*Science* in the Classroom (SitC)

American Association For The Advancement Of Science, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

This project will significantly expand the *Science* in the Classroom (SitC) initiative (http://www.scienceintheclassroom.org), which was launched through previous NSF funding (Awards DUE-1043998 and DUE-1224661). The most effective science education reforms focus on engaging students in the process of science. This project will pursue a unique approach to transforming the undergraduate STEM learning environment, one that introduces undergraduates, at very early stages in their careers, to important elements of the process of science: reading primary research articles, communicating science, and engaging in a peer review system. The project team, working with expert scientists, graduate students, postdocs, teachers, and educational researchers, will translate contemporary research papers, taken from the pages of the leading journal *Science*, into tools for learning. The annotated papers and related resources that are produced will allow students to engage with primary data sets and gain a deep understanding of how scientists design experiments, gather and analyze data, and present their conclusions. This approach enables students to assume the persona of a scientist; it guides them through the scientific process of posing questions, designing experiments to pursue those questions, analyzing the data that returns from the experiments, and working toward new conclusions in response to the analysis. The students also come to understand, first-hand, the process of scientific communication, through which scientists explain their progression from questions to experiments to data to conclusions, while also generating the next set of intriguing questions. The project will promote the development of transferable learning skills by introducing cutting-edge research and primary literature into the undergraduate classroom and by engaging students in the fundamental scientific principles of experimental design and critical analysis. The resources that are developed by the project will, in essence, expose students to the process of science. In addition, the new resources will encourage students to apply and integrate their new knowledge in the context of novel science, in place of simply learning vocabulary words and concepts from a textbook. Besides growing and enhancing the content of the existing SitC corpus, the new project will cultivate a "community of practice" around developing SitC resources; develop materials and workshops for pre-service teachers and college faculty, focusing on how to use the SitC resources in the classroom; expand efforts to reach community college students and faculty with the resources; and design instruments to assess the impact of the resources on various dimensions of teaching and learning.