which
future teachers learn their disciplinary content. Teachers who
learn chemistry in lecture formatswhere there is a one-way
transmission of facts, where skills are learned by rote, and
calculations are done by analogy to a worked example or by
filling numbers into a formulaare unlikely to understand the
increased depth required to teach to the NGSS. That is, if weteach our introductory chemistry courses in a traditional way,
using lectures, cookbook laboratories, and multiple-choice
testing, future teachers will not develop expertise in asking
questions, developing models, or arguing from evidence. It is
important for those of us who teach these courses to reflect on
the impact we may have on future teachers, and frankly on
future scientists and engineers. In the long run it is not what
students know that is important, but what students do with that
knowledge.