Fostering deep learning, identity, and agency: Minoritized students learning biology in personal and community-relevant contexts

目前，公平仍然是科学教育中一个难以实现的目标。许多少数群体在科学事业中的代表性仍然不足，限制了他们追求潜在科学轨迹的机会，并减少了从不同角度对社会的好处。然而，科学学习环境往往不以学生的生活为基础或不承认学生的生活，导致持续边缘化。反过来，这可能导致少数民族青年对科学产生负面认同，降低他们对科学的兴趣和成功。根据目前关于提高学生对科学的兴趣和相关性的研究，该项目将探索如何促进积极的身份发展和与下一代科学标准相一致的科学理解。项目团队将开发和研究一种学习环境，使中学生参与解决他们自己社区中与健康有关的问题。该团队将与七年级学生、他们的老师和社区成员合作，发展以社区为基础的科学教学。学生将在自己的社区内进行研究，并使用强大的技术工具来探索和解释这些问题的潜在生物和环境原因。利用这些资源，学生们还将为他们的社区创造解决方案。该项目将提供理论见解、一套指导未来教学设计和教师专业发展的原则，并将在期刊、会议和项目网站上报告他们的发现。该项目采用参与式设计方法，旨在加深对如何在三个相互关联的方面支持少数族裔青年的理解，这些方面对学校科学及其他领域的成功至关重要：创建与科学相关的身份、协商科学认识论以及学习生命科学核心思想和实践。通过两个连续的实施研究，项目团队将调查与这些方面相关的一套设计原则如何塑造学生与科学相关的身份以及对科学实践和核心学科思想的理解。他们将在中学生物课堂上工作，并与管理人员、教师、学生和社区成员合作，为少数族裔青年设计有意义和重要的教学。特别是，他们希望更好地理解如何在邀请和整合多种认识论和学生突出身份的同时支持科学学习。研究结果将对认知代理和基于社区的结果性学习之间的相互作用如何支持身份工作以及科学理解提供理论见解；可适应其他社区和环境的教育教学材料；可用于支持建立以社区为基础的学习环境的专业材料；以及可以用于教师培训项目的材料的改编。除了这些材料外，还将传播研究和从业人员出版物和报告、为中学教师举办的专业发展讲习班以及一个项目网站，使其他人可以免费获得这些材料和资源。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Currently, equity remains an elusive goal in science education. Many minority groups continue to be underrepresented in science careers, limiting their opportunities to pursue potential science trajectories and diminishing benefits to society from diverse perspectives. Science learning environments, however, often do not build on or recognize the lives of students resulting in persistent marginalization. This, in turn, can lead minoritized youth to identify negatively with science and decreases their interest and success in science. Drawing on current research about increasing interest in and relevance of science for students, this project will explore how to promote positive identity development and science understandings aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. The project team will develop and study a learning environment that engages middle school students in addressing health-related problems in their own community. The team will collaborate with seventh grade students, their teachers, and community members to develop community-based science instruction. Students will draw on research within their own communities and use powerful technology tools to explore and explain the underlying biological and environmental causes of these problems. Using these resources, students will also create solutions for their communities. The project will contribute theoretical insights, a set of principles to inform future instructional design, professional development for teachers and will report their findings in journals, conferences, and a project website.Using a participatory design approach, this project aims to deepen the understanding of how to support minoritized youth in three interlinked aspects critical for success in school science and beyond: authoring science-linked identities, negotiating science epistemologies, and learning life science core ideas and practices. Through two consecutive implementation studies, the project team will investigate how a set of design principles related to these aspects shapes students’ science-linked identities and understandings of science practices and core disciplinary ideas. They will work in middle school biology classrooms and collaborate with administrators, teachers, students, and community members to design meaningful and consequential instruction for minoritized youth. In particular, they hope to better understand how to support science learning while inviting and integrating multiple epistemologies and student-salient identities. The outcomes will contribute theoretical insights about how interactions between epistemic agency and community-based consequential learning support identity work as well as science understandings; educative instructional materials that can be adapted to other communities and contexts; professional materials that can be used to support enactment of community-based learning environments; and adaptations of materials that can be used in teacher preparation programs. In addition to the materials, dissemination will include research and practitioner publications and presentations, professional development workshops for middle school teachers, and a project website that will make the materials and resources freely available to others.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.