Scientific modeling competence has been considered a major component of students' scientific literacy. In China, this perspective has been endorsed by the new standard of high school curriculum, which has influenced the creation of new-generation textbooks and teaching activities. Based on the analytical framework proposed in the recent academic literature, this study accesses the representations of modeling practices in the 2017 High School Science Curriculum Standards (HSSCS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), regarding the extent, the distribution of the modeling practice representations (Model Selection, Model Construction, Model Validation, Model Analysis and Model Deployment), the quality (from L1 to L5), and the overall consistency of different aspects. The findings indicate substantial disparities in the representations of modeling practice in HSSCS and NGSS. The aspects of the modeling practice are fully represented by only HSSCS. For the four educational standards documents, the modeling practice representations are distributed unevenly throughout the contents, most of which are presented in Physical Sciences (PS) and Life Sciences (LS). Meanwhile, the requirement of the model verification for students is poorly or inconsistently represented in HSSCS and NGSS. It is recommended that explicit representation and broader dissemination of modeling practice be incorporated into the HSSCS.

Jialing Cai, Lurong Gong, Shanzhang Ren. Comparison of Modeling Practice Representations in Science Educational Standards between China and the United States. Frontiers in Educational Research (2023) Vol. 6, Issue 21: 12-21. https://doi.org/10.25236/FER.2023.062103.

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