Integrating health and biology in a science curriculum for Latino preschoolers

描述（由申请人提供）：与讲英语的同龄人相比，来自低收入语言少数民族背景的儿童进入幼儿园时处于显着劣势，突出了在幼儿时期为他们提供丰富教育经验的必要性。许多州准备标准现在强调学前科学是幼儿过渡到正规学校教育准备的关键领域（Head Start, 2007）。然而，缺乏严谨的研究设计来评估学前科学课程的有效性，这阻碍了研究人员得出关于最佳实践的结论。此外，学前科学课程是为来自中等收入背景的欧美儿童设计的，这些课程的有效性还没有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过测试。本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效果，该课程侧重于提高他们对细菌传染和污染以及食物和营养的概念理解，这是NIH感兴趣的一个领域，与发展创造性和创新性研究教育有关，向儿童提供有关科学健康生活的信息。我们的研究是新颖的，因为它将健康和生物学概念整合到一个多单元的科学课程中，而不是将健康信息作为科学之外的一个独立主题引入，这是典型的学前教育项目。在本研究中，将40个幼儿园教室随机分为两个实验组：1)实验组接受以生物为基础的健康科学课程；2)一个注意力控制组，从出版的在线材料中接受标准的健康课程。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到5岁的孩子都将参加考试前和考试后的评估。我们预计，相对于对照组，儿童将表现出对与生物过程有关的健康概念的概念性理解的增加，以及通过他们提出问题和产生解释的能力来衡量的科学探究技能。两组儿童（接受西班牙语教学的儿童和接受英语教学的儿童）在科学理解和探究技能方面的指标将显著提高，尽管实验课程的总体效果对接受母语（西班牙语）教学的儿童更为显著。本研究将为以生物学为基础的学前健康科学课程的发展和传播提供重要信息，特别是针对来自西班牙语背景的低收入拉丁裔儿童，但适用于不同类型的学习者。

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.