The National Research Council (2009) has called for implementation of “A New Biology” with emphasis on interdisciplinary curriculum and training students using problem-based and other engaging methods. Brewer & Smith (2010) have pointed out that many working scientists were first attracted to their discipline in key high school interventions, and that development of focused opportunities, particularly for independent research, are critical to development of scientific thinking.
Researchers working within this project will promote two kinds of opportunities . First, in partnership with the Planting Science program (www.plantingscience.org), independent botanical research experiment opportunities will be promoted and supported for any interested student in any high school grade, but we will target the early grades attempting to interest them in conducting work with “real” scientists. For each of these, participating researchers will work with students, following Planting Science recommendations, helping them to identify, implement and evaluate appropriate experiments that will both advance their knowledge and peak their curiosity. Second, students, particularly high school seniors and others showing strong interest in science, will be encouraged to work as field interns with scientists conducting on-going research in this project. This will include the research of this project with interviews with orchardists in neighboring local areas where the students live and where apples are grown. It will also include taxonomic research conducted by other researchers who are studying a wide variety of plants and ecosystems.
Conservation Ethnobiology Field Schools: Several of the collaborating researchers have offered 2-6 week field research methods training programs each year in a variety of locations around the world (see www.fielduniversity.com as an example). These schools emphasize multi-disciplinary, problem-based learning in ecology, conservation biology, ethnography, and scientific leadership. All problems that the students are given involve real data and they spend time analyzing data collected from actual research projects checking the conclusions drawn by published scholars. Accepted students are mostly university biology or anthropology seniors or early graduate students planning to conduct research on biological hypotheses involving humans in some way. The data specifically being generated from this project on orchards will be used to develop problems for the students to consider as part of the curriculum within the field school. The data collection and analysis methods used within this project will also be taught and refined based on the students’ experiences. Subsequent field schools will include data collection/analysis methods of this project (e.g., we are considering sites in Mexico and Spain with orchards so students may integrate training with this project).
Internship opportunity for M.Ed. students at Texas Christian University (TCU): BRIT is physically proximate to TCU and students can easily visit BRIT’s new facilities. Amanda Stone Norton, directs the BRIT teacher learning center that focuses on experiential outdoor learning. Norton is working with local universities to develop internship opportunities for teachers participating in BRIT sponsored professional learning communities. The TCU College of Education, Science Education, Graduate Program is offering an internship training opportunity in which BRIT participates. TCU graduate students may use this opportunity to work with BRIT researchers for a semester on a research-training project that is jointly designed. Two of the primary objectives of these training opportunities are 1) to obtain practical experience conducting scientific research, and 2) to develop practical science curriculum that is enriched with bioinformatics. The preliminary data for this project already provides a body of information that is being proposed as the basis of a curriculum project. As this becomes richer including analysis and supplementation from different scales (history, chemistry, geography, and hopefully, botanical phylogeny), it will become the basis of more than one project and integrate with the Segues to science work, mentioned earlier, that is currently being published.
Any curriculum that is developed by this project will be deposited for wider dissemination, evaluation and archiving within the Open Science Network (www.opensciencenetwork.net). The focus of the network is development and distribution of curriculum models that engage educators and students in scientific inquiry through ethnobiology, as well as a broad range of technological tools to teach about science and scientific methods through an open-access system. Pat Harrison, BRIT Education Director, is the PI for the Open Science Network in Ethnobiology (OSN) and will coordinate the transfer of curriculum materials from the project into the OSN system for broader distribution to educators both regionally and internationally. Harrison will promote use of the OSN to teachers through BRIT workshops and through professional societies such as the Society of Economic Botany and the Botanical Society of America.
SofiaVougioukalou is teaching anthropological field methods for undergraduates through University of Kent using interviews with orchard managers as foci of the experience. She has applied a similar approach in a graduate field school offered in Greece. These two kinds of opportunities will be promoted as training for students that will apply the ethnographic data collection and analysis methods of this project through local EU-based field schools.
Cumulatively the educational opportunities will be assessed in two broad ways: 1) Number and type (level, term, gender, and ethnicity) of participants, and 2) Improvement in use of STEM curriculum or engagement in STEM careers. A quantitative evaluation form will be developed to assess the level of incoming familiarity with different STEM disciplines and data. Deeper skills fields will be added exploring biological and social science intersections. This will be administered as a pre- and post- experience measure of knowledge engagement being developed within this project and will be tailored to address issues and broad themes associated with both the facts of the project and mechanisms for dissemination and exploration of these through education. The difference between pre- and post-tests will be the quantitative change in test measures. These researchers have used this summative method before.