Kimberly D. Tanner - US grants

Title of Project: Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) Track 2: SFSU/SFUSD Science Teachers and Research Scholars (STAR) Program
Institution: San Francisco State University (SFSU) ,College of Science and Engineering(COSE)
PI/Co-PI.s: John Stubbs, PI; Kimberly Tanner, Kathleen O.Sullivan, Gretchen
Rollwagen Bollens, Co-PI.s
Number of Fellows per year: 12
School District Partners: San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD)
Target audience of the project (K-12 grade band): Middle and High schools ,Grades 6-12
Setting: Urban
NSF supported disciplines involved: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geosciences, Mathematics

The STAR Program is focused on individual partnerships between SFSU science graduate students and SFUSD teachers, working together on-site in middle and high schools to deliver high quality inquiry-based science instruction. This Track 2 project uses a three phase plan to institutionalize graduate student-teacher partnerships by replacing the NSF GK-12 Graduate Teaching Fellows (GTF) over 5 years with COSE Graduate Research and Teaching Partners (GRTP). These GRTP will be graduate students in the COSE who are working toward their Master's degree in a science content discipline (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geosciences, Mathematics), but have a new requirement added to their thesis, a Science Education component. The GRTP will take a series of pedagogy courses and, as a culminating experience, will participate in a 10 hour per week on-site partnership with a middle or high school teacher.

Intellectual Merit: The project contributes to the knowledge base of the emerging discipline of science education partnership, as well as pioneers strategies and structures for the integration of partnership efforts into the mission and goals of university science departments. The Fellows develop pedagogical skills and K-12 education advocacy as part of their graduate training. Teachers improve inquiry-based teaching methods and mentoring skills, and K-12 students experience enhanced science learning and gain access to diverse role models pursuing careers in science. The institutionalization plan is a creative focus that imbues science education outreach into traditional research degrees throughout the SFSU COSE.

Broader Impacts: The STAR Program partners, SFSU and the SFUSD, are both diverse urban educational institutions. The 60,000+ students in the SFUSD, 55% of which are from economically disadvantage families, represent over 50 ethnic backgrounds, with no single group representing >30% of the total student body. Moreover, the STAR Program draws from a diverse graduate and undergraduate population at SFSU in which ~20% are Latina/ African American students.Thus, this program will directly influence K-16+ students traditionally underrepresented in science, as well as disseminate a model for institutionalizing partnership programs to other urban institutions. The project expands the current science education partnership efforts at SFSU, establishes courses and reward structures that will sustain the effort beyond the term of the grant, and initiates new academic pathways in existing COSE Master's degree programs to involve graduate students in science education partnership efforts as part of their scientific training.

Results from Track 1: GTF (27 to date) have improved their skill in devising effective science learning activities and have committed to continued outreach in their careers. Partner teachers have a renewed sense of enthusiasm for teaching science, documented in external evaluation surveys. The GTF-teacher partners have made grade-specific adaptations of over 80 inquiry-based lesson plans to date, with direct impact on ~1500 students in 5 middle schools (4 inner city) and 1000 students in six high schools( 4 inner city). The inner city schools have >60% Latina/African American student populations. All partner teachers(14 MS, 16 HS) report that students have significantly increased interest in science activities as a direct result of GTF presence. From experience gained in Track 1, procedures have evolved which establish effective GTF-teacher partnerships prior to semester startup. Finally, the Track 1 experience has resulted in a very close partnership between the SFUSD and SFSU, which will allow for rapid and smooth implementation of the Track 2 STAR Program. Finally, the COSE administration has become a strong advocate of institutionalizing the GK-12 model as a component of science graduate degrees.

