Teacher Labs to Foster Minority Students Bioscience Inq*

描述（由申请人提供）：研究表明，基于项目的研究性科学教学（在解决真实的个人关联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被忽视的少数民族初高中学生的科学态度。这与这些学生在初中和高中期间的科学态度和成就的典型下降形成了鲜明的对比（这是作为陈腐的事实和理论来记忆的科学教育的结果），导致未来少数民族研究科学家数量的最大下降发生在这些学生进入大学之前。另一方面，在学校进行基于项目的探究科学，为所有少数民族学生提供了进行个人相关科学研究的机会，这将培养他们追求科学事业的兴趣。然而，在教育了许多这类学生的城市学校里，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，本提案旨在开发、提供和评估一个基于实验室的专业发展计划，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教授。然而，人们认识到需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，计划中的实验室为教师制定现有的基于项目的探究性生物学课程建立了专门的探究技能：1、生物（学生在重新设计学校午餐选择以满足他们身体需求的背景下学习八周的中学生命科学）；疾病侦探（学生在解决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对少数民族初高中学生使用经过充分研究的基于项目的探究性生物学课程。这将有助于我们提高少数民族学生的科学成就和态度，以支持他们追求科学事业的主要目标。此外，这些具体的与健康有关的课程项目将实现我们的第二个目标，即提高学生和教师对心血管和营养相关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.