Meeting Abstract
The future of any scientific discipline depends on nurturing understanding of both discipline-specific core ideas and the nature of scientific thought in the next generation of scientists. Education/outreach continues to be emphasized as a core component of research grants. Efforts to bridge the formidable gap between K-12 science education, and scientific research and teaching at the post-secondary level, benefit from active collaboration between researchers and K-12 teachers. A successful exemplar is the “Beetle Project” spearheaded by the Williams Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. A two-month teacher-as-researcher experience funded by the NSF/SSE has yielded a published, NGSS-aligned instructional module using insects as a model system to illustrate biological impacts of climate change. The curricular goal is engaging students with a range of hands-on and minds-on activities that increase their understanding of how science works, evolutionary processes, and the impacts of climate change. We will model the curriculum, present ongoing results of implementation in high school classrooms, and discuss the benefits to both students and teachers of bringing authentic research into the classroom. Module components include: 1) a set of whole-organism/behavior and molecular lab activities using ladybird beetles; 2) a paper-and-pencil Data Nugget activity; and 3) an illustrated case study on the willow leaf beetle research that inspired the module, with extension materials for AP classrooms. The full module is hosted on the UC Berkeley Understanding Evolution website (https://tinyurl.com/y6bk9pzc). Detailed lesson plans suggest different scaffolding options for students from a variety of levels (middle school – AP Biology) and for classrooms with greater or lesser access to lab resources. We are partnering with teachers to develop, test, and disseminate the modules.
