Birmingham Science Education Partnership: Middle School Inquiry-Based Learning

描述（由申请人提供）： 美国的医疗保健差距部分是由于少数民族和弱势儿童缺乏早期生物医学/健康科学教育。教育系统的这种失败导致少数群体在生物医学职业中的代表性不足，卫生知识贫乏，卫生保健负担加重。亚拉巴马大学伯明翰分校（UAB）、伯明翰城市学校（BCS）和麦克韦恩中心结成了有效的联盟，使CORD的SEPA资助的高中课程获得授权，从而创造了一个自我维持的模式，利用所有三个合作伙伴的资源，大大提高了BCS科学教育。作为这一成功的指标，自1999年以来，近100%的非洲裔美国学生谁完成了CORD的3年制高中暑期课程已进入学院和大学，主要是生物医学科学科目的专业。每年，这些方案直接惠及约4，000名少数民族学生，并为20%以上的教师提供密集培训。然而，尽管取得了这些成功，大多数BCS学生在高中之前对科学教育失去了兴趣。这些学生必须参与，并在生命的早期给予坚实的科学背景，如果一个显着的数字是推进到生物医学事业。这项建议的重点是一个新的综合方案，以加强学生探究为基础的科学教育，为学生提供新的机会，大大提高他们的教师的科学培训6 - 8年级。这些群体面临的挑战与CORD在其高中课程中面临的挑战大不相同。中学生和教师的科学训练比他们的高中同学少得多。拟议方案的主要优势包括：1）将拟议的以探究为基础的课堂和麦克韦恩中心课程纳入BCS的核心科学课程，2）将教师培训纳入BCS科学教师的定期在职培训，3）与致力于专业和本科生物医学学生的伙伴关系，他们与教师将促进基于探究的科学和生物医学健康教育，以及4）家长和公众参与健康素养教育，了解NIH赞助研究的好处。UAB、BCS和McWane中心的合作伙伴关系将对这种基于调查的模式的能力、成本效益和自我可持续性进行测试。

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.