Teacher Labs to Foster Minority Students Bioscience Inq*

说明(申请人提供)：研究表明，基于项目的探究性科学教学(在解决与个人相关的真实问题的背景下学习科学)应该提高科学成就，并增强在科学研究中代表性不足的中学生和高中生对科学的态度。这与这些学生的科学态度和成就通常在初中和高中期间下降(科学作为陈旧的事实和需要记忆的理论传授的结果)形成了有利的对比，导致未来少数族裔研究科学家的数量在这些学生进入大学之前出现最大幅度的下降。另一方面，在学校开展基于项目的探究科学为所有少数族裔学生提供了进行与个人相关的科学的机会，这将培养他们追求科学职业的兴趣。然而，在教育了许多这样的学生的城市学校，科学教师本身缺乏足够的科学探究经验，无法成功地与学生进行科学探究。因此，这项建议旨在开发、提供和评估一个以实验室为基础的专业发展计划，旨在通过组织工程、营养科学、微循环、心脏病学、心血管流行病学和细胞生物学方面的实验室经验，向芝加哥的中学科学和高中生物教师教授科学探究。这些实验室将由NHLBI资助的科学家、科学教育研究人员和专业发展专家组成的团队设计和授课。然而，人们认识到有必要进一步帮助教师将这些基于实验室的经验转化为具体的基于探究的课堂教学。为此，计划中的实验室建立专门针对教师制定现有基于项目的探究生物学课程的探究技能：I、Bio(学生在重新设计学校午餐选择以满足身体需求的背景下学习八周的中学生命科学)；以及疾病探测器(学生在解决关于冠状动脉疾病的流行病学谜团的背景下学习八周的高中生物学)。通过这种方式，以实验室为基础的专业发展计划有助于教师在他们的少数民族初中生和高中生中使用经过充分研究的基于项目的探究生物学课程。这将解决我们的主要目标，即提高少数族裔学生的科学成就和态度，以支持他们追求科学事业。此外，这些与健康相关的具体课程项目将满足我们的次要目标，即提高学生和教师对与心血管和营养相关的疾病及其预防的知识。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research indicates that project-based inquiry science instruction (learning science in the context of solving authentic problems of personal relevance) should improve the science achievement and enhance the attitudes towards science of middle and high school students from minorities under-represented in scientific research. This is in favorable contrast to how these students' science attitudes and achievements typically decline during middle and high school (the result of science taught as stale facts and theories to be memorized), causing the greatest drop in the numbers of future minority research scientists to occur before these students ever enter college. Doing project-based inquiry science in school, on the other hand, provides all minority students the opportunity to perform the personally-relevant science that will foster their interest in pursuing scientific careers. However, in urban schools that educate many such students, science teachers themselves lack sufficient experience doing scientific inquiry to successfully engage in it with their students. Therefore, this proposal aims to develop, provide, and assess a laboratory-based professional development program designed to teach scientific inquiry to Chicago's middle school science and high school biology teachers via laboratory experiences in tissue engineering, nutritional science, microcirculation, cardiology, cardiovascular epidemiology, and cellular biology. These laboratories will be designed and taught by a team of NHLBI-funded scientists, science education researchers, and professional development specialists. However, there is a recognized need to further help teachers translate these lab-based experiences into concrete inquiry-based classroom instruction. To this end, the planned laboratories build inquiry skills specific to teachers enacting existing project-based inquiry biology curricula: I, Bio (students learn eight weeks of middle school life science in the context of redesigning their school lunch choices to meet their bodies' needs); and Disease Detectives (students learn eight weeks of high school biology in the context of solving a epidemiological mystery about coronary artery disease). In this way, the laboratory-based professional development program facilitates teachers using well-researched project-based inquiry biology curricula with their minority middle and high school students. This will address our primary aim of enhancing minority students' science achievement and attitudes to support their pursuing science careers. In addition, these specific health-related curricular projects will address our secondary aim of enhancing students' and teachers' knowledge of cardiovascular- and nutrition-related diseases and their prevention.