This project is partially supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory (SEPAL) in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University (SFSU) - in strong collaboration with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), the Exploratorium, and the National Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) Network - proposes Spectrum: Building Pathways to Biomedical Research Careers for Girls and Women of Color. While progress has been made in encouraging girls in science, women of color are still largely absent from the biomedical research community and no materials or models currently exist that are designed specifically to attract girls of color to these careers. Through the Spectrum initiative, SEPAL seeks to pioneer a multi-pronged program that brings together K-12 teachers and students with individuals from multiple stages on the biomedical research career pathway to learn together about the biology behind women's health issues and about research being conducted by women biomedical researchers of color. Together, a community composed of biomedical scientists who are women of color - including SFSU undergraduate students, SFSU Masters degree students, SFSU alumni in local doctoral and biotechnology positions, and SFSU Faculty - and middle and high school students and teachers will partner to address the following specific aims: 1) to educate local middle and high schools students, especially girls of color, and teachers about research on women's health and research by local NIH-funded researchers who are primarily women of color, 2) to develop a community of biomedical research role models and mentors that include females of color at multiple stages along the career pathway from middle school to faculty, 3) to develop a series of biomedical science activities tailored to the interests of adolescent girls and linked to the research programs of NIH-funded biomedical researchers who are primarily women of color, 4) to partner with the local and national Expanding Your Horizons organizations to disseminate the resulting curriculum on the science of women's health issues and this mentoring model nationwide, and 5) to investigate the role of participation in Spectrum on the interest of girls of color in biomedical science and retention of women of color in the research career pathway. Spectrum is so named to reflect its dual emphasis on developing scientists of color and on involving individuals from the entire spectrum of positions along the biomedical research career track. Spectrum activities will be open to all students and are designed specifically to attract the involvement of girls of color, and as such, will address a pressing equity issue by encouraging underrepresented students, especially girls and women of color, to pursue biomedical science research careers and by producing curricular materials designed to engage this target audience.

This collaborative project between a comprehensive state institution (San Francisco State University) and a community college (Foothill-De Anza Community College) is establishing a multi-pronged faculty enhancement program for community college biology faculty. It is anticipated that 150 college faculty and 11 graduate students will benefit directly from this project in terms of enhancing their teaching approaches, with many more undergraduate students benefitting from the resultant improved courses. The structure and content of the program is patterned after the Scientific Teaching Institutes organized by Jo Handelsman at the University of Wisconsin and has as its objective to enhance faculty pedagogical expertise, provide faculty with support to iteratively change their teaching and develop professional learning communities of community college faculty in the San Francisco Bay area.

The three aspects of this project are: 1. The Scientific Teaching Workshops Series an introductory series of five three hour workshops for those faculty with limited time who want to learn what is available in the hopes of participating in a more intense experience later on (offered during the spring term on a rotating basis at each of ten community colleges within the San Francisco Bay area); 2. The Scientific Teaching Summer Institute, a week long full day activity taking place on the campus of San Francisco State and 3. Follow up activities to help faculty implement what they have learned and to develop a teaching community among participants and their colleagues. The project further benefits from an additional resource, SEPAL (Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory) developed by Kimberly Tanner, a graduate student training program at SFSU that includes working with faculty to develop faculty teaching strengths.

Materials being used at the workshops include: the Scientific Teaching workbook developed by Jo Handelsman for the long standing Scientific Teaching Institutes workshops at the University of Wisconsin Madison, designed for faculty at research intensive universities and those teaching large introductory courses; the Approaches to Biology Teaching and Learning a publication collection written by Kimberly Tanner to translate key findings from the educational literature into practical teaching strategies for the college classroom; and curricular materials developed for SEPAL.

Intellectual Merit: The merit of this project resides in its use of successful activities and materials developed for one audience to transform opportunities available for a different audience.

Broader Impact: Given the large number of students taught by the faculty involved and the fact that in the bay area many biology majors at four year schools start their academic careers at community colleges, this project's potential to effect many students is obvious.

The purpose of this CAREER research study is to determine how undergraduate students conceptualize and explain complex biological phenomena, including: (1) cancer, and (2) genetic modification of organisms. In addition, this study explores the psychological basis for how these students learn about these subjects. Four study/survey groups are being compared: (1) entering biology majors; (2) graduating biology majors; (3) non-biology majors; and (4) expert research biologists, all located at San Francisco State University (SFSU).

