Integrating health and biology in a science curriculum for Latino preschoolers

说明(由申请人提供)：与说英语的同龄人相比，来自低收入语言少数群体背景的儿童在开始上幼儿园时处于明显的劣势，这突显了为他们提供丰富的幼儿教育经验的必要性。许多国家的准备性标准现在强调学龄前科学是为幼儿过渡到正规学校做好准备的一个关键领域(Head Start，2007)。然而，缺乏具有严格研究设计的研究来评估学龄前科学课程的有效性，这阻碍了研究人员就最佳实践得出结论。此外，还为来自中等收入背景的欧洲裔美国儿童组成的教室设计了学前科学课程，这些计划的有效性尚未在来自西班牙语背景的低收入拉丁裔学龄前儿童身上进行测试。这项拟议研究的总体目标是为低收入拉丁裔儿童设计和测试学前科学课程的有效性，该课程侧重于提高他们对细菌感染和污染以及食品和营养的概念理解，这是NIH感兴趣的一个领域，与发展创造性和创新性的研究教育有关，以向儿童提供健康的科学生活信息。我们的研究是新颖的，因为它将健康和生物学的概念整合到一个多单元的科学课程中，而不是像学龄前课程那样，将健康信息作为一个独立的科学外主题引入。在这项拟议的研究中，40个学龄前教室将被随机分配到两个试验组中：1)试验组，接受基于生物的健康科学课程；2)注意力控制组，接受发布的在线材料中的标准健康课程。在每个实验组中，一半的教室将接受西班牙语课程，另一半将接受英语课程。所有4岁和5岁的儿童都将参加考试前和考试后的评估。我们预计，与对照组相比，儿童对与生物过程有关的健康概念的概念性理解将有所增加，并通过提出问题和提供解释的能力来衡量科学探究技能。这两组儿童(接受西班牙语和英语授课的儿童)在科学理解和探究技能方面的测量将有显著提高，尽管实验课程对接受小学语言(西班牙语)教学的儿童的总体影响将更强。这项研究将为发展和传播以生物学为基础的学前健康科学计划提供重要信息，特别是针对来自西班牙语背景的低收入拉丁裔儿童，但适合不同类型的学习者。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children from low-income language minority backgrounds begin kindergarten at a significant disadvantage compared to their English-speaking peers, highlighting the need to provide them with enriching educational experiences in early childhood. Many state readiness standards now highlight preschool science as a key domain in the preparation of young children for the transition into formal schooling (Head Start, 2007). Yet, the lack of studies with rigorous research designs to evaluate the effectiveness of preschool science curricula has prevented researchers from drawing conclusions about best practices. In addition, preschool science curricula have been designed for classrooms made up of European American children from middle income backgrounds and the effectiveness of these programs have not been tested with low-income Latino preschool children from Spanish- speaking backgrounds. The overall goal of the proposed study is to design and test the efficacy of a preschool science curriculum for low-income Latino children that focuses on improving their conceptual understanding of germ contagion and contamination, and food and nutrition, an area of interest to NIH related to developing creative and innovate research education to deliver information about healthy living in science to children. Our study is novel in that it integrates health and biology concepts in a multi-unit science curriculum, instead of introducing health information as a stand-alone topic outside of science, typical of preschool programs. In the proposed research, 40 preschool classrooms will be assigned randomly to one of two experimental groups: 1) a treatment group that receives the biology-based health science curriculum; 2) an attention control group that receives a standard health curriculum from published, on-line materials. Within each experimental group, half of the classrooms will receive the curriculum in Spanish and the other half will receive the curriculum in English. All children, ages 4 and 5, will participate in pre- and postest assessment sessions. We expect that relative to control group, children will show an increase in conceptual understanding of health concepts related to biological process, and science inquiry skills as measured by their capacity to ask questions and generate explanations. There will be significant increases on measures of science understanding and inquiry skills for both groups of children (those receiving the instruction in Spanish and those in English) although the overall effects of the experimental curriculum will be stronger for children receiving the instruction in their primary language (Spanish).This study will provide vital information for the development and dissemination of a biology-based preschool health science program particularly for low-income Latino children from Spanish-speaking backgrounds, but appropriate for different types of learners.