BIORETS: Genetics and Genomics Research Experiences for High School Teachers in the Greater Houston Area

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The Houston Genetics BIORETS program will provide summer research experiences in genetics and genomics for high school biology teachers at the University of Houston. Genetics is a core topic in high school biology curricula, and it is foundational for many other topics in biology. Genetic literacy is also essential for understanding biomedical, agricultural, and environmental science. Despite this central importance, understanding of genetics consistently lags behind other scientific concepts, which is made even worse by the growing role that genetics and genomics plays in modern biology. The Houston Genetics BIORETS program will address this problem by providing high school biology teachers with valuable knowledge and experiences that will improve genetics instruction in their classrooms. Teachers will be drawn from schools with large enrollments of at-risk students and students from groups historically excluded from the sciences.The Houston Genetics BIORETS program aims to improve genetics instruction in high school biology classes by achieving three goals. First, teachers will improve their genetics and genomics content knowledge by participating in research projects, and they will attend seminars on topics in genetics and genomics. Second, expert teacher trainers will provide instruction in effective pedagogical practices, including inquiry-based teaching and culturally responsive pedagogy. Third, teachers will work with genetics faculty and teacher trainers to develop curricular materials to use in their classrooms, with specific objectives of improving student understanding of concepts and awareness of genetics careers. Lesson plans will be published and disseminated to other teachers. An external project evaluator will assess how well each goal was accomplished and provide annual feedback for improvement.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.