The overarching research hypothesis is that entering university biology majors and graduating biology majors hold multiple explanatory frameworks for their understanding of these complex biological phenomena. If this is the case, then biology majors may employ different explanations for a biological phenomenon, like cancer, depending on whether or not they are cued to apply their basic biology knowledge learned in school. A specific aim of this proposal is to investigate what conceptual changes biology majors undergo as a result of their undergraduate training and to what extent do they develop biological expertise during their university education.

This research includes three approaches to gaining insight into biology learning during the proposed five-year funding period: (1) a comparative, cross-sectional survey of a large number (~1800) of university students; (2) more detailed videotaped survey interviews with a subset (~120) of the above-referenced university students; and (3) a longitudinal study over the entire funding period of 20 non-biology majors as compared to 20 biology majors.

This research study is being carried out by Tanner and her graduate students in the SFSU biology department. This represents a unique opportunity for STEM-content-based (biology) graduate students to receive training and experience in science educational research. Furthermore, the PI is developing a new concentration in biology education research as part of the Masters degree in biology. As an urban-serving institution, this project includes a broad representation and diversity of the target undergraduate population. This study is being enhanced by input received from an advisory committee composed of cognitive scientists and science education researchers, as well as through ongoing formative assessment.

The results of this research will inform both the science education and biological content communities. Research findings will be widely disseminated via presentations at national meetings and articles published in peer-reviewed professional journals. It is anticipated that these research results will contribute to understanding how undergraduate students learn complex biological phenomena and lead to insights that could influence how these ideas are taught in higher education throughout the U.S.

In a collaborative project involving San Francisco State University and the Foothill-DeAnza Community College District, Summer Teaching Institutes continue to be offered to community-college faculty of the San Francisco Bay area. These institutes introduce faculty to the concepts and attitudes of scientific teaching and provide professional development for faculty to change their practices to include goal setting and assessment to determine whether the goals have been met. In this expanded second stage of the project, a second Advanced Summer Institute is available to graduates of the first who are interested in collaborating to develop a common assessment tool. This tool applied to the population of San Francisco area community college students generates powerful data measuring the effectiveness of scientific teaching on student learning. Additional activities of the emerging learning community include Teaching Squares, groups of four faculty at one or several institutions who meet together regularly to share teaching strategies and observe each others' classes; and Classroom Partnerships between a mentor community college faculty member and a SFSU graduate student interested in pursuing college-level teaching as a career. The enthusiastic response to the first phase of this project demanded that it be extended and amplified. To do so in the direction of establishing data on effectiveness makes the experience all the richer. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts toward Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education.

The Scientist Spotlights Initiative: Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Science through Development, Assessment, and Dissemination of Curriculum Supplements that Bring Rare Science Role Models to Students Project Summary/Abstract San Francisco State University (SFSU) and Foothill Community College ? in strong collaboration with the San Francisco public schools, the California Academy of Sciences, Story Collider, and Science Friday ? propose The Scientist Spotlights Initiative: Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Science through Development, Assessment, and Dissemination of Curriculum Supplements that Bring Rare Science Role Models to Students. Research into science identity, science belonging, stereotype threat, and possible selves suggests a lack of diverse representations of scientists is impeding traditionally under-represented students from persisting and succeeding in science from middle school through college. Access to diverse role models in science appears to be key; however, bringing diverse scientists directly to classrooms is simply not feasible as a regular part of the science curriculum. Science instructors at all levels ? middle school, high school, community college, and university ? are enthusiastic about promoting inclusion in science, bringing diverse role models to classrooms, and connecting these real scientists to students' learning experiences. However, few curricular materials currently exist that support teachers in regularly and systematically connecting diverse role models and science careers to students and the content they teach. In previous efforts, we have evaluated a series of metacognitive homework assignments ? Scientist Spotlights ? that featured counter-stereotypical examples of scientists in an introductory biology class at a diverse community college. Scientist Spotlights additionally served as tools to engage students in content, as scientists were selected to match topics covered each week. Research on the impact of Scientist Spotlight interventions revealed that these simple curriculum supplements shifted students' ideas towards counter-stereotypical descriptions of scientists and enhanced their ability to personally relate to scientists. As Scientist Spotlights require very little class time and complement existing curricula, they represent a promising tool for enhancing science identity, shifting stereotypes, and connecting content to issues of equity and diversity in a broad range of STEM classrooms, from middle school through university. Over 5 years, we anticipate developing, piloting, and assessing ~200 unique Scientist Spotlight curriculum supplements that would allow science instructors from middle to high school to community college to integrate diversity explicitly into their courses, engaging ~40 non-traditional college-level students/year and ~12 science teachers/year in implementing and assessing Scientist Spotlights in their classrooms with ~1,500 enrolled students, establishing service-learning courses to institutionalize these efforts, continuing our record of publishing research on such efforts with SEPAL postdoctoral scholars, producing an accessible Scientists Spotlights Initiative website to make materials widely available, and disseminating the effort in collaboration with school, museum, and media partners.

