Teachers FIRST: From Interesting Research to Scientific Teaching

描述（申请人提供）：教师第一项目（从有趣的研究到科学的教学）旨在为高中教师提供在教学中超越分子生物学中心教条（DNA -> RNA ->蛋白）的背景和工具，并让学生参与基因组科学及其对个性化医疗保健的影响的有意义的讨论。在这个项目的第一阶段，教师将被介绍一系列当前研究的分子故事，说明最近的技术进步如何推动个性化基因组医学的发展。本项目将创建一系列创新的、以学生为中心的教学材料，包括(i)将学生的思维从细胞世界转移到分子世界的细胞景观，（ii）中心教条构建工具包，以及（iii）物理模型和基于计算机（Jmol）的特定蛋白质探索。然后，教师将在学校接受明确的培训

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Teachers FIRST project (From Interesting Research to Scientific Teaching) aims to provide high school teachers with the background and tools to go beyond the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology (DNA -> RNA -> Protein) in their teaching, and to engage their students in meaningful discussions of genomic science and its implications for personalized health care. In the first phase of this project, teachers will be introduced to a series of molecular stories of current research that illustrate how recent advances in technology are driving the development of personalized genomic medicine. A broad range of innovative, student-centered instructional materials will be created in this project, including (i) cellular landscapes that transition students' thinking from the cellular to the molecular world, (ii) a central dogma construction kit, and (iii) physical models and computer-based (Jmol) explorations of specific proteins. Teachers will then receive explicit training in the use of these materials to connect the central elements of each molecular story of current research to the basic concepts of chemistry and biology that are taught at the high school level. In the second phase of this project, teachers will be introduced to the principles of scientific teaching - and challenged to apply the same experimental rigor to their classrooms that researchers apply in their laboratories. Teams of teachers will be assisted in the development of individualized research plans in which the impact of implementing the project's instructional materials in their classrooms will be studied. Beginning in a summer workshop and continuing into the implementation of these shared research plans in their classrooms, teachers will be encouraged to become active participants in a professional community of educators - committed to documenting the impact of their classroom innovations on student learning and to sharing the results of that education research with others. In the final phase of this project, the molecular stories and related instructional materials will e disseminated to a national audience of high school students and their teachers though a Protein Modeling event in the Science Olympiad competition. More than 9,000 students in 48 states will be exposed to stories of personalized genomic medicine as they construct physical models of proteins that play key roles in molecular stories.