Scientific and Engineering Practices

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Scientific and engineering practices. The student analyzes and interprets data to derive meaning, identify features and patterns, and discover relationships or correlations to develop evidence-based arguments or evaluate designs.

The further explanation is designed to be a resource for educators that helps them better understand the topic their students are learning. Further explanations may be written at a more complex level than would be expected for students at the grade level.

Sources of error in data could include human errors such as failing to follow instructions accurately, not following procedures for an investigation, or misreading a measurement and experimental errors such as simplifying external environmental factors (friction), equipment calibration, contamination, or sufficient quantity or range of data.

Glossary terms and definitions are consistent across kindergarten through high school in the TEKS Guide. The definitions are intended to give educators a common understanding of the terms regardless of what grade level they teach. Glossary definitions are not intended for use with students.

factual information (such as observations, measurements, or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation; often includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful

regular sequences that can be found throughout nature

Research

Baker-Lawrence, Anika Rae, "An Investigation into Instructional Support for Data Analysis in High School Science Inquiry" (2013). PhD. Paper 1534. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.1534

Summary:  The results of this study indicate that students struggle to produce proficient analysis and interpretations of data. The areas of student struggle were the areas that required higher-order thinking: analyzing results, drawing conclusions, and communicating results. Furthermore, this research discusses areas of data analysis instruction that may benefit from professional development opportunities.