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving undergraduate biology education. It will do so by conducting basic research on how the intuitive thinking of biology students helps and/or hinders their learning of biological concepts in STEM learning environments. The project focuses on anthropocentric thinking, a particular kind of intuitive thinking that anchors understanding of the biological world in human terms. Anthropocentric thinking results in a tendency to see humans as biologically exceptional or to reason about other organisms by analogy to humans. Previous NSF-sponsored findings show that anthropocentric thinking may have a complex role in how undergraduates learn biological science. This project intends to examine this issue from three perspectives: 1) How students from different backgrounds may vary in the degree to which they bring with anthropocentric conceptions to the biology classroom. 2) How teaching biology concepts using anthropocentric language might help and/or hinder student learning. 3) How faculty may intentionally or unintentionally use anthropocentric language in their own teaching. This research has the potential to contribute to the NSF EHR mission by discovering how specific systems of cognitive understanding may interact with formal classroom teaching to help and/or hinder science learning.

This project will leverage a successful long-term collaboration between cognitive scientists and discipline-based education researchers to investigate the educational consequences of intuitive understandings. These investigators? previous work revealed systematic relationships between patterns of intuitive, informal thought about biology, including teleological, essentialist, and anthropocentric thinking, as well as revealing misconceptions about biological concepts among students. It showed anthropocentric thinking is more strongly and consistently related to biological misconceptions than other types of intuitive thinking. However, widespread and frequent use of anthropocentric language by biology faculty in classrooms suggests that at least some instructors see pedagogical merit in such thinking. Moreover, although this project's researchers have found similar anthropocentric thinking and misconceptions among students in two different urban institutions, anthropocentric thinking has been shown to be reduced among people from rural backgrounds. Therefore, this project intends to probe relationships between anthropocentric thinking and biological misconceptions among students from rural backgrounds. It is important to explore in depth the ways in which anthropocentric framing may facilitate learning formal biology concepts (via human examples and analogies) and/or engender misconceptions (via human exceptionalism). Accordingly, the project aims to investigate the effects of anthropocentric framing on biology learning by experimentally presenting biology concepts framed in different ways and assessing resulting learning and misconceptions. Finally, although there is widespread evidence of anthropocentric language in faculty lectures, the degree to which instructors consciously employ such language as a pedagogical strategy is unknown. Therefore, this project seeks to assess faculty metacognitive awareness of their use of anthropocentric language in biology explanations. Results of this research are expected to inform the building of an important and generative theoretical framework integrating disconnected yet theoretically interdependent lines of inquiry in cognitive science and discipline-based science education research. It has the potential to translate this theoretical framework for understanding the acquisition of expertise in life sciences into pedagogical best practices and thus influence the way undergraduate biology is taught. The proposed project is a joint effort between the Conceptual Organization, Reasoning, and Education Laboratory (CORE Lab) at Northeastern University and the Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory (SEPAL) at San Francisco State University, and is supported by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.