Skip to content

Science · NCEA Level 1

91922 · How science works

Explain how the features of science shape what we know.

Open LearnOpen PractiseOpen Exam

Key concepts

  • Science explanations are built on evidence

    A scientific idea earns its place by being supported by observations and measurements that other people can examine. That is what separates a scientific explanation from an assertion: not that scientists are cleverer, but that the claim is tied to evidence anyone with the right training and equipment could check. When you answer a question in this standard, quote the actual evidence in the resource - the soil samples, the sediment cores, the recorded temperatures - rather than saying "they did tests".

  • Observation and inference are different moves

    An observation is what was directly seen, counted or measured: kauri trees with bleeding gum lesions and thinning canopies. An inference is the explanation drawn from it: a soil-borne organism is attacking the roots. Both are essential, and science advances by testing inferences against new observations - but confusing the two is how a tentative explanation gets mistaken for an established fact. Look for the word that gives it away: "showed", "recorded" and "measured" mark observations; "suggests", "indicates" and "concluded" mark inferences.

  • Replication and independent checking

    One result from one team is a starting point, not a conclusion. Replication - repeating the work, ideally by other people with their own equipment - tests whether the finding is real or a quirk of a particular set-up, sample or season. Independent verification by a different method is stronger still: if sediment cores, radiocarbon dates and satellite positioning all point the same way, the conclusion no longer depends on any one technique being right. This is different from taking repeat readings inside a single investigation, which is about reliability of that investigation's data.

  • Peer review and community scrutiny

    Before research is published in a scientific journal it is sent to other specialists who look for weaknesses in the method, the analysis and the reasoning, and who can require changes or reject it. Peer review does not guarantee a paper is correct - reviewers can miss things and occasionally papers are withdrawn - but it filters out a great deal of poor work and forces claims to be defensible. Publication also puts the method in the open, which is what makes replication by anyone else possible.

  • Scientific knowledge is tentative and self-correcting

    Tentative does not mean flimsy. It means every scientific idea is held open to revision if better evidence appears. Ideas backed by decades of replicated evidence are extremely reliable and are not going to be overturned by one surprising result - but they can be refined, extended, or in rare cases replaced. Anomalous results are treated as signals to check rather than instant proof: they are repeated, tested by other methods, and only then allowed to change the idea.

  • Technology and tools extend what can be observed

    Much of the history of science is the history of being able to see or measure something new. DNA-based soil testing turned "something is killing kauri" into a named organism. Radiocarbon dating turned layers of mud into a timeline of past earthquakes. Satellites turned occasional Antarctic readings into a continuous global picture, and satellite positioning turned "the plates are moving" into a measured rate. When technology improves, ideas that were previously untestable become testable - and existing ideas are sometimes revised as a result.

  • Science and society shape each other

    The relationship runs both ways. Society influences science by deciding what gets funded and studied, by setting ethical limits on what may be done, and by raising the questions communities care about. Science influences society by informing decisions - track closures, building standards, health advice, international agreements. Neither side simply obeys the other: evidence rarely dictates a single course of action, because a decision also involves cost, culture, risk tolerance and values.

  • Different knowledge systems contribute

    Mātauranga Māori is a knowledge system in its own right: knowledge, values and practices built up over many generations of close observation of place, and carried in whakapapa, tikanga and language. It includes detailed environmental knowledge - the maramataka guiding when to plant and fish, and tohu such as the flowering of a particular tree signalling that a species is ready to harvest. It is not folklore waiting for science to approve it. Where mātauranga Māori and science are brought together, as in the use of rāhui alongside monitoring data, each contributes something the other does not, and that work requires the consent and leadership of the whānau, hapū or iwi whose knowledge it is.

  • The features interact - that is the top of the standard

    Features of science rarely act alone, and the highest band asks you to show how they worked together. Technology produces new evidence, which triggers a revision, which the community checks by replication and peer review, which then informs a decision by society, which funds more investigation. In an answer, that looks like sentences that join two features with a because or a so: "Because the DNA-based test could identify the organism in soil, the tentative idea that soil movement spreads the disease became testable, which is what justified the hygiene stations on the tracks."

  • Writing one whole response for a grade-score external

    Grade-score marking judges your entire response to a question as a single piece of work, so the shape of the answer matters. Answer every part - a strong final paragraph cannot rescue an empty first one, because there are no separate part marks to bank. Use the resource: name the specific evidence rather than talking about science in general. And make the reasoning explicit: state the feature, say what it did in this case, and then say why that mattered to the idea. A short, connected answer that does all three beats a long one that lists features and stops.

Assessment

External · grade-score marked.

This is an external achievement standard. Whetū offers original exam-style questions marked on the NCEA grade-score scale. Grades are estimates, not official results.

A mock paper is available in Whetū: Mock paper · How science works.

Learn

4 authored Learn units for this standard.

  • Evidence, replication and revision

    This page is about how a science idea is checked and changed. A feature of science is one of the official ways scientific knowledge is built. The exam gives you a resource about a real investigation in Aotearoa New Zealand or the Pacific. Your job is not to retell the study, and it is not to praise the benefit of the work. It is to name two different features, say what each one looks like in the resource, and show how each one moved a named idea.

  • Technology and the tools of science

    This page is about one official feature of science: the influence of the development and use of technology on science. In a resource, that feature has a characteristic you can point at. Name the instrument or technique, and name the observational window it opened — a scale, a signal, a place, a timespan, a comparison or a computation that unaided senses, or the earlier method, could not reach. The page is not a tour of gadgets and not a lesson in how an instrument works. It is how a named capability moved a named science idea from an earlier claim to a developed one.

  • Science, society and knowledge systems

    This page is about features of science that come from people, places and other knowledge systems. A social setting, a cultural value, a concrete need, a decision about who takes part, or a knowledge pathway can change which science is done, or how a science idea develops. Those are not background colour. They are the features the exam is asking you to describe.

  • How features of science interact

    This page is not a twelfth feature of science. The eleven official features are taught on the three sibling pages for this standard. What this page owns is a different kind of thinking: discussing how two named features interacted in the development of a science idea.

Practise

32 Practise questions in “How science works”. Feedback here is formative and is not an official NCEA grade.

  • Evidence and revision

    Follow how new evidence sharpens or changes a science idea.

  • Replication and checking

    Judge what repeating and independent checking actually add.

  • Technology and tools

    Say what a tool made measurable, and what changed as a result.

  • Science and society

    Trace the influence running in both directions.

  • Knowledge systems

    Describe mātauranga Māori and science contributing to one problem.

  • Tentative and self-correcting

    Explain why openness to revision is a strength, not a weakness.

  • Peer review and scrutiny

    Explain what expert scrutiny before publication adds - and does not.

  • Features interacting

    Connect two features with a because, instead of listing them.

  • Explaining how an idea developed

    Move from naming a feature to explaining why it mattered.

  • Writing the whole response

    Shape one connected answer for a grade-score marked external.

Sample questions

  1. Which part of this is an inference rather than an observation?
  2. Which finding would most justify revising that estimate?
  3. Which changes would strengthen this answer? Select all that apply.
  4. In science, what does replication usually mean?
  5. Which would most strengthen confidence that the low readings are real?
  6. Match each way of checking to what it actually involves.
  7. What did radiocarbon dating most directly contribute to the Alpine Fault research?
  8. “Until we could detect the organism in a soil sample, all we could honestly say was that trees were dying. We couldn't say what was killing them or how it was moving.” Whose viewpoint is this?

Practise 91922 in Whetū

Exam-style questions

465 original exam-style questions in Whetū. These are practice papers, not official NZQA assessments.

Back to Science.