Birmingham Science Education Partnership: Middle School Inquiry-Based Learning

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Health care disparities in the United States are due, in part, to a lack of early biomedical/health science education among minority and disadvantaged children. This failure of the education system leads to an under representation of minorities in the pipeline to biomedical careers, poor health literacy and an elevated burden on health care. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Birmingham City Schools (BCS)' and McWane Center have forged an effective alliance that has empowered CORD's SEPA-funded high school programs and thus, created a self-sustaining model in which the resources of all three partners have been leveraged to greatly enhance BCS science education. As an index of this success, since 1999 nearly 100% of the African-American students who completed CORD's 3-year high school summer program have advanced into colleges and universities, primarily majoring in biomedical science subjects. Annually, these programs directly reach about 4,000 minority students and provide intense training to > 20 of their teachers. However, despite these successes, a majority of BCS students lose interest in science education prior to high school years. These students must be engaged and given a solid science background earlier in life, if a significant number are to advance into biomedical careers. This proposal focuses on a new integrated program to enhance student inquiry-based science education for grades 6-8 by providing new opportunities for the students and greatly enhancing science training for their teachers. The challenges of these groups are quite different from the ones CORD faced in its high school programs. Middle school students and the teachers have much less science training than their high school counterparts. Major strengths of the proposed program include: 1) incorporation of proposed inquiry-based, in-class and McWane Center sessions into the core science curriculum of BCS, 2) integration of teacher training into the regular in-service training of BCS science teachers, 3) partnership with committed professional and undergraduate biomedical students who with the teachers will facilitate inquiry-based science and biomedical health education and 4) engagement of parents and the general public in health literacy education, awareness of the benefits of NIHsponsored research. The proven partnership of UAB, BCS and McWane Center will provide a test of the power, cost-effectiveness and self-sustainability of this inquiry-based model.