Science Achievement and Health Behavior: High School Curriculum, Social Context, and Opportunity to Learn

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

A three-year research project is proposed with the following goals:1. To fully describe the science and mathematics curricular exposure of high school students anddifferences resulting from curricular variations, social context and opportunities to learn, andstudents background.2. To analyze how curricular exposure and social structure influence students persistence throughthe science and mathematics pipeline.3. To analyze how curricular exposure and academic progress through the science pipeline affectstudents choice to major in science-related fields, including teaching.4. To analyze how science curricular exposure shapes students health behavior and health-relatedscience literacy.Three major areas that influence students progress through the science and mathematicspipeline and their health choices and literacy even if they leave the pipeline are identified andanalyzed: (1) curriculum content, performance expectations and perspectives (2) formal,structured opportunities to learn and (3) the informal social contexts of students learningenvironments.Quantitative methods are employed. This study takes advantage of a unique and timelyopportunity to analyze nationally representative, longitudinal data from the 1990s, the NationalLongitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and its transcript supplement. A thirdwave of Add Health is currently being gathered, and students high school transcripts andsupporting school documents (course catalogues, syllabi, textbook lists) are being collected andcoded. For this study, course curriculum (content, performance expectations, and perspectives)will also be coded and analyzed along with the transcript data and longitudinal survey data fromapproximately 19,000 respondents who were in grades 7 through 12 in the1994-1995 school year.This data set contains extensive measures of many sources of influence from the contexts ofstudents lives that can be linked to adolescents health behavior, academic performance, andscience and teaching aspirations.This study is set within Quadrant III of the ROLE program: irResearch on SMET learning informal and informal educational settings,ll and has major implications and links to Quadrants IIand IV. The study directly targets the question of how recent mathematics and scienceeducational reforms in approaches and curriculum materials affect students academic progressand learning. It explicitly distinguishes between formal and informal processes to assess theeffects and interactions of each. The study addresses the concentration of Quadrant II since theresearch questions are framed to recognize how the complex, multilevel aspects of studentsbackgrounds and lives interact with the structure and social context of schools to affect learning.The concentrations of Quadrant IV are also addressed by the multilevel approach to analysis oflongitudinal, nationally representative data. The data sets depth allows for analysis of howreforms in curricular content (including textbook adoptions) and structure are related to studentsprogress within the context of schools and curriculum-based subsets of students (such as tracks).Consistent with common themes across ROLE concentration areas, this study will model theseprocesses and analyze large-scale effects of curricular and social structuring inherent inmathematics and science reform efforts. Finally, it assesses how science education is related tothe everyday lives of the U.S.s diverse population by examining how exposure to science inhigh school is related to health choices and behaviors.