NGSS and the Hestenes Paper

"Modeling games in the Newtonian World" has many prominent parallels to the standards presented in the NGSS. When reading the paper, I utilized the eight practices given in Chapter 3 of the NGSS to identify them in the Hestenes paper. It was interesting to find so many of the same ideas in both readings.

Hestenes spoke about how "one cannot discover what one cannot conceive". This is important for students because without having an ability to conceive a concept, they cannot understand that they know it. The practices are very useful in this because they allow for this to  occur. The paper is filled with many different examples of the practices (both obvious and embedded) listed in the NGSS. For example, the mention of theoretical games, such as model building, ramification, and deployment have different components of the practices, such as asking questions and planning and carrying out investigations. The paper also gives various ways to utilize the practices, which allows flexibility. This is a good trait to have because it is important that students know that there is no right or wrong answer to utilizing the practices in scientific discovery. Another interesting parallel I found was that of Figure 3-1 in NGSS and Figure 5 of Hestenes. Both speak of having components that must balance out with elements of understanding, investigation/interpretation, and creation. Overall, I will admit that with my minute prior knowledge of physics, the paper was easier to follow than I expected.