Appraising Instructional Materials from TeachersPayTeachers for Features of NGSS Design and Nature of Science Representations

Science teachers crave instructional materials and an increasing number of them are going to online educational marketplaces to purchase them. This study reports on a content analysis of highly rated products marketed for middle level science (grades 6, 7, and/or 8) on TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT), one of the most prominent online educational marketplaces. Thirty-three products were reviewed in this study and they contained a variety of student tasks (e.g., investigations & worksheets) and teacher resources (e.g., PowerPoint slides, lesson plans, & answer keys). Instructional materials obtained from these products yielded more than 1,500 pages for analysis. The first layer of the analysis focused on the alignment of these materials to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and results indicated that few materials included any key features of NGSS design (n = 2). The second layer of the analysis focused on the treatment and presentation of nature of science (NOS) ideas in these instructional materials. Of the 27 products that included any representation of NOS, the majority of these materials included empirical NOS (n = 22) and the myth of the “Scientific Method” (n = 21). Fewer representations were found for social NOS (n = 4), creative (n = 3), tentative (n = 3), theory-laden (n = 3), and along with social and cultural embeddedness (n = 1). Results revealed mixed messages among the instructional materials reviewed, examples are shared to frame a discussion about features that can foster the development of NOS understandings. Implications of this research regarding the preparation of teachers to evaluate instructional materials are discussed alongside research highlighting how educative features can support NOS instruction.