Introduction

The following AAAS Benchmark are addressed through The Disappeared Project activities. Each of the knowledge or skill benchmarks below pertain to students in grades 9-12. Each knowledge or skill benchmark is presented by topic chapter number and section, section title and section benchmark. The entire text of the AAAS document can be accessed at Benchmarks On-Line.

Chapter 1: The Nature of Science

A. The Scientific World View

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Scientists assume that the universe is a vast single system in which the basic rules are the same everywhere. The rules may range from very simple to extremely complex, but
  scientists operate on the belief that the rules can be discovered by careful, systematic study.
• From time to time, major shifts occur in the scientific view of how the world works. More often, however, the changes that take place in the body of scientific knowledge are
  small modifications of prior knowledge. Change and continuity are persistent features of science.

B. Scientific Inquiry

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Investigations are conducted for different reasons, including to explore new phenomena, to check on previous results, to test how well a theory predicts, and to compare different theories.
• Sometimes, scientists can control conditions in order to obtain evidence. When that is not possible for practical or ethical reasons, they try to observe as wide a range of natural occurrences as possible to be able to discern patterns.
• There are different traditions in science about what is investigated and how, but they all have in common certain basic beliefs about the value of evidence, logic, and good arguments. And there is agreement that progress in all fields of science depends on intelligence, hard work, imagination, and even chance.

C. The Scientific Enterprise

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Modern science is based on traditions of thought that came together in Europe about 500 years ago. People from all cultures now contribute to that tradition.
• Progress in science and invention depends heavily on what else is happening in society, and history often depends on scientific and technological developments.
• Science disciplines differ from one another in what is studied, techniques used, and outcomes sought, but they share a common purpose and philosophy, and all are part of the same scientific enterprise. Although each discipline provides a conceptual structure for organizing and pursuing knowledge, many problems are studied by scientists using information and skills from many disciplines. Disciplines do not have fixed boundaries, and it happens that new scientific disciplines are being formed where existing ones meet and that some subdisciplines spin off to become new disciplines in their own right.
• Current ethics in science hold that research involving human subjects may be conducted only with the informed consent of the subjects, even if this constraint limits some kinds of potentially important research or influences the results. When it comes to participation in research that could pose risks to society, most scientists believe that a decision to participate or not is a matter of personal ethics rather than professional ethics.
• Scientists can bring information, insights, and analytical skills to bear on matters of public concern. Acting in their areas of expertise, scientists can help people understand the likely causes of events and estimate their possible effects. Outside their areas of expertise, however, scientists should enjoy no special credibility. And where their own personal, institutional, or community interests are at stake, scientists as a group can be expected to be no less biased than other groups are about their perceived interests.
• Funding influences the direction of science by virtue of the decisions that are made on which research to support. Research funding comes from various federal government agencies, industry, and private foundations.

Chapter 2: The Nature of Mathematics

A. Patterns and Relationships

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Theories and applications in mathematical work influence each other. Sometimes a practical problem leads to the development of new mathematical theories; often mathematics developed for its own sake turns out to have practical applications.

B. Mathematics, Science, and Technology

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Mathematics and science as enterprises share many values and features: belief in order, ideals of honesty and openness, the importance of criticism by colleagues, and the essential role played by imagination.
• Mathematics provides a precise language for science and technology-to describe objects and events, to characterize relationships between variables, and to argue logically.

Chapter 3: The Nature of Technology

A. Technology and Science

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Technological problems often create a demand for new scientific knowledge, and new technologies make it possible for scientists to extend their research in new ways or to undertake entirely new lines of research. The very availability of new technology itself often sparks scientific advances.
• Technology usually affects society more directly than science because it solves practical problems and serves human needs (and may create new problems and needs). In contrast, science affects society mainly by stimulating and satisfying people's curiosity and occasionally by enlarging or challenging their views of what the world is like.

B. Design and Systems

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• The value of any given technology may be different for different groups of people and at different points in time.

C. Issues in Technology 

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Social and economic forces strongly influence which technologies will be developed and used. Which will prevail is affected by many factors, such as personal values, consumer acceptance, patent laws, the availability of risk capital, the federal budget, local and national regulations, media attention, economic competition, and tax incentives.

Chapter 5: The Living Environment

A. Diversity of Life

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• The degree of kinship between organisms or species can be estimated from similarity of their DNA sequences, which often closely matches their classification based on anatomical differences.

B. Heredity  

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• The sorting and recombination of genes in sexual reproduction results in a great variety of possible gene combinations from the offspring of any two parents.
• The information passed from parents to offspring is coded in DNA molecules.
• Genes are segments of DNA molecules. Inserting, deleting, or substituting DNA segments can alter genes. An altered gene may be passed on to every cell that develops from it. The resulting features may help, harm, or have little or no effect on the offspring's success in its environment.
• Gene mutations can be caused by such things as radiation and chemicals. When they occur in sex cells, the mutations can be passed on to offspring; if they occur in other cells, they can be passed on to descendant cells only. The experiences an organism has during its lifetime can affect its offspring only if the genes in its own sex cells are changed by the experience.

C. Cells

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• The work of the cell is carried out by the many different types of molecules it assembles, mostly proteins. Protein molecules are long, usually folded chains made from 20 different kinds of amino-acid molecules. The function of each protein molecule depends on its specific sequence of amino acids and the shape the chain takes is a consequence of attractions between the chain's parts.
• The genetic information encoded in DNA molecules provides instructions for assembling protein molecules. The code used is virtually the same for all life forms.  Before a cell divides, the instructions are duplicated so that each of the two new cells gets all the necessary information for carrying on.

F. Evolution of Life

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Molecular evidence substantiates the anatomical evidence for evolution and provides additional detail about the sequence in which various lines of descent branched off from one another.
• Heritable characteristics can be observed at molecular and whole-organism levels-in structure, chemistry, or behavior. These characteristics strongly influence what capabilities an organism will have and how it will react, and therefore influence how likely it is to survive and reproduce.
• New heritable characteristics can result from new combinations of existing genes or from mutations of genes in reproductive cells. Changes in other cells of an organism cannot be passed on to the next generation.

Chapter 6: The Human Organism

A. Human Identity

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• The similarity of human DNA sequences and the resulting similarity in cell chemistry and anatomy identify human beings as a single species.
• Written records and photographic and electronic devices enable human beings to share, compile, use, and misuse great amounts of information and misinformation. No other species uses such technologies.

Chapter 7: Human Society

C. Social Change

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• To various degrees, governments try to bring about social change or to impede it through policies, laws, incentives, or direct coercion. Sometimes such efforts achieve their intended results and sometimes they do not.

Return to Project Disappeared Teacher Materials

Return to Project Disappeared Home Page