NIMHD Science Education Initiative: K-12 Science Education Initiative

描述（由申请人提供）：建立一个管道，介绍和增加少数民族和代表性不足的学生对科学的兴趣少数民族，除了亚裔美国人，在科学和工程领域获得的学士，硕士和博士学位比他们在人口中的比例要少。然而，少数民族的孩子似乎比他们的白色同龄人对科学更感兴趣。因此，我们必须假设，在孩子的成长期发生的一些事情并没有加强他们对科学的早期兴趣。为了解决这个问题，我们建议制定一个新的课程，教育和促进青少年科学（EASY 1-2-3），当充分发展，将开始在幼儿园，并将继续通过12年级，以激发儿童对科学的兴趣。课程将是多媒体的，有趣的使用，娱乐和有趣。它还将集中在一个特定的兴趣领域，人体，学生可以涉及的东西。我们的目标是开始向12所学校介绍我们的课程，从6 - 10年级开始，在四个国家的市场：巴吞鲁日，洛杉矶，那里的学校是种族混合的;洛杉矶，加利福尼亚州，那里的西班牙裔学生占大多数;新奥尔良，洛杉矶，那里的学校是种族混合的，但有一个非洲裔美国人的小优势;而在俄克拉荷马州的俄克拉荷马州，那里的学校是种族混合的，但也包括很大比例的美国印第安儿童。我们计划在每个市场的每所学校试点5名学生，在此期间解决任何问题，然后在每个市场的每所学校试点10名学生。在该项目的第三年结束时，我们计划向所有小学、初中和高中年龄组的儿童全面推出该课程，每所学校选择多达30名学生，如果有兴趣，将其开放给不同的学校。这项研究的第二部分是向学生的家庭和社区成员提供补充材料，以补充学生收到的关于人类健康的材料。我们的目标是确定这门课程是否会增加学生对科学的兴趣，正如他们在课堂上参与科学项目所表明的那样，增加了与家庭和社区成员关于科学的讨论，并最终决定追求科学事业。 公共卫生相关性：EASY 1-2-3建立一个管道，介绍和提高少数民族和代表性不足的学生对科学的兴趣，教育和促进青年科学（EASY）1-2-3是一个教育项目，向K-12学生提供科学课程，通过使用与人体结构和功能有关的信息，使他们感兴趣。该计划的目标是通过使用学生会觉得有趣和有趣的信息，在年轻时激发儿童对科学领域的兴趣，从而增加科学领域代表性不足的少数民族。与此同时，该方案将通过向学生提供类似的科学信息，使学生家庭和社区参与进来，希望激发学生、其家庭和社区之间的对话，以帮助支持学生的学习，并增加成年人对健康相关主题的知识。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Building a Pipeline for Introducing and Increasing Interest in Science for Minority and Underrepresented Students Minorities, other than Asian Americans, earn fewer bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in science and engineering fields than their proportion in the population. Yet minority children seem to be even more interested in science than their white counterparts. Thus, we must assume that something happens during the children's formative years that do not reinforce their early interest in science. To remedy this, we propose to develop a new curriculum, Educating and Advancing Science in Youth (EASY 1-2-3), that, when fully developed, will begin in kindergarten and will continue through 12th grade to stimulate children's interest in science. The curriculum will be multimedia, fun to use, entertaining and interesting. It also will focus on a particular area of interest, the human body, something to which students can relate. Our aim is to start introducing our curriculum to 12 schools, beginning with 6th-10th grades, in four national markets: Baton Rouge, LA, where schools are racially mixed; Los Angeles, CA, where Hispanics make up the majority of students; New Orleans, LA, where schools are racially mixed but there is a small predominance of African Americans; and in Oklahoma City, OK, where the schools are racially mixed, but also include a significant proportion of American Indian children. We plan to pre-pilot our curriculum to five students per school in each market, work out any problems during this period, then pilot it to 10 students per school in each market. At the end of the third year of the project, we plan to do a full rollout of the curriculum to children at all elementary, middle and high school age groups, select as many as 30 students per school, and, if there is interest, open it to different schools. A secondary part of the study is to offer material that is complementary to what the students receive on human health to the students' families and members of the communities. Our goal is to determine if this curriculum increases student interest in science, as indicated by their participation in science projects in class, increased discussions with family and community members about science and, ultimately, their decision to pursue a scientific career. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: EASY 1-2-3 Building a Pipeline for Introducing and Increasing Interest in Science for Minority and Underrepresented Students Educating and Advancing Science in Youth (EASY) 1-2-3 is an educational project to present a science curriculum to K-12 students that will interest them through use of information related to the structure and function of the human body. The goal of the program is to increase under-represented minorities in science by exciting children to the science field at a young age, through use of information that the students will find entertaining and interesting. At the same time, the program will engage students' families and the community by presenting similar scientific information to them in the hopes of stimulating a dialogue among the students, their families and the community to aid in support for the students' studies and to increase adults' knowledge of health- related topics.