Research consistently shows that children who have opportunities to actively investigate natural settings and engage in problem-based learning greatly benefit from the experiences. They gain skills, interests, knowledge, aspirations, and motivation to learn more. But how can we provide these rich opportunities in densely populated urban areas where resources and access to natural areas are limited? This project will develop and test a model of curriculum and community enterprise to address that issue within the nation's largest urban school system. Middle school students will study New York harbor and the extensive watershed that empties into it, and they will conduct field research in support of restoring native oyster habitats. The project builds on the existing Billion Oyster Project, and will be implemented by a broad partnership of institutions and community resources, including Pace University, the New York City Department of Education, the Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the New York Academy of Sciences, the New York Harbor Foundation, the New York Aquarium, and others.
The project focuses on an important concept in the geological, environmental, and biological sciences that typically receives inadequate attention in schools: watersheds. This project builds on and extends the Billion Oyster Project of the New York Harbor School. The project model includes five interrelated components: A teacher education curriculum, a student learning curriculum, a digital platform for project resources, an aquarium exhibit, and an afterschool STEM mentoring program. It targets middle-school students in low-income neighborhoods with high populations of English language learners and students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields and education pathways. The project will directly involve over forty schools, eighty teachers, and 8,640 students over a period of three years. A quasi-experimental, mixed-methods research plan will be used to assess the individual and collective effectiveness of the five project components. Regression analyses will be used to identify effective program aspects and assess the individual effectiveness of participation in various combinations of the five program components. Social network mapping will be used to further asses the overall "curriculum plus community" model.
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Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Sciences: The Expansion and Future of the Model
Abstract
The CCERS partnership includes collaborators from universities, foundations, education departments, community organizations, and cultural institutions to build a new curriculum. As reported in a study conducted by the Rand Corporation (2011), partnerships among districts, community-based organizations, government agencies, local funders, and others can strengthen learning programs. The curriculum merged project-based learning and Bybee’s 5E model (Note 1) to teach core STEM-C concepts to urban middle school students through restoration science. CCERS has five interrelated and complementary programmatic pillars (see details in the next section). The CCERS curriculum encourages urban middle school students to explore and participate in project-based learning activities restoring the oyster population in and around New York Harbor. In Melaville, Berg and Blank’s Community Based Learning (2001) there is a statement that says, “Education must connect subject matter with the places where students live and the issues that affect us all”. Lessons engage students and teachers in long-term restoration ecology and environmental monitoring projects with STEM professionals and citizen scientists. In brief, partners have created curriculums for both in-school and out-of-school learning programs, an online platform for educators and students to collaborate, and exhibits with community partners to reinforce and extend both the educators’ and their students’ learning. Currently CCERS implementation involves:
• 78 middle schools
• 127 teachers
• 110 scientist volunteers
• Over 5000 K-12 students
In this report, we present summative findings from data collected via surveys among three cohorts of students whose teachers were trained by the project’s curriculum and findings from interviews among project leaders to answer the following research questions:
1. Do the five programmatic pillars function independently and collectively as a system of interrelated STEM-C content delivery vehicles that also effectively change students’ and educators’ disposition towards STEM-C learning and environmental restoration and stewardship?
2. What comprises the "curriculum plus community enterprise" local model?
3. What are the mechanisms for creating sustainability and scalability of the model locally during and beyond its five-year implementation?
4. What core aspects of the model are replicable?
Findings suggest the program improved students’ knowledge in life sciences but did not have a significant effect on students’ intent to become a scientist or affinity for science.
Published by Sciedu Press 1 ISSN 2380-9183 E-ISSN 2380-9205
http://irhe.sciedupress.com International Research in Higher Education Vol. 3, No. 4; 2018
Interviews with project staff indicated that the key factors in the model were its conservation mission, partnerships, and the local nature of the issues involved. The primary mechanisms for sustainability and scalability beyond the five-year implementation were the digital platform, the curriculum itself, and the dissemination (with over 450 articles related to the project published in the media and academic journals). The core replicable aspects identified were the digital platform and adoption in other Keystone species contexts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1440869
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10078618
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International research in higher education
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2380-9183
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-11
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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