Incorporating professional science writing into high school STEM research projects

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This exploratory project addresses important challenge of incorporating disciplinary literacy practices in scientific inquiry projects of high school students. The project will incorporate the peer-review process and publication in the Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI). The Next Generation Science Standards emphasize constructs from disciplinary literacy such as engaging in argument from evidence, and evaluating and communicating information. However, there are few resources available to students and teachers that integrate these constructs in authentic forms that reflect the practices of professional scientists. High school student learners engage in scientific inquiry, but rarely participate in authentic forms of communication, forms that are reflective of how scientists communicate and participate in the primary literature of their fields. The project has three aims: 1) Generate knowledge of the impact of peer-review and publication on perceptions and skills of scientific inquiry and STEM identity, 2) Generate knowledge of how participation in peer-review and publication are impacted by contextual factors (differences in mentors and research contexts), and 3) Develop JEI field-guides across a range of contexts in which students conduct their research. The goal of the project is to expand high school student participation in the peer-review process and in publishing in JEI, a science journal dedicated to mentoring pre-college students through peer-reviewed publication. By publishing pre-college research in an open access website, the project will build understanding of how engaging in these activities can change high school students’ perceptions and practices of scientific inquiry. The project will investigate how participation in peer-reviewed publications will have an impact on student learning by administering a set of pre- and post-surveys to students who submit a paper to JEI. The project will expand student participation in JEI via outreach to teachers in under-resourced and remote areas by delivering virtual and in-person workshops which will serve to demystify peer review and publication, and explore ways to integrate these processes into existing inquiry projects. Other efforts will focus on understanding how student contextual experiences can impact their learning of scientific inquiry. These student experiences include the location of the project (school, home, university lab), the type of mentor they have, and how they became motivated to pursue publication of their research. The project will recruit students from under-resourced schools in New York through a collaboration with MathForAmerica and from rural areas through outreach with STEM coordinators in the Midwest. The resources created will be disseminated directly on the JEI website.The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by pre-K-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.